Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/280

248 of the covine drove, toads drew the plough, the trace-chains were of couch grass, and a gelded animal's horn formed the plough-share. The covine, or squad, of witches surrounded the plough, moving as it moved and repeating incantations. In this ceremony the objects used connoted barrenness; but as the witches were acknowledged to have the double power of causing and blasting fertility, this seems to be a fertility charm reversed; and the original cause of these local meetings was in all probability the promotion of fertility among the flocks and crops of the members.

The local meetings often ended with feasting and dancing, and were sometimes, though not always, kept up till cock-crow.

Everything, which was done at a local meeting, was noted by the officer and reported at the great assembly, or Sabbath, where it was entered in the Devil's book.

The Sabbaths were the important meetings, and were held four times in the year; the dates being Candlemas, February 2, Roodmas or Holy Cross Day, Lammas, August 1, and Hallowmas, October 31. Roodmas falls on May 3, but from the indications it would appear that the date of the Sabbath in Great Britain was originally the same as in Germany, namely Walpurgis Nacht, or April 30; in Bavaria it may be noted that Walpurgis Day was May 2. It is then clear that the Sabbaths were held on the four "cross-quarter" days, i.e. the quarter days of the May-November year. Frazer notes that the division of the year at these points has nothing to do with the solstices or equinoxes, and therefore though of little moment to agriculture is of the utmost importance to the European herdsman, "for it is on the approach of summer that