Anna Tait

Anna Tait (also spelled Anne Tait), sometimes referred to as Hononni, was a Scottish woman accused of witchcraft in Haddington, East Lothian in 1634. She was executed in 1635. Her case centered on her expressions of grief and guilt, including suicidal ideation, related to the murder of her first husband and the death of her daughter following a failed home abortion.

Background Historian and witchcraft expert Louise Yeoman notes that Tait's name does not appear in the Sourcebook of Scottish Witchcraft by Christina Larner, which has been regarded as the most authoritative reference on Scottish witchcraft since its publication in 1977. This omission occurred because Tait, along with nearly a hundred other individuals accused of witchcraft, was unknown to the book's compilers at the time. Their names were instead preserved in an overlooked manuscript held by the National Library of Scotland.

During the preparation of the published volumes of the Register of the Privy Council of Scotland at the end of the 19th century, one volume of the Register of Commissions covering the years 1630–1642 was inadvertently omitted. As a result, hundreds of Privy Council commissions—many of which led to criminal trials—remained undocumented in secondary sources. Anna Tait's trial was among those overlooked.

Yeoman credits Dr. Michael Wasser, a historian specializing in crimes of violence in 16th- and 17th-century Scotland at McGill University, with rediscovering the manuscript and recognizing its significance. According to pre-trial notes, she was first arrested on 18 December 1634 for attempting to take her own life by "hanging [herself] in [her] courch [kerchief or headdress]."

Historian Louise Yeoman explains:"In 17th century terms suicide was one of the most heinous acts one could commit. It was like witchcraft, considered to be a particularly odious crime against God’s law and it was punishable by forfeiture of the entire goods of the victim and by a dishonourable burial in unconsecrated ground."

John Coltart While being questioned at the tolbooth, Tait confessed to the ministers and baillies of Haddington that 28 years earlier, According to her confession, he died within three hours of consuming the mixture.

Goodare notes that while many of these causes—such as malice—fit expected patterns of early modern thinking, it is striking that "extremity of grief" appears first in the list. He argues that this points to the need for historians to examine more closely the connections between accusations of witchcraft and the psychological trauma of the accused.

These links seem obvious for Anna Tait... Tait had an awful domestic background, was ‘thrie several times deprehendit putting violent hands in herself at her awne hous’, and was convinced that her wickedness was due to the Devil, before she was accused of witchcraft in 1634. — J. Goodare, Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland

Thirty years after Tait's death It was thirty years later, during the panic of 1662, that later generations of Scottish Privy Councillors re-examined the issue of confessions made by those who were suicidal or mentally disturbed, ultimately reaching a different conclusion. It was then strictly mandated that commissions for criminal trials and the execution of convicted witches could only be approved if it was confirmed that "at the tyme of their confessions they were of right judgement, nowayes distracted or under any earnest desyre to die."

However, this shift in policy and growing sensitivity came too late for Anna Tait.