Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/142

 and six at even, being alone and commanded her to be at North-berwick Kirk the next night. To which place she came on horse-back, conveyed to her Good-son, called Iohn Couper.” The Swedish witches (1669) who carried children off to Blockula “set them upon a Beast of the Devil’s providing, and then they rid away.” One boy confessed that “to perform the Journey, he took his own Fathers horse out of the Meadow, where it was feeding.” Upon his return one of the coven let the horse graze in her own pasture, and here the boy’s father found it the next day.

In the popular imagination the witch is always associated with the broomstick, employed by her to fly in wild career through mid-air. This belief seems almost universal, of all times and climes. The broomstick is, of course, closely connected with the magic wand or staff which was considered equally serviceable for purposes of equitation. The wood whence it was fashioned was often from the hazel-tree, witch-hazel, although in De Lancre’s day the sorcerers of Southern France favoured the “Souhandourra”—Cornus sanguinea, dog-wood. Mid hurricane and tempest, in the very heart of the dark storm, the convoy of witches, straddling their broomsticks, sped swiftly along to the Sabbat, their yells and hideous laughter sounding louder than the crash of elements and mingling in fearsome discord with the frantic pipe of the gale.

There is a very important reference to these beliefs from the pen of the famous and erudite Benedictine Abbot, Regino of Prüm ( 906), who in his weighty De ecclesiasticis disciplinis writes: “This too must by no means be passed over that certain utterly abandoned women, turning aside to follow Satan, being seduced by the illusions and phantasmical shows of demons firmly believe and openly profess that in the dead of night they ride upon certain beasts along with the pagan goddess Diana and a countless horde of women, and that in those silent hours they fly over vast tracts of country and obey her as their mistress, whilst on certain other nights they are summoned to do her homage and pay her service.” The witches rode sometimes upon a besom or a stick, sometimes upon an animal, and the excursion through the air was generally preceded by an unction with a magic ointment. Various recipes are given for the ointment,