EAST Lothian has a dark side to its history: Witch-hunting and burning lasted longer here than almost anywhere else in Europe.

For instance, records show that the presbytery of Dunbar brought 73 people to trial for being witches. Only two were acquitted. Even as late as 1705, long after witch trials were discredited elsewhere, ‘many witches were burnt on Spott Loan’, opposite the old kirk manse. Those burnt or strangled (with their cats) were mostly poor, and mostly women. Most were only accused as a result of quarrelling with their neighbours.

Once a person was denounced, imaginations ran riot. Agnes Sampson, who lived near Haddington, was accused of dancing with the Devil in a North Berwick church and being part of a witches’ conspiracy to kill King James VI. Under torture, she made a series of dubious confessions – wouldn’t you? – including that she had raised violent storms at sea and plotted to bewitch the king himself. Agnes was convicted in 1591, then strangled and burned at Castlehill.

Fortunately, East Lothian has made belated amends. On Hallowe’en 2004, as its last act before being abolished, the ancient court of the Barony of Prestoungrange granted a posthumous pardon to 81 Prestonpans witches, plus their black cats. Their names are commemorated in a memorial garden at the wonderful Prestonpans Gothenburg pub. In addition, the court declared each succeeding Hallowe’en should be a Remembrance Day in Prestonpans for them. We can’t undo the past but we can remember the better not to repeat past mistakes.

What prompted this muse was sitting through a debate in the Commons last week, in which a Conservative minister deliberately ‘talked out’ a Private Members’ Bill sponsored by SNP MP John Nicolson to grant a pardon to men convicted only of loving other men, in the bad old days when being gay was branded a crime. Much as people were once branded witches and burned at the stake.

During the debate, various pedants suggested if we pardoned people for being gay because it’s no longer a crime, where should we draw the line? Pardoning witches, say? But in East Lothian we have pardoned so-called witches. Perhaps the penny will drop at Number 10 eventually.

Enjoy Hallowe’en and remember the 81 witches of Prestonpans.