In September 1659, Maly Purdie, a resident of Skirling within the presbytery of Biggar, became the subject of a legal process concerning allegations of witchcraft. While the surviving archival record for this case—indexed under reference C/EGD/2406—is brief, the entry serves as a formal marker of her entanglement with the judicial systems of seventeenth-century Scotland. Historical documentation of Maly’s case highlights the complexities of archival research in this field; although the scholar Christina Larner identified Maly as being from the Peeblesshire parish of Skirling, she also linked the reference to a history of Arbroath, illustrating the potential for geographical ambiguity in the records of the period.
Beyond the administrative details preserved in the case notes, the specific circumstances surrounding the accusation against Maly remain largely obscured by the passage of time. The project responsible for the cataloging of these records noted that the secondary source cited by Larner was not examined during their research, leaving a silence in the historical narrative regarding the nature of the charges brought against her. Consequently, Maly stands in the record as a representative figure of the era’s intensive focus on witchcraft, her legal experience captured only through the skeletal remains of a case file that highlights both the prevalence of such trials and the significant gaps inherent in early modern record-keeping.