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Witches and Witch Burning in Ayr Scotland

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  • Margaret Wallace (b. - 1622)
    Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. iii, pp. 508-563Ayr Kirk-Session Records, 12th October 1629Ayr Burgh Accounts, p. 262
  • Janet Horne (b. - 1727)
    the witch of Dornoch was executed in 1727,^ just a few years in advance of the new law of 1736 abolishing the death penalty for witchcraft.Could Maggie Osborne have been Janet Horne?Could she have been...
  • Jonet Smellie (deceased)
    Annals of Ayr, p. 109 Jonet Smellie. This infamous creature first appears in 1613 making filthy, slanderous speeches against her neighbours, thereby meriting the 'spurr' to gag her mouth at the Fish Cr...
  • Janet Saers (b. - 1658)
    In Cromwell's time the English soldiers stationed in Ayr record, with disgust, a late witch burning in the burgh. A colonel writing from Ayr tells of a certain Janet Saers who was strangled at the stak...
  • William Gilmour, of Polquhairn (b. - 1582)
    In 1582 a William Gilmour of Polquhairn, appearing in Edinburgh before the Lords of Council on a charge of witch craft and sorcery, was forwarded for trial to the Justice ayre of Ayr , but there is no ...

Towards the close of the sixteenth century Ayr began the most gruesome and ghastly period in its history, the period of witch burning.

In I563 the Scottish Parliament formally constituted witchcraft a capital offence, enacting that, 'all who used witchcraft, sorcery, necromancy, or pretended skill therein and all consulters of witches and sorcerers should be punished capitally.

Many such applications are recorded in Ayr's local records, cash payments of executions are record in the burgh Book of Accounts,