Witchcraft

The Ayr Witch Records, 1586 to 1663

Auld Kirk and Malt Cross area, Ayr

1586 to 1663

Electric Scotland's 'Witches of Ayr' quotes the session and town records, including the 1586 costs for candles, meat, pitch barrels, coal and heather for the burning of the Barnweill witch, the 1630 case of two women present at a 'dog-hanging by way of witchcraft', and a 1663 charge that one woman had told another to renounce her baptism. In 1644 the minister of Straiton asked the Presbytery whether he could consult a young woman from Galloway who claimed to find witches, and was refused. The Presbytery records for the 17th century are very defective, so the trials themselves are largely lost.

An Irvine Times feature says there are records of well over 100 witch trials across Ayrshire, and that William Adair, minister of the Auld Kirk from 1639 to 1682, brought many accused witches to trial. Robertson's chapter records the 1596 banishment of Margaret Reid. Together these show that the tradition of one famous Ayr witch (see the Maggie Osborne record) sits on a real and much larger persecution.

Evidence
Contemporary written record
Access
Access unrecorded
Location
55.463, -4.629 (Parish-level only, treat as an area)

Sources: Electric Scotland, "Witches of Ayr" [public-domain]; Gianni Marini, "TIMES PAST: The torture of Ayrshire's witches", Irvine Times [other]; William Robertson, Historical Tales and Legends of Ayrshire (1889), chapter 'The Burning of the Ayr and Dairy Witches' [public-domain]

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