“The persistent tradition is that witches were executed here; this maybe a memory of the fact that a court did judge a witch at the stone. 1595 had a case from ‘This Court of ye Burgh of Kintore, holden at ye Cloven Stone’. In this instance the court acquitted two men of striking Isobel Cockie, on the self-defence grounds that she was ‘in ane distemper, and they were forced to put her out of doors’. This was at least a year before she was investigated for witchcraft.”
Extracts From The Record Books Of Kintore 1864