In 1611, Christian Bonn, a resident of Clunie—though records note a potential origin in Clune—found herself caught within the formal machinery of the Scottish witch trials. Her case, documented under reference C/EGD/758, preserves the specific grievances leveled against her by her community. At the heart of the accusations were allegations of property damage, specifically concerning the destruction of crops and the interference with dairy production. Such charges reflected the profound anxieties of early modern agrarian life, where the health of livestock and the success of a harvest were often viewed through the lens of supernatural causation.
The historical record for Christian remains incomplete, as there is no surviving evidence regarding the judicial outcome or the specific trajectory of her trial process. While the legal proceedings that followed her accusation are not documented, her case serves as a poignant example of how domestic grievances in seventeenth-century Clunie could escalate into formal charges of witchcraft. Despite the gravity of the accusations, Christian’s experience remains a fragment of the broader judicial landscape of the period, representing a moment where the private struggles of a community were brought under the scrutiny of early modern law.