In September 1659, a woman identified in the historical record only as Murray was formally accused of witchcraft. A resident of Skirling, within the presbytery of Biggar, her case remains an elusive entry in the broader study of Scottish judicial proceedings. While the historian Christina Larner initially cataloged Murray as belonging to the Skirling locality, the documentation surrounding her trial is inextricably linked to an Arbroath source, highlighting the complexities and potential geographical inconsistencies often found when tracing regional legal proceedings from the mid-seventeenth century.
The surviving records for the case, indexed as C/EGD/2407, provide sparse detail regarding the specific charges brought against Murray or the eventual outcome of her trial. Because the investigative project responsible for modern archival verification did not independently confirm Larner’s reliance on the printed secondary source, the circumstances of her prosecution remain confined to these few documented fragments. Murray thus stands as a representative of the many individuals caught within the machinery of the Scottish witch trials, whose lived experiences were distilled into the brief, administrative shorthand of the church and secular courts.