In the summer of 1629, the life of Helene Gastoun, a resident of Lassudden in the county of Roxburgh, became the subject of formal legal proceedings. On August 1st, 1629, her case was officially recorded within the Scottish judicial system under the designation C/EGD/1119. This administrative step marked the beginning of a process that would see Helene entangled in the complexities of the early modern witch trials, a period during which local communities and the central judiciary frequently scrutinized those suspected of contravening spiritual and social order.
Following the initial record of the case, Helene was brought to face a formal trial, documented in the records as T/LA/696. The transition from the case filing to the trial stage reflects the standard legal rigor applied to such accusations in seventeenth-century Scotland. While the specific nature of the allegations remains contained within these judicial archives, the documentation of Helene’s trial highlights the gravity with which the authorities treated matters of perceived maleficence and the formal procedures that governed the lives of women in Roxburgh during this era.