Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/267

Rh he often led the dance which being a fertility-rite, must be looked upon as part of an early and primitive cult. He sometimes, though not always, attended the local meetings, but as these were not so important as the Sabbaths his presence could be dispensed with.

We knew nothing as to how he was appointed and his identity was always studiously concealed, but on a few occasions we get a glimpse of a real personality; sometimes this proves to be a person of some political importance. Eg. at North Berwick where the witch-community was destroyed, root and branch, on account of their attempt on the King's life [James VI. our James I.], the evidence points to Francis Earl Bothwell as the chief or Devil. Bothwell was grandson of James V. and nephew of the Regent Moray, and in spite of the bar sinister he was practically the next male heir to the throne of Scotland had our King James died without children. Of less importance but also political is a list of suspected persons in the reign of Elizabeth; among them are several witches and "Ould Birtles the great devil." In 1649 a man named Marsh of Dunstable is identified by George Palmer, who had himself been a witch for nearly 60 years, as "the head of the whole College of Witches that hee knows in the world." Altogether I have been able to identify eight or nine men, but with more time and trouble it would be possible to identify several more.

The appearance of the devil is often given in great •detail. He was said to appear usually as a man, a bull, a goat, and a dog. As a man he was usually dressed in black, apparently garbed like the clergy of the period;