Page:Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921).djvu/106

 we wold ryd, we tak windle-strawes, or been-stakes [bean-stalks] and put them betwixt owr foot, and say thryse, Horse and Hattok, horse and goe, Horse and pellattis, ho! ho! and immediatlie we flie away whair euir we wold &hellip; All the Coeven did fflie lyk cattis, bot Barbara Ronald, in Brightmanney, and I, still [always] read on an horse, quhich ve vold mak of a straw or beein-stalk.'

Julian Cox (1664) said that 'one evening she walkt out about a Mile from her own House, and there came riding towards her three persons upon three Broom-staves, born up about a yard and an half from the ground. Two of them she formerly knew, which was a Witch and a Wizzard &hellip; The third person she knew not. He came in the shape of a black Man.' Two of the New England witches (1692) confessed to riding on a pole; Mary Osgood, wife of Capt. Osgood of Andover, 'was carried through the air to five-mile pond &hellip; she was transported back again through the air, in company with the forenamed persons, in the same manner as she went, and believes they were carried upon a pole'. Goody Foster's evidence was reported by two authors: 'One Foster confessed that the Devil carry'd them on a pole, to a Witch-meeting; but the pole broke, and she hanging about [Martha] Carrier's neck, they both fell down, and she then received an hurt by the Fall, whereof she was not at this very time recovered.' The second account is substantially the same: 'In particular Goody F. said (Inter alia) that she with two others (one of whom acknowledged the same) Rode from Andover to the same Village Witch meeting upon a stick above ground, and that in the way the stick brake, and gave the said F. a fall: whereupon, said she, I got a fall and hurt of which I am still sore.'

Site.—The Sabbath seems to have been originally held on a fixed site. So much so was this the case that de Lancre is