In the spring of 1583, Alexander Wason, a resident of Broklardike in the parish of Sorn, Ayrshire, found himself entangled in the legal machinery of the Scottish witch trials. On the 4th of March, Alexander was formally brought before the authorities to answer to charges of witchcraft. The records of the Justiciary Court in Edinburgh (C/LA/3171) identify him as a man of modest standing, swept up in a period of intense religious and social scrutiny that characterized early modern Scotland.
Following the initial registration of his case, the legal proceedings culminated in a trial held later that year, noted in the records as T/LA/1737. While the surviving documentation remains stark and administrative in nature, it situates Alexander within a volatile era where the boundaries between communal discord and perceived supernatural intervention were frequently blurred. His experience remains a documented fragment of the judicial practices of 16th-century Ayrshire, reflecting the gravity with which the Scottish state treated allegations of maleficium during this formative decade.