The prediction at the heart of the case is a grim classic. After a dispute with a man, Katherine Craigie said he would be dead within a year, and he was. In the thinking of the time that made her words a curse that worked.
She was tried in 1640 and again in 1643, and found guilty on the second occasion. She was executed by strangling and burning. The Orkney witch trials ran from 1594 to 1708, with 68 people accused, about nine in ten of them women. 1643 was the worst year.
The pin is on Rousay generally as no farm is named.
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