Reddit mentions: The best scotland history books

Officially free masonry started with the Grand Lodge in 1717. But it's not so cut and dry as all the that. It's almost like asking when did the United States start. July 1776 was the declaration of independence but the thinking, motivations, and political stirrings started far before that. You could argue it started with the Jamestown settlement, it really depends on how you look at it.

I believe Lodge 1 of Edinburgh has "lodge" minutes back to 1599 or 1600. Since that was before the Grand Lodge in 1717 there weren't really free masons but they were that kind of muddy water. Some records of free mason like activity can be traced back much further, depending on your historical slant one could argue Hiram Abiff was a free mason but I digress. There are some very basic minutes of business for stone masons as far back the 900s in France if memory serves. There was a really good book on this that my first WM lent me when I was an apprentice but I can't remember the name of the book.

If you want to dive in pre 1700s of free masonry I'd recommend https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Freemasonry-Scotlands-Century-1590/dp/0521396549 but it's not a casual read if that makes sense.

You want Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland and The Scottish Witch Hunt in Context. They're both quite easy to get - I think Central Library has copies, and if it doesn't then the NLS certainly does.

The witch trials are pretty much my favourite aspect of history to geek out over and I've been studying them for a while, so if there's anything in particular that you're wanting to know please feel free to message me and I'll do my best to help or point you in the direction of the right resources. (NB: My area of interest runs from the North Berwick witch trials in 1590 to the fall of the witchprickers in the 1660s. I'm not so au fait with cases later than that.)

There are also a couple of good online resources that might interest you - James IV's Daemonologie, which was a very important text during the trials, and Edinburgh University's Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, a searchable database containing information gathered from surviving trial records (there's also a handy suggested reading list on that site).

> while the Scottish monarchs were used to having more absolute power

I would strongly contest this. The Scottish kings had much more of a primes inter pares relationships with their nobles from the Middle Ages onwards, and powerful magnates were always a problem both in the Lowlands and Highlands. Especially in the Stewart period (from 1371), it was extremely common for kings to be minors when they took the throne, and control of the monarch's person was a very effective political chip for an enterprising noble. Look into the Gowrie Conspiracy or Mary Stewart's upbringing if you'd like to see examples of this at work (Scotland: Story of a Nation is a decent survey of Scottish history).

If anything, it was the English monarchs who were used to a more imperial style, and this suited a flamboyant personality like James VI and I perfectly. In fact his Scottish subjects resented the formality required of them at his court in London and the preferments he gave to servile English courtiers instead of good, honest Scots (this is how they saw it, anyway.) For information about the tension between Scottish nobles and James after the Union of the Crowns, Allan Macinnes' Charles I and the Making of the Covenanting Movement is the best I can think of off the top of my head.

For a good general overview of Scotland's history you can't go far wrong with Michael Lynch's Scotland: A New History and my dad says that Neil Oliver's book A History of Scotland is good as well. I've not read it myself, but given that it's aimed at a general audience instead of historians it's possibly more readable than Lynch's book.

For modern Scottish history Tam Devine's book The Scottish Nation: 1700-2007 is a pretty good start. I find him quite readable, but it's more of a social history than a dates and facts history. I've taken against him a bit lately as he keeps sticking his oar in whenever there's a social issue on the go (Rangers going into administration was the latest), but I can't fault him for his knowledge and research work. I've a lot of respect for him as a historian.

The articles on Scottish History on Wikipedia tend to be quite well written, researched and sourced so you might find more specific books and information from their footnotes.

Are you trying to write a novel? Because it sounds like you're trying to write a novel.

What it feels like to live in Inverness...is the same as it feels to live in any other 21st century large town/small city. Except with 5x more tourists. I really don't know what you're hoping to hear, but honestly, it's probably not much different to where you live now.

I can say that with a fair degree of certainty, because I moved from the US to Scotland several years ago myself.

It's just not that different. Sorry to burst your bubble.

But while I'm at it, I may as well piss on your parade too, and tell you that there's no way that, as a plumber, you're ever going to get a visa to settle in the UK. It just doesn't work that way, and it doesn't matter how much history and culture you've absorbed.

But, if you're still wanting to absorb it, I'd recommend Scotland:
The Story of a Nation and The Scottish Nation: A Modern History as good overviews to start with.

If you're then wanting to drill down into particular periods, Edinburgh University Press has a series, New History of Scotland, which includes a number of books on specific eras/topics.

For Highland-specific history, the one everyone has read is John Prebble's The Highland Clearances, but of course there are others.

In general, just avoid anything by Neil Oliver.

Eh, I don't know about pen-pals, but you could certainly chat with folks over on r/scotland.

The book Scots: The Mither Tongue by Billy Kay is a favourite of mine for information on the history,politics and current situation of the Scots language. As for learning the language there are books such as this and grammar guides such as this. There is also the Dictionary of the Scots Language which is an amazingly useful resource for native and learner alike found here. As for the issue of listening to Scots speakers so you can understand pronunciation i have no suggestion however i will have a search and contact you if i find a good solution to this. When brushing up on my own Scots i always found copying passages from English into Scots as being useful for both increasing vocabulary but also making the word choice more natural when i was using it in daily life, i myself ended up completing a good chunk of the KJV in Scots. While an endeavour like the KJV is by no means recommended by me, smaller passages from books/newspapers/back of beans tins copied into Scots daily can be useful practice.

>How does John Wilkes factor into the British radicalism of the late 18th century?

He doesn't is the short answer. Wilkes was very much an opportunist who used political agitation to achieve his short term goals. Frank O'Gorman argues in The Long Eighteenth Century: British Political and Social History 1688-1832 that, whilst Wilkes was the first 'popular' political figure who "appealed directly to the mass of the people", his focus on 'English liberties' and the patriotic nature of his writings and songs sung at Wilkite events meant that "the Wilkite movement was patriotic, loyalist, even conservative in its ideological stance". However, the Wilkite movement was responsible for constructing a radical tradition in England and popularising a radical view of the Glorious Revolution, though O'Gorman stresses that these were "indirect aspects of the Wilkite phenomenon". Similarly, at the height of the Wilkite movement a dozen radical MPs were elected to Parliament in 1774 and radicals established themselves as a permanent opposition to traditional authorities in London, though they were less successful elsewhere.

So in a way, Wilkes was the founding father of English radicalism in the Eighteenth century. I refer to Wilkite radicalism as English due to Wilkes' staunch anti-Scottish sentiments. However, rather than continuing to support the political organisations he set up, Wilkes lost interest when they no long served his purposes. Linda Colley states in Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 that the slogan 'Wilkes and Liberty' became "expressive of triumph, celebration and relief, rather than a war-cry stimulating further protest". The patriotic and conservative elements of the Wilkite movement made him "too easy to incorporate into a conventional, approving English patriotism", effectively damaging his credentials as a radical figurehead. This is, according to Colley, "one reason why neither the man nor the slogan [Wilkes and Liberty] was much referred to by subsequent generations of radicals".

So, to summarise, Wilkes was essentially a product of his time, a demagogue who could play to the crowd and espoused populist resistance to the established order to gain popularity with a British population hit hard by the economic decline and rise in unemployment after the Seven Years War. Wilkes made the most of the political crisis caused by the accession of George III but had no interests in radical politics beyond his own. As a consequence, although he was significant in its formations, Wilkes left little lasting legacy to the generation of radicals at the time of the French Revolution.

This got pretty long. I was going to deal with your other question about Whig politics but I will leave it here so this doesn't become a solid wall of text.

they're the scottish clans, which these days are just the family names of the major families, I wish it was higher res, was disappointed when I couldn't zoom in, but presume my grandmother's clan is on there.

Edit: found the original map on amazon, http://www.amazon.in/Scotland-Old-Clans-Collins-Pictorial/dp/0007485905

Funnily enough Clan Campbell are shown in the zoomed in image, third pne along, the yellow to the right of Inverness ( and funnily enough the rest of the family who still live up there are in Inverness now.)

Bonus: happen to be at my parents so got a pic of my mother's plate that has the coat of arms and motto; https://imgur.com/a/tQwPF

Emma Wilby also wrote The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland which is highly regarded in and out of magickal circles. But good luck getting your hands on a copy that costs less than an arm and a leg.

>“In this bold and imaginative book, Emma Wilby attempts to understand Isobel by taking us deeply into her culture and spiritual worldview. . . . With meticulous attention to detail, she reconstructs Isobel’s life as a poor, illiterate farmwife: her cultural horizons within the fermtoun, or small agro-pastoral community where she lived; her spiritual worldview, which combined Christianity with many aspects of folklore rooted in earlier cosmologies; and the likely sequence of events that led to her arrest and imprisonment. Wilby gives equally careful attention to the personalities and agendas of the men who questioned her, showing how a unique combination of personal, religious, and political ideologies came together in the small interrogation room, culminating in her remarkable performance. . . . No other author to date has come up with such a cohesive interpretation of Isobel’s confessions. In the end, this book does what good research should: provide us with provocative, original interpretations and raise questions for further exploration. Wilby’s book will be of great interest to folklorists, anthropologists, historians of witchcraft, and of course modern Pagan Witches.” —Sabina Magliocco, California State University, Journal of Folklore Research

Are you looking for history of the region and culture or historical treatises?

A single compendium of treatises that I (with a lot of help from others) put together.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1trCQd0eCL8cyaJGKIOkr8rPSSGtaOC7I0nw2PvAQaAw/edit?usp=sharing

For "old style" broadsword the most important texts are probably Hope, Wylde, McBane, Page, Miller, and Lonnergan. For the later "regimental" broadsword styles look at Sinclair, Angelo, Taylor, Mathewson, and Roworth. Roworth is the most accessible for a new practitioner.

Cateran Society is probably the single go to source, though there would be others. If you had to buy one book it would be "Lessons from the Broadsword Masters" which effectively combines his previous books. This will give you a good grounding on the cultural and military history of the region and then an a comprehensive look at the techniques and approaches.
https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Broadsword-Masters-Christopher-Thompson/dp/0359139639

Unortunately Wagner and Rector's "Highland Broadsword" book is out of print. https://www.amazon.com/Highland-Broadsword-Scottish-Regimental-Swordsmanship/dp/1891448218
The included treatises/manuals can all be sourced elsewhere now but there are some essays that would be nice to be able to read.

Scottish Broadsword is nice but not necessary, I would consider it informative once you have a main core of research and practice done.
https://www.amazon.com/Scottish-Fencing-Small-Sword-Broadsword-Battlefield/dp/0999056735/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=33678FJ3DZY411T3YJA9

There is the GeoHipster calendar, which is always good for inspiration: http://geohipster.com/2019/11/14/on-postgis-day-we-reveal-the-map-authors-for-our-2020-calendar/

There has been, at least in Europe, a lot of great historic mapping books published in recent times. I always find them fascinating: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scotland-Mapping-Nation-Christopher-Fleet/dp/1780270917

Horatio Hornblower series by C. S. Forester, most definitely! Then you'd have to list all the stuff that's been based off that series, which is down the bottom of the wikipedia page.

And I know this is a bit out there for you, but you could call this supplementary - it's historical fiction with dragons. His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire, Book 1) by Naomi Novik.

For the girls, you could get them to read the stuff by Georgette Heyer. Heyer was a romance novelist whose research library for British period customs and clothing was fiercely fought over by museums and libraries when she died. She wrote things that are both engaging and truly capture the flavor of the timeframe; she didn't impose modern morals and anachronisms onto her fiction.

Sherlock Holmes? Pick a few of the classic stories and maybe analyze the differences between society then in Victorian England and today. As a companion, you could get them to read the bit in A Bloody Business: An Anecdotal History of Scotland Yard which discusses Arthur Conan Doyle and his contributions to social change in Victorian London.

Then there's the Mabinogi, which has inspired tons of other works, and you could pair that with Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising Series - there's only one book in there that really draws from/deals with Welsh myth, but it's a good one.

A short book of the 2000 years of Scotland before the union? You could find a bible on the Golden Age alone.

Scottish History for Dummies seems like it would help.

Or This

Or This

Have fun!

I actually might pick all of them up myself haha.

Have you read The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotlandby Emma Wilby? Wow oh wow!! If you haven't, you really should, if you can find a copy.

Lodge 49 S01E06 The Mysteries

We are somewhere between Albedo and Citrinitas, or the White Phase to the Yellow Phase. Larry's memory is heavily cast in yellow light, as is his room and upholstered chairs, even his shirt. Cinitras is when we change from the Moon to the Sun, from reflecting the light of others to becoming a source of light ourselves.

In the three Pillars of the Tree of Life, Severity, Mercy and Balance, Dud seems to be taking the path of Severity (which starts with passivity), Liz the Path of Mercy (which starts with taking action), and Ernie the Path of Balance (living in the here and now).

“He who thinks a fire, is a fire.” is a hex being cast by Wallis Smith onto child Larry. What a dickish thing to do to your girl-on-the-side’s son. In real lodges, a President only serves a one year term, to keep their heads from getting too swelled like this, and the officer’s line keeps moving people up so that will be many Past Presidents lying around to check the power of the current year’s one should he get out of line. Those Thanksgiving decorations, including the bark canoe, are pretty sweet tho.

“Except we’re the Lynx. Not the Masons. The Masons were wannabe Rosicrucians. And the Rosicrucians were a hoax that pretty much just got out of hand. You know, there's a really great essay by this British junkie--" There have been so many conjectures about the origins of Freemasonry by so many authors, all of whom contradict each other, that this essay of Duds could be hidden among any of the Prestonian Lectures, the hundreds of books published by Lewis Masonic, or since Scotland is part of Great Britain, it could be Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century. But we see Dud has taken seriously Blaise’s statement that he wouldn’t respect Dud if he didn’t put in the work and study necessary to earn becoming a Knight.

[Edit: Hat tip to /u/ficta, who saw the clue was in "British junkie", which I completely missed despite it being there in the closed captions. This makes the essay most likely Historico-Critical Inquiry Into the Origin of the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons by Thomas De Quincey. Warning: It has a wandering, fatiguing intro, just skip to Chapter 2. ]

“Who’s not afraid of the dark, Liz? At least it makes sense. You know what doesn’t make sense? Being afraid of the light.” …says the guy starting a nightshift job where he will be chased by dark shadowy figures similar to the shadow man alchemical symbol for Earth.

Champ’s Marxist rants about corporations are self-fulfilling. He chooses to place himself in the pressure cooker, and refuses to step away. He chooses to work two jobs at the same time. I wonder if he also saves money by having no home or bed to sleep in. His anti-capitalism rants offer no solution, no way out, nothing to change to, just bitterness at his alienation and disempowerment. Maybe if he quit his speed habit he could afford to quit one of his bottom of the ladder jobs and be less stressed. While Dud idealizes pastoral naturalism, Champ demonizes industrial capitalism. Even a future when Champ retires and is replaced by robots is dystopian. Dystopian literature is a particularly bad fantasy genre that misleads angsty teen mid-wits into believing they’re in-on-the-secret visionaries.

Ernie is declared Sovereign Protector, which Jung would say now makes Ernie a Senex.

Larry “goes down swinging” in the same spot outside the lodge of his childhood fist fight.

Dud is quickly moving up in the world. From a Fool, through the three Medieval ranks of Those who Work, and now to Those Who Fight. (Er, those who drive away quickly.)

Notice what the thieves are stealing? They’re cutting out copper electrical lines from the Orbis warehouse.

Alice’s motivational exhortations ("You're so weak! You suck at this!") are all dude bro shit talking, which takes a shift in thinking for some to understand how it works: She challenges you, saying who you are is not good enough. You overcome her by proving her wrong and doing better. It’s her quick way of filtering for winners, which are people willing to push themselves to improve.

Alice has displaced the Father's "Relax" pillow, throwing it onto the floor, and taken the Father's position on the couch herself while she challenges Liz to "improve her core". She can casually do this because Alice's name means "nobility".

"You moved the couch". The couch for Liz is the structure that she has placed herself, her father, and her brother into since childhood, giving her comfort. Liz has finally developed enough core (spirit) to shift her couch, and shift the relationships that the three have all been locked in even past death, breaking at last the parent's hold over them all. This breakthrough was not without risk, and the power released by the child rebelling against the parent and breaking these relationship constraints has injured and hospitalized her.

Liz has destroyed the image of her old self, transforming into someone new. While Dud's changes come from study and learning, Liz's changes result from intoxication. She ends with a cable tow tied around her neck. She may have stumbled on the carpet in the same place a second time as when she went to answer the door earlier ...or she may have stumbled on her father's Relax pillow that was thrown there by Alice. And did she really stumble there earlier, or just injure herself in the same place Dud is injured when she said his name out loud?

The scrolls will now become the McGuffin of the show? They're going to feel really dumb when they find out the Corpus Hermeticum is available on Kindle. What about all the first editions already sitting in the rediscovered library? Are they chopped liver?

Avery again gets 15 seconds of screen time, now making the character a Chekhov's gun. His name means "counsel". Real lodges issue membership cards that travelling members use to identify themselves as "members in good standing" to other lodges that also shows their rank within the organization. There used to be certain phrases and handshakes, but are only used ceremonially anymore because frankly once learned those don't expire when members get cheap and stop paying their dues. We're all now trained to look for a current membership card to enforce against travelling cheapskates that aren't current in dues with their home lodge drifting around satellite lodges to continue milking unpaid for membership benefits. You quickly learn to flash your current membership card first thing to the bartender when visiting any of your order's out of town lodge's taverns to show you're in good standing with your home lodge, and the first thing every bartender looks for is the current year on your card. The Grand Lodge officers are particularly diligent on flashing their membership cards because they want to discourage lax security and encourage enforcing keeping everyone up in their dues. "Is there room at the Inn?", if a real Lynx phrase used to identify a travelling Lynx member to another lodge when they don't have a current membership card, has got to be the lamest phrase ever, and this kind of easy to fake impostor credentialism is precisely why all the fraternities have moved on from using secret handshakes and password phrases to rewarding paying your annual dues with a membership card with the new year's graphics, card color background, and the newly paid for year prominently displayed ...that expires when the next lodge dues are up.

There is a theory that Lodge 49 itself is a character, and that its spirits speaks to the main characters through birds and weather. If so, the happy bird chirps and bright light when Avery crosses over the threshold and under the lintel means at least the Lodge spirits like him.

Kenneth Welsh has his own theory why his character Larry punched Dud.

The closing a cappella version of “Nature Boy” was sang by Tom Patterson's wife Susy Kane in their living room.

The history you mention is a lot more complex and long, so it's a bit like shooting fish in a barrel refuting your comment. What I point out below takes away the spun, nice and black and white 'history' we (in the UK) were taught in school. The history I learned at home was somewhat different, so I've spent a good part of 20 years investigating it.

Neil Oliver put together an excellent history more aligned to what actually happened, rather than the propagandised (written by the victor) history you mentioned. However, if you like books, these are a good start:

• A History of Scotland: Look Behind the Mist and Myth of Scottish History (Neil Oliver)
  
  
• Scotland: The Autobiography2,000 Years of Scottish History By Those Who Saw It Happen
  
  This is an excellent resource on the highland clearances. Growing up I was told of how ancestors were thrown off their land, their language and way of life destroyed, betrayed and left to starve by their clansmen for greed and power - then, if they still lived they were ultimately thrown to all corners of the earth looking for a survivable way of life or in fact slavery...
  One part of the Irish side of the family was enslaved and sent to the Caribbean (didn't learn about the Irish slaves at school, did you?...). And of course other parts of the family lived (if they were lucky) through what some have called the Irish Holocaust
  I spent a period of my youth incredibly angry at 'the powers that be/were' as they stood by and let these genocides happen for two reasons; greed and lust for power. Hence my long interest in history written by those on the receiving end of monarchist, aristocrat and religious policies. These people's ancestors still inhabit the castles and own the land taken at the time.
  
  I woke up one day a long time ago now, clear in the knowledge I had a bad case of Stockholm syndrome brainwashed into me via the 'education' and corporate media. Hence, I'll refute comments such as yours til I'm pushing up the daisies - because it's admittedly a very successful, but deliberate attempt by those in power to tell us what they want us to hear.
  
  In respect to your 'mass extermination of the indigenous people of those islands? (New Zealand)' - again, you're very misinformed on the facts as they've been laid down. For starters, The Maori committed their own genocide before the white man turned up. Then, yes the British monarchy's minions did their usual and committed terrible acts - no change there then, but from the above, I'm sure you'll have picked up which side I stand on, i.e. not 'royal'.
  

So - here's the dangerously short version.

18th French Masons had difficulty accepting the idea that Freemasonry was of "rude" origin, viz. stoneworkers. Common replacements became religious heretics, chivalric orders (eventually everyone agreed KT was the best story), the Rosicrucians, Ancient Egypt, lost heirs and pretenders, gray aliens, Knights with red feathers on their head... you name it.

The origin of eccosais (french for Scottish) is that during the Glorious Revolution when the Scottish King - er, um - bravely ran away to France (circa 1786) a number of Scottish Masons/Engineers were in tow thus bringing Freemasonry to France.

Eccosais currents were often Jacobite, almost always include the preservation of the Word (a direct jab at the English for loosing it), and gear towards the Qabbalah, not chivalric currents - though in time, as seen in the AASR, everyone learned how to play along and chivalric Masonry was placed firmly above everything else - unless you count the secret work, which is a whole other discussion.

Reading List

• https://www.academia.edu/237466/An_Introduction_to_the_High_Degrees_of_Freemasonry
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Masonic-Myth-Unlocking-Symbols-Freemasonry/dp/0060822562
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Builders-Alchemists-Rosicrucians-Freemasons/dp/157863329X
  
• http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/bernheim17.html
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Freemasonry-Scotlands-Century-1590/dp/0521396549
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Compasses-Cross-Stephen-Dafoe/dp/0853182981
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

I am thinking she must be reading the Outlander series. While I was in Scotland, I went on a tour of places that Outlander either used or was similar to- one of them being Culloden. The store there had some wonderful books; we bought the one that was written by our guide that day - "Culloden Tales" by Hugh Allison . I have also watched all the Neil Oliver youtubes, if there was something by him in a DVD, that would be another great choice.

I'd recommend starting with Solomon's Builders by Christopher Hodapp. Founding Fathers, Secret Societies by Dr. Robert Hieronimus would be a good followup.

If you really want to delve into the older history, The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's Century, 1590 to 1710 by David Stevenson is your best bet.

If you really want to understand the secrecy angle - read The Craft Of Intelligence by Allen Dulles, It's not about Freemasonry, but the tools and tactics are the same. Secret Societies and the Intel Community have a lot in common.

It's really true. Have you ever read How the Scots Invented the Modern World? Fantastic stuff.

That's amazing. I found the book The Lighthouse Stevensons at an overstock giveaway, and it's been gathering dust on my shelves for almost a year now. This thread is inspiring me to give it a second look.

For context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stevenson_(civil_engineer)

I used to have this map on my bedroom wall when I was a kid, probably back in the late 70s but might've been the early 80s... The nostalgia is strong.

OP, where did you find the image? I'd like to get another print copy of this for my kids if I can.

e: Found the same map, in folding form, on Amazon. Not quite the same color palette, though it may be that OPs image is just time worn.

This is awesome. I've been trying to learn more about the history of British Isles. So far I've really enjoyed Neil Oliver's A History of Scotland (also on iPlayer) and the History in an Hour books, 1066 and The Medieval Anarchy, by Kaye Jones.

Is there a larger version of this map? Or anything similar - but again, larger - focusing on the early makeup of the peoples of the isles? I'm looking for a new poster :)!

If you have not gotten to it yet, I highly recommend you read the Lighthouse Stevensons by Bella Bathurst. The Stevenson's were a multi-generational family of engineers in Scotland who constructed many of the early offshore lighthouses. The book touches on many of the things you mentioned you were interested in learning more about and would be a good tool to get started with.

Any library will have it but its worth it to own it.
https://www.amazon.com/Lighthouse-Stevensons-Bella-Bathurst/dp/0060932260

Can't recommend these enough:

Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812217519/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_seDXDb5367ERH

Cunning-Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic https://www.amazon.com/dp/1845190793/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_nfDXDbZWXFQX8

The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland https://www.amazon.com/dp/1845191803/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_NfDXDbBKC83F0

I really enjoyed this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Scotland-Neil-Oliver/dp/0753826631

If you want to really punish/enlighten yourself, here's a decent chunk of the texts from the course list:

Nations and Nationalism (New Perspectives on the Past)

The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Wiles Lectures, 1996.)

The Brothertown Nation of Indians: Land Ownership and Nationalism in Early America, 1740-1840

Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century

Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration

Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837; Revised Edition

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New Edition)

Globalisms: The Great Ideological Struggle of the Twenty-first Century (Globalization)

One of my favorite books is about Scottish influence on Britain/the empire/the world.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Scots-Invented-Modern-World/dp/0609606352

You can purchase it as well

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0007485905/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

not a poster but map form

Before I post my resources, I'd like to dive into what the Devil is to the early modern country dwelling folk who practiced cinningcraft/witchcraft and the animistic undertones that still pervaded their worldview until the late 19th Century or so.

The Devil often was less of the theological figure, and more of a folk figure that could refer to any number of local spirits or beliefs, often taking the place of pagan gods and fairy lords. Isobel Gowdie, regarded as genuine witchcraft, was a sixteenth century witch that professed some genuine Devil worship, although in her case the Devil was a king of fairys, in addition to the female fairy queen figure.

This further influenced the modern contemporary forms of witchcraft (Whereas Gerard Gardner made it a point to distance his horned god from the Devil, while other forms like the Clan of Tubal Cain did not), and modern regional practices.

The Visions of Isobel Gowdie

Devils Dozen; Thirteen Craft Rites of the Old One

Masks of Misrule

The Devils Plantation

The History of the Devil

The Fairy Tradition in Britain

The Man in Black

The Devil did me no Harm

The Devil and His Dame in Traditional Witchcraft

The Devil in Witchcraft

Now, I practice Traditional (In this case, witchcraft inspired by folklore, ballads, fairy faith and Folklore, in a truly operative and sorcerous manner, truly pagan and highly blasphemous) witchcraft, and exist as a Fairy Faith animist. The Devil reigns as a pagan god in my craft, the very spirit of air and motion, of the world, whose essence is infused with us in the form of a breath soul, our intellect and ego, whose body is the wind itself. He can be Lucifer, Cernunnos, Odin, Azael, Pwcca, Bucca, Janicot, among other names. He is the primary focus of my "one-man cultus" when it comes to the cosmology. Because of this, I find it important to know how he has appeared in the history of witchcraft.