Research source

A good case in point is that of Bessie Dunlop, of Dalry, in Ayrshire, tried on 8th November 1576 for witchcraft

Date of account: Written 1691; later edited edition
Source: The secret commonwealth of elves, fauns & fairies
Reference: The secret commonwealth of elves, fauns & fairies · selected passage 10
Rights: public_domain
Language: English/Scots historical text
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

A good case in point is that of Bessie Dunlop, of Dalry, in Ayrshire, tried on 8th November 1576 for witchcraft. She dealt in medicine and white magic, and obtained her prescriptions from Thomas Reid, slain at Pinkie fight (1547), who often appeared to her, and tried to lead her off to Fairyland. She, like Alison Pearson, was “convict and burnt” (Scott’s _Demonology_, p. 146, and Pitcairn’s _Criminal Trials_). Both ladies knew the Fairy Queen, and Alison Pearson beheld Maitland of Lethington, and Buccleugh, in Fairyland, as is recounted in a rhymed satire on Archbishop Adamson (Dalzell’s _Scottish Poems_, p. 321). These are excellent proofs that Fairyland was a kind of Hades, or home of the dead.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

Lattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.

Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.