On March 31, 1636, the judicial machinery of early modern Scotland turned toward the remote parish of Strathie in the county of Caithness, marking the formal initiation of legal proceedings against a woman named Donald McCheaniche. The records categorised under case reference C/LA/3326 indicate that the accusations brought against her were deemed sufficiently serious to warrant the intervention of the authorities. While the specific nature of the allegations remains obscured by the brevity of the surviving documentation, the transition from a local accusation to the procedural designation of a formal case suggests a process deeply rooted in the statutory framework established by the Witchcraft Act of 1563.
Following the initial registration of the case, the proceedings moved into the judicial stage documented under trial reference T/LA/2116. For Donald, this shift signified the commencement of a rigorous legal inquiry that would have required her to answer to the allegations in accordance with the religious and civil anxieties of seventeenth-century Caithness. Though the historical record preserves little of her own voice, the existence of these distinct references—the case file and the subsequent trial document—provides a stark administrative testament to the gravity of the legal jeopardy Donald faced during this period of heightened witch-hunting activity in the North of Scotland.