Margaret Dalgleish, a married woman residing in Humbie within the county of Haddington, found herself enmeshed in the turbulence of the Scottish witch trials era when she was summoned to face charges of witchcraft on the 13th of September, 1678. The precise details of the accusations against Margaret are sparse in the surviving records. Her name, however, emerges in the annals of history when she failed to appear at her trial in Edinburgh, a common venue for such proceedings in the late 17th century.
On the day of her scheduled trial, Margaret was declared a fugitive; a term that denotes she did not attend court and was not present to respond to the accusations laid against her. The declaration of fugitive status meant that Margaret was put "to the horn," a legal term indicating she was outlawed, which involved publicly proclaiming her as a wanted person. This development would have extraordinary implications for her and her family's lives, forcing them to navigate the ensuing stigma and to evade capture.
Margaret Dalgleish's absence from her trial may reflect a bid to preserve her freedom against the overwhelming power of the judicial system of her time, which was notoriously impervious to the pleas and defenses of those accused of witchcraft. Her status as a fugitive relieved her, at least temporarily, from the immediate grasp of the law but placed her in an uncertain and precarious existence, perpetually on the margins of society. The records cease to follow her trail thereafter, leaving her ultimate fate shrouded in mystery, a poignant reminder of the many untold stories of those entangled in Scotland’s witch trials.