Abstract
Elizabeth Ewan and Janay Nugent have produced a wonderful collection of essays that individually and collectively provide a stimulating and engaging exploration into the lives and experiences of children and youth from a wide range of social, economic, and political backgrounds in premodern Scotland. Spanning an impressive time span (thirteenth to nineteenth centuries), the editors and contributors seek to resituate an often side-lined, forgotten group of individuals within the broader historiography and impressively reveal how a nuanced analysis of traditional sources can reveal unexpected and exciting narratives relating to the location of children and youth within the history of care provision, education, marriage, state formation, work, and trade in premodern Scotland.
The scope of the book is impressive, given the range of archival sources and methodologies employed. Through treasurers’ accounts, financial and land records, archaeological finds, court proceedings, Gaelic poetry and song, personal correspondence, portraiture, and newspapers, to name a few, we can begin to see how children and youth are interspersed within such records, thus revealing the wealth and breadth of sources available to scholars of medieval and early modern Scotland. Following on from Finding the Family in Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (Routledge, 2008), Ewan and Nugent have continued to challenge traditional historiographical trends in Scottish history, which have tended to view the history of childhood as peripheral and thus dichotomous to research into the social, political, ethnic, and religious structures of the nation. Rather than simply placing these children and youth among already established narratives, the book illustrates how research into groups who have been historically marginalized can skillfully challenge and add to our own historical understanding of assumed hierarchical structures within premodern societies.
While elite children remain the focus of chapters heavily reliant on medieval sources, which is to be expected, the contributors reveal how an attentive reading of such records can unearth a rich understanding of childhood and youth not necessarily confined to the upper echelons of society. Mairi Cowan’s and Laura E. Walking’s imaginative exploration into the court of King James IV through the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland reveals a wide range of factors affecting both elite and nonelite children’s experience of life, play, and death in the royal court. Heather Parker’s research into child betrothal practices from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries shows how privileged children were able to negotiate and influence the terms of the own arranged marriage in relation to the convivial sensibilities of parents and kin group. While Cynthia J. Neville’s chapter into the privileged upbringing of Prince Alexander uncovers limited details of his personal experience of childhood and youth as prince and heir of the throne, she inventively observes his encounters with illness and grief through the death of his mother and brother in a short period of time. His own untimely death at the age of twenty reminds us of the difficulties the children and youth of premodern Scotland faced when growing up in a society ravaged by famine, plague, and war.
The issue of children’s agency is compellingly addressed throughout the book and rightfully noted as one “fraught with controversy” (p. 7). Attempting to recover the voice and experience of a collective group of people who have left little evidence of their existence is certainly difficult and frustrating. Nonetheless, by solicitously approaching the sources, the contributors reveal how ideas about children, the voices and mannerisms of children, and their experience of growing up in Scotland can be readily uncovered. Stuart Campbell’s chapter on the archaeological remains of premodern toys shows how material understanding of children’s tangible possessions can add depth to our knowledge of play as well as the consumption and the circulation of goods, both locally and regionally. Likewise, Nel Whiting’s examination of David Allan’s group family portraiture addresses how children were pictorially understood and situated within the family household, with both chapters revealing how interdisciplinary approaches can provide additional layers to narratives that have traditionally relied on written sources overwhelming penned by the adults involved in their lives.
The strength of this book is also that it considers regional customs that were unique to children and youth living and growing up in the Highland region, with both Nugent and Anne Frater explore the Celtic practice of fostering. Fosterage was a customary practice where children were sent from their natal family to be raised in another household, primarily to strengthen bonds of kinship between families in clan society. Nugent reveals how biological and foster-mothers often clashed when it came to parenting their children, with shared commitment to the welfare of the child often creating a “point of tension” between the two families (p. 54). Frater shows how evidence from Gaelic song can unveil how foster-parents cherished their fosterlings as if they were their own, showing pride in their accomplishments and “lamenting any misfortune that befell them” (p. 91). Although relating to a Lowland family, Jamie Reid Baxter’s closing chapter on Elizabeth Melville’s letters to her son James reveals a mother’s personal hopes and anxieties for her young son studying in London, urging him to “refrain from wyn and women, and esschew all occasiouns that may snair you that waye…” (p. 213). Each of these chapters reveals how women, in their capacity as mothers, were central to providing moral and religious instruction to the children and youth in their physical and spiritual care.
Conversely, in a rather dispiriting but wholly exemplary chapter, Dorothy MacKinnon explores Scotland’s role in the Atlantic Slave trade, concentrating on those enslaved women who were rendered voiceless when overseeing the upbringing of their children. Her study of thirty-two slave children and youth is exceptional, providing a new perspective on complex issues of race and gender in eighteenth-century Scotland. While her focus on the sexual and economic abuse of enslaved women at the hands of their Scottish masters is a saddening read, it contributes to an important aspect of Scotland’s involvement in the mass enslavement of humans, shedding light on the legal and economic vulnerability of those who were both born and brought up within this exploitative system.
Exploration into the lives of offspring from less privileged backgrounds also adds an extra dimension to our understanding of childhood and youth as transitional phase in a person’s lifecycle. Sarah Dunnigan explores the representation of feminine conduct in the Maitland manuscripts, locating female youth at “particular junctures of social, sexual and emotional formation”; namely, the phase prior to embarking upon marriage and motherhood (p. 200). Cathryn Spence’s essay on young women who were apprenticed to learn the craft of perling (silk weaving) in Edinburgh reveals the ways in which women could informally navigate male-dominated guild structures in return for decent remuneration. Finally, Katie Barclay’s chapter on inheritance strategies and disputes in the long eighteenth century reveals how sentiments espousing “natural affection” are readily found within legal contracts, and how fictive kin often relied on the rhetoric of familial love to explain and justify their claim to property, further complicating our understanding of the nuclear family of premodern Scotland.
This book is a timely contribution to a burgeoning field that refreshingly situates the lived experiences of children and youth at the centre of historical dialogue. There is still much to be said on the formative years of those growing up in Scotland and beyond during the premodern period, and the guide to further reading at the back of the volume is a welcome addition to an already fruitful volume. Despite the dearth of sources that unequivocally relate to early stages of life in premodern Scotland, the editors and contributors have shown how varied and multivocal narratives can emerge from records that have been overlooked as a resource for delving into the history of the children and youth of our distant past.