A History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland

by Cowan, Edward J; Henderson, Lizanne

• ISBN13: 9780748621576
• ISBN10: 0748621571
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-06-06
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Summary

This book examines the ordinary, routine, daily behaviour, experiences and beliefs of people in Scotland from the earliest times to 1600. Its purpose is to discover the character of everyday life in Scotland over time and to do so, where possible, within a comparative context. Its focus is on the mundane, but at the same time it takes heed of the people's experience of wars, famine, environmental disaster and other major causes of disturbance, and assesses the effects of longer-term processes of change in religion, politics, and economic and social affairs. In showing how the extraordinary impinged on the everyday, the book draws on every possible kind of evidence including a diverse range of documentary sources, artefactual, environmental and archaeological material, and the published work of many disciplines. The authors explore the lives of all the people of Scotland and provide unique insights into how the experience of daily life varied across time according to rank, class, gender, age, religion and ethnic group. They look at the contextual nature of everyday experience and consider how this was shaped by national, regional and tribal considerations. They reveal the variations between Highland and Lowland, the Western Isles and the Northern Isles, inland and coastal, and urban and rural. They examine the role played by language, whether Gaelic, Welsh, English, Pictish, Norse, Latin or Scots. The book shows the distinctively Scottish aspects of diurnal life and how, through trading and contact with migrants, the lives of Scots were affected by other cultures and nations. Taken as a whole it represents a new way of looking at medieval Scotland and has implications and relevance for historians and their public across the discipline.

Author Biography

Edward J. Cowan, Emeritus Professor of Scottish History at the University of Glasgow, is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He is the author of The Wallace Book (2007), For Freedom Alone: The Declaration of Arbroath 1320 (2008) and Folk in Print: Scotland's Chapbook Heritage (2007). Lizanne Henderson is Lecturer in History at the University of Glasgow. She is the author of Fantastical Imaginations: The Supernatural in Scottish History and Culture (2009) and co-author, with Edward J. Cowan, of Scottish Fairy Belief: A History (2007).

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. vii
Series Editors' Foreword	p. ix
Introduction: Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland	p. 1
Landscape and People	p. 25
The Worldview of Scottish Vikings in the Age of the Sagas	p. 36
Sacred and Banal: The Discovery of Everyday Medieval Material Culture	p. 67
The Family	p. 89
'Hamperit in ane hony came': Sights, Sounds and Smells in the Medieval Town	p. 109
Playtime Everyday: The Material Culture of Medieval Gaming	p. 145
Women of Independence in Barbour's Bruce and Blind Harry's Wallace	p. 169
Everyday Life in the Histories of Scotland from Walter Bower to George Buchanan	p. 185
Disease, Death and the Hereafter in Medieval Scotland	p. 196
'Detestable Slaves of the Devil': Changing Ideas about Witchcraft in Sixteenth-Century Scotland	p. 226
Glaswegians: The First One Thousand Years	p. 254
Marian Devotion in Scotland and the Shrine of Loreto	p. 274
Annotated Bibliography	p. 289
Notes on the Contributors	p. 303
Index	p. 306
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