[ANSTHRLD] Witch Names

C. L. Ward gunnora at vikinganswerlady.com
Thu Jun 5 13:20:49 PDT 2003


While looking for information on Guthrum the Dane, I downloaded a PDF of
Margaret Alice Murray's "The Witch-Cult in Western Europe" (Oxford:
Clarendon. 1921), because Google hit it in a general search for "guthrum".

As it turns out, the PDF has a tiny passing mention of Guthrum that was
useless to me, but one of Murray's appendices caught my eye, being a list of
681 names of witches from covens (162 of which occur between 1324 and 1598
A.D.), with one section being arranged by date and location, and the other
alphabetical by personal name. These names were compiled from judicial
records and contemporary chroniclers, as well as some unpublished trials
among the Edinburgh Justiciary Records and also in the Guernsey Greffe.
Murray's study was focused on Great Britain, but also investigated some
French and Flemish sources, and New England records.

I'm not exactly sure what Murray's theories about names and witches is (I
guess I'll eventually wade through enough of the text to figure that out,
just out of curiosity).  But having the alphabetical list presented by
Murray in tabular form, in a PDF, and being a tech writer with all the
necessary geeky tools for manipulating PDFs, and having time on my hands, I
sucked out the names into an Excel file.

I have some vague notions that there is an article in this somewhere, with a
working title thus far of "Just Because You're an SCA Wiccan Doesn't Mean
You Have to Have a Pixie Moonglow Name".

Since my focus is really on Viking names (d'oh!), I wondered if anyone
either (a) would like to pick up this list and do something useful with it
or (b) can suggest some useful presentation of this material (assuming it is
in any way useful).

I've zipped the PDF and the Excel file separately and stuck 'em on my
website so folks can get at them.  They're located at:

http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/FTP_Files/MurrayWitchCult(477KB).zip
http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/FTP_Files/MurrayWitchNames(55KB).zip

::GUNNVOR::




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