“At their meeting they have usually wine and good beer, cakes, meat or the like. They eat and drink really when they meet in their bodies, dance also and have music. The man in black sits at the higher end, and Anne Bishop usually next him. He uses some words before meat, and none after, his voice is audible, and very low.”(17)
She does not quote the sentence immediately preceding: “At every meeting the Spirit vanishes away, he appoints the next meeting place and time, and at his departure there is a foul smell.” Nor is there any mention of certain other details supplied by the same witness. For Elizabeth Styles said that, while the Devil sometimes appeared to her as a man, he usually did so in the form of a dog, a cat or a fly; as a fly, he was apt to suck at the back of her head. He also provided his followers with oil with which to anoint their foreheads and wrists — which enabled them to be carried in a moment to and from the meetings. On the other hand, Elizabeth added that sometimes the meetings were attended by the witches’ spirits only, their bodies remaining at home.(18)
A Scot herself, Murray draws heavily on the records of Scottish trials for her material. A typical source, covering both the feast at the sabbat and the return from it, is the confession of Helen Guthrie, one of the alleged witches tried at Forfar in 1661. The Witch-Cult gives the following excerpts:
They went to Mary Rynd’s house and sat down together at the table, the devil being present at the head of it; and some of them went to John Benny’s house, he being a brewer, and brought ale from hence....and others of them went to Alexander Hieche’s and brought aqua vitae from thence, and thus made themselves merry; and the devil made much of them all, but especially of Mary Rynd, and he kissed them all except the said Helen herself, whose hand only he kissed; and she and Jonet Stout sat opposite one to another at the table.(19)
Herself, Isobell Shyrie and Elspet Alexander, did meet together at a house near to Barrie, a little before sunset, after they had stayed in the said house about the space of an hour drinking three pints of ale together, they went forth to the sands, and there three other women met them, and the Devil was there present with them all.... and they parted so late that night that she could get no lodging, but was forced to lie at a dike side all night.(20)
All very normal — until one looks at the original source and discovers what those sets of dots represent. With the lacunae filled in the passages read as follows:
....and brought ale from hence, and they (went) through at a little hole like bees, and took the substance of the ale....
.... and the Devil was there present with them all, in the shape of a great horse; and they decided on the sinking of a ship, lying not far off from Barrie, and presently the said company appointed herself to take hold of the cable tow, and to hold it fast until they did return, and she herself did presently take hold of the cable tow, and the rest with the Devil went into the sea upon the said cable, as she thought, and about the space of an hour thereafter, they returned all in the same likeness as before, except that the Devil was in the shape of a man upon his return, and the rest were sorely fatigued.... (21)
After this it comes as no surprise to learn that another member of the group was accustomed to turn herself into a horse, shod with horseshoes, and in that guise transport her fellow witches, and even the Devil himself, to and from the sabbat — with the result that the following day she was confined to bed with sore hands. Nor is it unexpected that the Forfar witches should sometimes have had less ordinary meals than those described above. In the event they confessed to digging up the corpse of a baby, making a pic of its flesh, and eating it; the purpose being to prevent themselves from ever confessing to their witchcraft — just as, five centuries earlier, the heretics of Thrace and of Orléans were supposed to have been inwardly and irrevocably bound to their sect by consuming the ashes of babies’ bodies. In the case of the Forfar witches it was a vain hope, for in Scottish trials torture was commonly employed until a confession was obtained.
Similar use is made of Isobel Gowdie’s confession (or rather confessions, for under increasing pressure she made four) at Auldearn, in Nairn, in 1662:
We would go to several houses in the night time. We were at Candlemas last in Grangehill, where we got meat and drink enough. The Devil sat at the head of the table, and all the Coven about. That night he desired Alexander Elder in Earlseat to say the grace before meat, which he did; and is this: “We eat this meat in the Devil’s name” (etc.) And then we began to eat. And when we had ended eating, we looked steadfastly to the Devil, and bowing ourselves to him, we said to the Devil, We thank thee, our Lord, for this. — We killed an ox, in Burgie, about the dawning of the day, and we brought the ox with us home to Auldeme, and feasted on it.(22)
The simple dash between the two stories conceals much, including the following items:
All the coven did fly like cats, jackdaws, hares and rooks, etc., but Barbara Ronald, in Brightmanney, and I always rode on a horse, which we would make of a straw or a bean-stalk. Bessie Wilson was always in the likeness of a rook.... (The Devil) would be like a heifer, a bull, a deer, a roe, or a dog, etc., and have dealings with us; and he would hold up his tail while we kissed his arse.(23)
Isobel Gowdie had much more to say. When she and her associates went to the sabbat they would place in the bed, beside their husbands, a broom or a three-legged stool, which promptly took on the appearance of a woman. At the sabbat they made a plough of a ram’s horn and yoked frogs to it, using grass for the traces. As the plough went round the fields, driven by the Devil with the help of the male officer of the coven, the women followed it, praying to the Devil that the soil might yield only thistles and briars.
Murray cites Isobel Gowdie as an example of a witch who rode to and from meetings on horseback; the proof being Isobel’s own words, “I had a little horse, and would say, ‘Horse and Hattock, in the Devil’s name!’ ” This, however, is the very phrase that fairies were believed to use as they flew from place to place; and the rest of Isobel’s account shows that, in a desperate effort to find enough material to satisfy her interrogators and torturers, she did indeed draw on the local fairy lore:
I had a little horse, and would say, ‘'Horse and Hittock, in the Devil’s name!” And then we would fly away, where we would, even as straws fly upon a highway. We would fly like straws when we please; wild-straws and corn-straws will be horses to us, if we put them between our feet and say, “Horse and Hattock, in the Devil’s name!” If anyone sees these straws in a whirlwind, and do not bless themselves, we may shoot them dead at our pleasure. Any that are shot by us, their souls will go to Heaven, but their bodies remain with us, and will fly as our horses, as small as straws. I was in the Downie-hills, and got meat from the Queen of Fairie, more than I could eat. The Queen of Fairie is bravely clothed in white linen.... (24)
At this point Isobel’s interrogators cut her short: she was straying too far from the demonological material they required. After a further three weeks in gaol she produced a version in which the fairies were duly integrated into the Devil’s kingdom. The Devil himself, she asserted, shaped “elf-arrow-heads” and handed them over to small hunch-backed elves, who sharpened them and in turn passed them to the witches for shooting. As the witches had no bows, they flicked the arrows from their thumb-nails as they sailed overhead on their straws and bean-stalks; and the arrows killed those they hit, even through a coat of armour.(25) This is the passage that led Murray to her theory about the fugitive aboriginal race; others will interpret it in a different sense. Certainly we are a long, long way from those commonplace feastings at Grangehill and Auldearn.