Modern day sorcerers have it easy

These days there's no escaping spells and witches, sorcery and magic - particularly now that the last Harry Potter movie has finally hit cinema screens, sending muggles into a spellbound frenzy of all things wizard-like.

The movie of Edinburgh-based author JK Rowling's final instalment in the gripping tale of her boy wizard kicked off last night when cinemas across the land opened at midnight for special night-time screenings for fans, many dressed in Potter robes and Dumbledore wizard hats.

But 350 years ago this year, uttering even the slightest spell-like incantation - never mind donning a witch's cap and befriending a black cat - was almost certainly enough to at best end with torture, at worst lead to a very messy conclusion: strangled, garrotted and then, for good measure, burned at the stake.

In the space of just 16 months between 1661 and 1662, some 660 Scots were accused of sorcery and devil worship in a frenzied witch hunt which had its roots in the small villages and towns of Midlothian and East Lothian.

There alone between April and December 1661, more than 200 people were rounded up, many viciously tortured - a popular method of establishing witch credentials was to insert needles into the accused's skin to see if they would bleed - and then, if finally convicted, sentenced to death.

As word of the Midlothian and East Lothian witch hunt spread, fear and frenzy tore throughout Scotland. Soon people from north to south, east and west were also being subjected to torture and trial aimed at establishing their guilt in what became known as The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661.

It was, according to records from the time, one of the most extreme witch hunts ever. Its intensity only matched by the fervent North Berwick witch trials of 1597, when 70 people were accused of witchery after bad weather struck a convoy of vessels carrying James VI home from Denmark with his wife to be, Anne.

Edinburgh-based historian and author Douglas Watt says it's unclear why 60 years later the area would again become a hotbed for those seeking to crack down on anyone suspected of having links to the dark arts.

"Witch hunts tended to be pockets of frenzied activity that erupted at particular times. The reason why this flared up in 1661 in Midlothian and East Lothian is unclear, it seems to have happened all of a sudden.

"Some have tried to link it to social issues, economic problems. What's interesting is that this particular witch hunt happened while Scotland was on the cusp of the Enlightenment when there was actually a rise in scientific thought, more reasonable thinking and a more conscious society."

Douglas, who has used The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661 as the background to his new murder mystery novel, Testament of a Witch, says the frenzy that began in Midlothian and East Lothian spread rapidly.

For those who found themselves accused - many men among them as well as women - there was often a terrible fate.

"Often the accused would be pricked using a two-inch needle everywhere on their body in a practice known as "witch pricking". The idea was that they were looking for areas on them that didn't bleed, which was a sign of the devil. That would be used as a piece of evidence against a person."

For anyone who was sent to trial, usually at the central courts in Edinburgh at the time, or who opted to confess - after all, adds Douglas, 45, some people at the time really did believe they had special magical powers - there was an awful fate ahead.

"Those who were found guilty were executed, strangled and then garrotted and burned at the stake at Castle Hill.

"It was a gruesome end and you can imagine the scene with hundreds of people across the city would come to watch and there was a real sense of fear."

But as The Enlightenment took shape, legal and scientific minds began to question the practise and by 1736 the Witchcraft Act of 1563 had been repelled.

"That said, the belief in magic, second sight and divination continued - as it does even today - but the state apparatus to take them to court is long gone."

• Testament of a Witch by Douglas Watt is published by Luath Press, 8.99. Douglas Watt will be appearing as part of Blackwells Writers at the Fringe at the South Bridge shop on August 18 and at the Edinburgh International Book Festival at Charlotte Square on August 25.