Janet Beaton, Lady of Branxholme and Buccleugh (1519–1569) was an aristocratic Scottish woman and a mistress of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell.
[2] Janet was immortalised as Sir Walter Scott's Wizard Lady of Branxholm in his celebrated narrative poem "Lay of the Last Minstrel".
During the war of the Rough Wooing the mills were damaged by an English sympathiser, an "assured Scot", Peter Durie from Saltoun.
[7] In 1558, Janet marched at the head of an armed party consisting of two hundred members of her clan to the Kirk of St. Mary of the Lowes in Yarrow, where she knocked down the doors in an attempt to apprehend Sir Peter Cranstoun.
[13] Janet Beaton was immortalised by Sir Walter Scott in his narrative poem "Lay of the Last Minstrel" as Wizard Lady of Branxholm, who could '"bond to her bidding the viewless forms of air".
[15] Janet's sister Margaret Beaton, born about 1526, married Arthur Forbes, 4th Laird of Rires in the parish of Kilconquhar and had two sons with him before his death in 1586.
When the queen had gone into labour with her son James VI and I on 19 June 1566, by the magic of the Countess Atholl, Margaret bore her pains by proxy.