Finding the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland

Elizabeth Ewan is University Research Chair and Professor of History at the University of Guelph, Canada. Janay Nugent is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Lethbridge, Canada.

In this interdisciplinary collaboration, an international group of scholars have come together to suggest new directions for the study of the family in Scotland circa 1300-1750. Contributors apply tools from across a range of disciplines including art history, literature, music, gender studies, anthropology, history and religious studies to assess creatively the broad range of sources which inform our understanding of the pre-modern Scottish family.

Contents: Introduction: where is the family in medieval and early modern Scotland?, Elizabeth Ewan and Janay Nugent; Part I1Sources: Finding the family in the charters of medieval Scotland, 1150-1350, Cynthia Neville; 'And 4 years space, being man and wife, they loveingly agreed': balladry and early modern understandings of marriage, Katie Barclay; 'I now have a book of songs of her writing': Scottish families, orality, literacy, and the transmission of musical culture c.1500-c.1800, Dolly MacKinnon; The crucible: witchcraft and the experience of family in early modern Scotland, Scott Moir. Part 2 Family Roles: The name of the father: baptism and the social construction of fatherhood in early modern Edinburgh, Melissa Hollander; Parents and children in early modern Scotland, David G. Mullan; Crediting wives: married women and debt litigation in the 17th century, Gordon DesBrisay and Karen Sander Thomson; Lapidary inscriptions: rhetoric, reality and the Baillies of Mellerstain, Barbara C. Murison. Part 3 Family, Kin and Community: The spiritual ties of kinship in pre-Reformation Scotland, Mairi Cowan; 'Inressyng of kyndnes and renewing off thair blud': the family, kinship and clan policy in 16th-century Scottish Gaeldom, Alison Cathcart; A family affair: households, misbehaving anfd the community in 16th-century Aberdeen, J.R.D. Falconer; The famine of the 1690s and its aftermath: survival and recovery of the family, Karen Cullen; The disorder of Comrie, Perthshire after the '45: a leg in a cornfield, Deborah A. Symonds; Guide to further reading; Glossary; Index.