The affair began at Bargarran House in Renfrewshire in 1696, when eleven-year-old Christian Shaw, daughter of the laird, fell into violent fits after a quarrel with a servant, Katherine Campbell, whom she had reported for stealing a drink of milk. The girl complained of being tormented by unseen tormentors and named a growing list of her neighbours as the witches responsible.
The story
A commission was appointed, and in 1697 seven people — Margaret Lang, Katherine Campbell, Agnes Naismith, Margaret Fulton, John Lindsay, James Lindsay and John Lindsay of Barloch — were found guilty of bewitching the child. On 10 June 1697 they were hanged and then burned on the Gallow Green in Paisley, the last mass execution for witchcraft in western Europe. As she went to her death, Agnes Naismith was said to have laid a dying curse on all present and their descendants, and for generations afterward every misfortune in Paisley was blamed on it.
The accuser, Christian Shaw, lived on to become a successful businesswoman and a pioneer of the Paisley thread industry. The case has fascinated and troubled historians ever since, read variously as mass hysteria, a child's malice, and a community's readiness to kill on the word of an eleven-year-old.