Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/134

 cemetery, a ruined building, some solitary chapel or semi-deserted church, sometimes a house belonging to one of the initiates.

It was advisable that the selected locality should be remote and deserted to obviate any chance of espionage or casual interruption, and in many provinces some wild ill-omened gully or lone hill-top was shudderingly marked as the notorious haunt of witches and their fiends. De Lancre says that the Grand Sabbat must be held near a stream, lake, or water of some kind, and Bodin adds: “The places where Sorcerers meet are remarkable and generally distinguished by some trees, or even a cross.” These ancient cromlechs and granite dolmens, the stones of the Marais de Dol, the monolith that lies between Seny and Ellemelle (Candroz), even the market-crosses of sleepy old towns and English villages, were among the favourite rendezvous of the pythons and warlocks of a whole countryside. On one occasion, which seems exceptional, a Sabbat was held in the very heart of the city of Bordeaux. Throughout Germany the Blocksburg or the Brocken, the highest peak of the Hartz Mountains, was the great meeting-place of the witches, some of whom, it was said, came from distant Lapland and Norway to forgather there. But local Blocksburgs existed, or rather hills so called, especially in Pomerania, which boasted two or three such crags. The sorcerers of Corrières held their Sabbat at a deserted spot, turning off the highway near Combes; the witches of la Mouille in a tumbledown house, which had once belonged to religious; the Gandillons and their coven, who were brought to justice in June, 1598, met at Fontenelles, a forsaken and haunted spot near the village of Nezar. Dr. Fian and his associates (1591) “upon the night of Allhollen-Even” assembled at “the kirke of North-Berrick in Lowthian.” Silvain Nevillon, who was executed at Orleans, 4 February, 1615, confessed “que le Sabbat se tenoit dans vne maison,” and the full details he gave shows this to have been a large château, no doubt the home of some wealthy local magnate, where above two hundred persons could assemble. Isobel Young, Christian Grinton, and two or three other witches entertained the Devil in Young’s house in 1629. Alexander Hamilton, a “known warlock” executed at Edinburgh in 1630, confessed that “the pannel