Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/271

Rh or women ; in France they are said to be minor devils, diablotins. The officers were entrusted with the management and arrangement of all the meetings, they notified the members when and where the local meetings would be held, they kept the records of attendance at the meetings and also of the ceremonials performed, they appear to have arranged for the feasts, they often led the ring in the dance or remained in the rear to make the less agile dancers keep up with the rest, they introduced the new convert, and in France they inflicted the "Devil's mark" on the newly admitted witch.

The Scotch witches and apparently originally the English witches also, were divided into companies, or covines, as Isobel Gowdie calls them. The number in a covine was thirteen, twelve witches and the officer, i.e. the Devil's dozen. Each covine was independent of any other, but several could meet for any special purpose; for example, at North Berwick there were thirty-nine witches present, three covines. All the covines of a district met together at the great Sabbaths, but as a rule each covine had its own weekly meeting, near the place of residence of the