In the annals of early modern Scottish witch trials, the name of Margaret Anderson emerges, nestled among the other accused in the tumultuous year of 1678. Known to have resided in Birnstown, Humbie—a small village in Haddingtonshire—Margaret was a widow, a status that often rendered women vulnerable in the patriarchal society of 17th-century Scotland. Her connections to the vicinity were noted in records, with some documents also identifying her as being from Ormiston, suggesting the fluidity of township boundaries and affiliations in that era.
Margaret Anderson's case was formally marked on the 13th of September, 1678, in Edinburgh, encapsulated in the legal documentation of the period. Yet, Margaret's story diverges from many contemporaneous accounts because she did not attend her trial, resulting in her being declared a fugitive. The legal term "put to the horn" indicated she was proclaimed an outlaw—a serious pronouncement that legally sanctioned others to act against her, essentially stripping her of the protections of the law. The absence of her trial proceedings leaves a silence in the records; whether through choice or circumstance, Margaret evaded the immediate clutches of judicial resolution, leaving behind an enigmatic fragment in the tapestry of Scotland's witch trials.