Witch Lore and Scottish Castles: a Wikipedia Editathon

Eilean Donan Castle, by Diliff [CC BY-SA 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons

On Friday 27th September we were joined by castle buffs and witchcraft enthusiasts to help us improve the representation of Scottish witchcraft and heritage on Wikipedia. Our Witch Lore and Scottish Castles editathon event saw people coming together in the Digital Scholarship Centre of the Main Library to add ‘Witchlore’, stories and information relating to early modern witchcraft, to pages about Scottish castles and heritage locations.

A page created during our September editathon, CC-BY-SA by Ellie Whitehead

A number of Wikipedia pages about castles in Scotland neglected to mention their place in the stories of Scotland’s accused witches. The event looked to remedy this, adding some stories about witchcraft and accused witches to pages such as, Craigmillar Castle, Dirleton Castle, St Magnus Cathedral and Falkland Palace.

We also saw some brand-new pages about Scottish castles and heritage locations created! These include, Bass Castle, Logie House and Steading, and Poldrate Mill. Yet, despite our team’s valiant efforts – as ever – there is still more work to be done. See our worklist to take a look at a list of pages that we didn’t get around to improving and creating and have ago yourself! Some special mentions here would be to improve the mention of folklore in the Forvie Nature Reserve, Crichton Castle and Culross.

A diary from the University of Edinburgh Special Collections, CC-BY-SA by Ellie Whitehead

As part of this event, we also hosted an exhibition of material about Scottish castles and witchcraft that the university special collections hold. It was a great addition to the event to be able to get our hands on these items and see some archival material that linked directly to what we were editing.

We got to see hand-painted watercolours and sketches of castles, hand-written legends from the Outer Hebridies about witches living in Kisimul Castle on Barra. We were able to leaf through architectural plans and drawings of Scotland’s Castles and seventeenth-century demonological books, such as George Sinclair’s Satans Invisible World Discovered.

An exhibition of material relating to witchcraft and castles from the University of Edinburgh Special Collections, CC-BY-SA by Ellie Whitehead

Keeping true to our heritage theme, Ruby Imrie also gave us a presentation on the Wikipedia photography project and competition Wiki Loves Monuments! This is an annual international competition that takes place in September which encourages people to go out and take photographs of heritage locations around them and upload them to Wikipedia. Take a look at some of the 1,645 images that were uploaded this September in Scotland in celebration of cultural heritage!

Overall, at this event saw 16 editors create 4 articles and edit 114! A grand total of 236 edits were made and 6000 words were added.  Articles created or edited at this event have been viewed over 5500 times! See our dashboard for a more detailed insight into what we added.

This was a great event, which added some fantastic information about Scotland’s supernatural history and heritage onto Wikipedia. Thank you to all those who attended. Our next major event that we would like to highlight is the launch of our BRAND NEW Map of Scottish Witchcraft, Map of Memorials and Curious Edinburgh Walking Tour. Join us on the 23rd October between 3-4.30pm at Lecture Theatre 2.35 at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. Hope to see you there!

Written by Ellie Whitehead, Assistant Wikimedian in Residence