In the year 1649, the legal records of Scotland register the case of Marione McNab, a woman residing in the burgh of Stirling. While the documentation surrounding her trial is brief—notably referenced as case C/EGD/2399—it situates Marione within a period of intense judicial activity concerning the crime of witchcraft. Historical indices also make mention of another individual of the same name, active in Stirling in 1590; however, the temporal distance between the two records suggests they are distinct persons, leaving Marione to face the ecclesiastical and secular scrutiny of the mid-seventeenth century as a singular subject of record.
The archival trail for Marione remains constrained, as the specifics of her examination and the final disposition of her case were not subjected to the same depth of contemporary research as other prominent trials of the era. Her presence in the historical record serves as a stark marker of the legal mechanisms employed in 1649. Through her, we glimpse the formal processes of the Stirling courts, where the name of Marione McNab became tied to the complex statutes and anxieties that governed the early modern Scottish response to the perceived threat of witchcraft.