In the spring of 1634, Margaret nein dan mhic Coull, a married woman residing in the coastal settlement of Golspie in Caithness, found herself drawn into the machinery of the Scottish legal system. On the 7th of May, she was formally brought before the authorities under case reference C/LA/3318. At a time when fears regarding malevolent magic were increasingly codified into judicial procedure, Margaret’s designation as a subject of inquiry placed her within a growing trend of witchcraft prosecutions that characterised seventeenth-century Scotland.
Following the initial registration of her case, proceedings moved toward trial under the designation T/LA/2108. The documentation surviving from this process serves as a stark administrative remnant of a life intercepted by the local courts of the North. While the specific nature of the allegations leveled against Margaret remains absent from this archival fragment, the transition from case registration to formal trial underscores the gravity with which the community and the legal establishment viewed her circumstances in the early summer of 1634.