Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/284

252 May and November are I believe the usual breeding seasons for herd animals, it seems probable then that the fertility rites, which have always interested writers on witchcraft almost to the exclusion of other points of ritual, took place on the May eve and Hallow-eve Sabbaths. The reason of these rites, as Frazer has shown in his accounts of Sacred Marriages, was to promote fertility; in this case, the fertility of the herds. The accusations brought against witches of certain gross forms of immorality were probably true, but true only in a sense; the rites being a survival of a primitive cult, and the chief of the Sabbath being a man in the guise of a bull, sheep, or goat, who thus represented the god in animal form. The dates of these two Sabbaths go far to suggest this.

The Candlemas and Lammas festivals were more general in their magical effects. To Candlemas must belong the account of the Devil as a goat with the sacred fire between or upon his horns, from which the witches lighted their candles and torches. The complete account comes from a French source, but the custom held good in England and Scotland, though the rite was so completely misunderstood by the recorders and possibly by the witches themselves that, without the French account as a guide, it is liable to be passed over as unimportant.

Lammas, in the Christian Church, was an early harvest festival, and was probably the same among the witches. Possibly the jumping dance was a fertility rite to ensure the growth of the corn.