Janay Nugent & Elizabeth Ewan 
Children and Youth in Premodern Scotland 

Essays exploring childhood and youth in Scotland before the nineteenth century.


Children and youth have tended to be under-reported in the historical scholarship. This collection of essays recasts the historical narrative by populating premodern Scottish communities from the thirteenth to the late eighteenthcenturies with their lively experiences and voices. By examining medieval and early modern Scottish communities through the lens of age, the collection counters traditional assumptions that young people are peripheral to our understanding of the political, economic, and social contexts of the premodern era.

The topics addressed fall into three main sections: the experience of being a child/adolescent; representations of the young; and the constructionof the next generation. The individual essays examine the experience of the young at all levels of society, including princes and princesses, aristocratic and gentry youth, urban young people, rural children, and those who came to Scotland as slaves; they draw on evidence from art, personal correspondence, material culture, song, legal and government records, work and marriage contracts, and literature.


Janay Nugent is an Associate Professor of History and a founding member of the Institute for Child and Youth Studies at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada; Elizabeth Ewan is University Research Chair and Professor of History and Scottish Studies at the Centrefor Scottish Studies, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada.


Contributors: Katie Barclay, Stuart Campbell, Mairi Cowan, Sarah Dunnigan, Elizabeth Ewan, Anne Frater, Dolly Mac Kinnon, Cynthia J. Neville, Janay Nugent, Heather Parker, Jamie Reid Baxter, Cathryn R. Spence, Laura E. Walkling, Nel Whiting.

Tabela de Conteúdo

Introduction: Adding Age and Generation as a Category of Historical Analysis – Janay Nugent and Elizabeth Ewan

A ‘gret cradil of stait’: Growing Up with the Court of James IV – Laura E. Walkling and Mairi Cowan

A Perl for Your Debts? Young Women and Apprenticeships in Early Modern Edinburgh – Cathryn Spence

‘Your louing childe and foster’: The Fostering of Archie Campbell of Argyll, 1633-39 – Janay Nugent

Work and Play: The Material Culture of Childhood in Early Modern Scotland – Stuart Campbell

Clann and Clan: Children of the Gaelic Nobility, c.1500-c.1800 – Anne Frater

Depictions of Childhood in David Allan’s Family Group Portraiture of the 1780s – Nel Whiting

Slave Children: Scotland’s Children as Chattels at Home and Abroad in the Eighteenth Century – Dolly Mac Kinnon

Natural Affection, Children, and Family Inheritance Practices in the Long Eighteenth Century – Katie Barclay

Preparing for Kingship: Prince Alexander of Scotland, 1264-84 – Cynthia J Neville

‘At thair perfect age’: Elite Child Betrothal and Parental Control, 1430-1560 – Heather Parker

Sons and Daughters, ‘young wyfis’ and ‘barnis’: Lyric, Gender, and the Imagining of Youth in the Maitland Manuscripts – Sarah Dunnigan

Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross: Two Letters to Her Son James – Jamie Reid Baxter

Guide to Further Reading