Page:The history of Witchcraft and demonology.djvu/163

 (1460–1523), Master of the Sacred Palace, and the great champion of orthodoxy against the heresiarch Luther, in his erudite De Strigimagia relates that in Como and Brescia a number of children between eight and twelve years old, who had frequented the Sabbat, but had been happily converted by the unsparing patience of the Inquisitors, at the request of the Superiors gave exhibitions of these dances when they showed such extraordinary adroitness and skill in executing the most intricate and fantastic figures that it was evident they had been instructed by no mere human tutelage. Marco de Viqueria, the Dominican Prior of the Brussels monastery, closely investigated the matter, and he was a religious of such known acumen and exceptional probity that his testimony soon convinced many prelates at Rome who were inclined to suspect some trickery or cunning practice. In Belgium this Sabbat dance was known as Pauana.

In the Fian trial Agnes Sampson confessed that “They danced along the Kirk-yeard, Geilic Duncan playing on a Trump, and John Fein mussiled led the Ring. The said Agnes and her daughter followed next. Besides these were Kate Gray, George Noilis his wife, … with the rest of their Cummers above an hundred Persons.” She further added that this Geillis Duncane did goe before them, playing this reill or daunce uppon a small trumpe, called a Jewe’s trumpe, untill they entered into the Kerk of North Barrick.” “These confessions made the King [James I, then James VI of Scotland] in a wonderfull admiration, and sent for the saide Geillis Duncane, who, upon the like trumpe, did play the saide daunce before the kinges maiestie.”

Music generally accompanied the dancers, and there is ample evidence that various instruments were played, violins, flutes, tambourines, citterns, hautboys, and, in Scotland, the pipes. Those of the witches who had any skill were the performers, and very often they obliged the company awhile with favourite airs of a vulgar kind, but the concert ended in the most hideous discords and bestial clamour; the laws of harmony and of decency were alike rudely violated. In August, 1590, a certain Nicolas Laghernhard, on his way to Assencauria, was passing through the outskirts of a wood when he saw through the trees a number of men and women