The following extract is taken from The Witches of Balnagown: Witch-Hunting in Easter Ross, 1577–1590. It recounts the opening of the 1590 trial of Katherine Ross, Lady Fowlis.
The fires at Chanonry had burned thirteen years before—but on 22 July 1590, their embers were reignited in Edinburgh. Within the grim stone walls of the Tolbooth, beneath the shadow of St Giles, Katherine Ross, Lady Fowlis, stood accused of witchcraft.
She was not alone. The gallery would have held lawyers, jurors, and her accuser—her stepson, Hector Munro of Fowlis.
But the voices that truly threatened her came from the grave. All of the witnesses whose confessions were read aloud had long since been burned. Their words, extracted in 1577 under pressure and pain, had outlived them. Now they returned, transformed into evidence.
Hector Munro led the charge. Whether driven by vengeance, politics, or fear, he stood as private prosecutor in a case that would define Katherine’s fate. Now, thirteen years after the fires at Chanonry, those embers were fanned once more in Edinburgh.
This was no parochial spectacle. It was the closing act of a feud—of land, power, or maybe belief—and Katherine Ross stood in its centre. She had fled once. Now she faced the same charge—and possibly the same fate—as Christian Ross Malcomson.
The Dittay
One by one, the voices of the dead returned: Christian, Agnes Roy, William MacGillivray. They had confessed. They had burned. Now, their words were not testimony—but judgment. This time, their statements were turned against Katherine.
The tone, as preserved in Pitcairn’s summary, is grim and unyielding—unfolding like an incantation, a chant, with Katherine its solitary target.
However, the accusations did not begin with the Devil. They began with old fairy magic: clay figures, elf-arrowheads shared and fired, images broken and remade. This was Highland spellcraft rendered in legal prose—but rooted in malicious intent.
Then came the allegations of poisonings. Not one instance, but many: casks, pigs, stoups, and skins—each said to carry death into a household. Servants were sent to Elgin, to Dingwall, and ‘to the Egyptians’—a likely reference to travelling Romani groups, who were both sought out for healing and feared for their supposed magical powers. There were secret signals—hands squeezed, feet stamped, codes passed in kitchens. The court heard of children vomiting, nursemaids dying.
Charge followed charge. Everything became suspicious: a firlot of meal, too much cloth, a whispered word, a gesture behind a door. The more the list grew, the more impossible it seemed—until excess became part of the argument.
If not this one, then the next. Or the next.
Every accusation rested on testimony extracted thirteen years earlier. No new witnesses were called. Most charges ended the same way: “This accusation was confessed as stated, and you cannot deny it.”