The Popular Superstitions and Festive Amusements of the Highlanders of Scotland.

New Edition, xi, [4], 203p., illustrated frontispiece, ownership note to flyleaf head, original publisher’s cloth, title gilt in centre board, spine sunned, 8vo, London, Aylott and Jones, 1851.

Stewart’s groundbreaking work in which he attempts to systematically classify supernatural beings. The Table of Contents impressed readers with its formal chapter divisions, slicing up supernatural beings according to their properties, powers and traits. The author discusses Highland ghosts, fairies, brownies, water-kelpies, as well as Highland festivities from Halloween, Christmas, and Beltane.

The third part is dedicated entirely to the history of witchcraft, with the following headings:

Origins and History of Witchcraft

Of the Agents, Qualifications, and Ceremonies of their Constitution

Of the Personal Similitude of the Agents or Members of the Craft

Of their Professional Powers and Practices

Of the Witch’s Powers of Transformation

Safeguards from Witchcraft

Distinguished for its classifactory, Enlightenment spirit, Stewart’s work mirrors a form of the late Romantic travel book. These are not just travel books, charting moral and psychological, as well as literal paths, but often encyclopaedias of folklore, natural history, superstitions and stories. The authorial figure in questions is a historian, an archivist, a collector. Stewart’s work is defined as part of a well-exemplified fascination with the Highland landscape. His work reflects the language of eighteenth century primitivism, and also draws on the romantic cult of the picturesque and sublime.

The work had considerable impact, influencing famous authors like Sir Walter Scott and the Brothers Grimm. The Grimms relied heavily on Stewart’s work in their translation of Croker’s work on Irish fairy legends.

[History of British Folklore, Dorson, 1999; Scotland and the 19th-Century World, Carruthers, 2012]