The Calder Witch Hunt blog says the tale describes West Calder witches flying on broomsticks to tame or turn the moon every 28 days. In the real records, Margaret Watson confessed to attending meetings at Carnwath and Lanark kirks and places named Neveinseat and Tormonquheill, and said she flew on a bottle of straw, while others were said to have used a cat, a cockerel, a thorn tree and an elder tree. The project suggests that stories about the Tormywheel meetings became Tamethemoon over the generations, since the names sound alike, and that the accused came from land near the Tormywheel and Turniemoon hills.
Margaret and Jean were executed at Carnwath on 31 December 1644. Margaret withdrew her confession before she died and denied the charges to her last breath. The legend is therefore a folk memory shaped by a real case, and the folk version cannot be taken as a description of anything that happened.
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