Writing in 1435-7, the German Johann Nider tells the story of a peasant woman who imagined herself to fly at night with Diana.(34) When a visiting Dominican tried to disabuse her, she offered to show him how she did it. One night, in the presence of the Dominican and another witness, she placed herself in a basket, rubbed herself with an ointment, and fell into such a stupor that not even falling to the floor could wake her. When finally she awoke she assured the observers that she had been with Diana, and could hardly be persuaded that she had never left the spot at all. At the same date the Spaniard Alfonso Tostato also tells of such women, and adds that while in their stupor they are insensible to blows and even to fire.(35) A century later the Italian Bartolommeo Spina knew of women who anointed themselves and, in a deep stupor, imagined themselves to fly through the air with their mistress and a host of dancers.(36) And by 1569 the Dutch physician Johannes Weyer was even able to supply recipes of solutions and ointments that were supposed to be favoured by witches.(37)
How seriously should all this be taken? The fact that some of the recipes include real narcotics, such as belladonna, has roused curiosity. Some bold spirits, notably in Germany, recently tried them out on themselves — and promptly experienced very much what the witches are supposed to have experienced.(38) Yet there are grounds for doubt. Not one of those tales about women anointing themselves even pretends to come from an eyewitness — even Nider, who goes into most detail, merely repeats what his teacher had once told him about an unnamed Dominican. Moreover the earliest recipes, from the fifteenth century, consist not of narcotics but of such disagreeable but nontoxic substances as the flesh of snakes, lizards, toads, spiders and (of course) children; and the ointments are less commonly applied to the witch’s body than to the chairs and broomsticks on which she rides.(39) All in all, there is hardly more reason to take these stories seriously than to believe that the witch Pamphile, in Apuleius, was really able, with the help of a concoction of laurel and dill, to grow an owl’s feathers, beak and claws and fly off hooting.(40) The true explanation lies in quite a different direction — not in pharmacology but in anthropology; for the night-witch is known in many non-European societies today.
The anthropological literature on witchcraft is vast and continues to grow at a prodigious rate, but to clarify this particular problem one need only turn to J. R. Crawford’s Witchcraft and sorcery in Rhodesia.(41) Mr Crawford’s book, which is based on judicial records of witchcraft and sorcery allegations between 1956 and 1962, shows very clearly what the Shona peoples of Rhodesia believe about night-witches. They believe that certain women strip themselves naked and fly through the air at night, usually on a hyena, ant-bear, owl or crocodile. The purpose of the flight is cannibalism or, rather, necrophagy — something which the Shona regard with even greater horror, if possible, than does our own society. The witch is supposed to exhume newly buried corpses and eat the flesh — but also to kill people, especially children, in order to devour them.(42) That is the general belief amongst the Shona, and it has many counterparts in other areas of Africa, and, indeed, in Asia and Central and Southern America also. The point, however, is that some Shona women apply it to themselves. The following comes from a confession of a woman called Muhlava:
‘I know a native woman by the name of Chirunga, she is a witch. We go about at night bewitching people. We have gone out five times. The accused came to my hut one day and said she wanted to be friendly with me. Later she came again and we went to the fields and there I made certain incisions on the accused on the hips. I applied some magic to these cuts, some white medicine. This is the same stuff that Tsatsawani had given me some years previously. The accused was at this time quite a young girl, she was not married and was still living with her parents. I explained — to Dawu, the accused, that this meant she was now a witch. I explained that we should go about at night bewitching people. Once I went out with Chirunga and the accused to see my husband. They both came to my hut, that is the accused and Chirunga. They came riding hyenas at night. We all went to my husband’s hut. They came with me in order to bewitch my husband Chidava. This was also to teach the accused. I cannot explain the reason, for this, it only comes to us in a dream. We poured some maheo or sweet beer into Chidava’s mouth, there was bewitching medicine in it. We then sprinkled some more medicine on his body. We then left and went to bed. The accused and Chirunga then took their hyenas and rode away into the night. Three days later my husband died. A little later my two friends, the accused and Chirunga, came at night on hyenas and we all went to the place where the body was buried. We exumed the body of my husband, we skinned the body, we cut a piece of meat and took it to my hut. We reinterred the body in the grave. At the hut we cooked the meat and ate it, it was good. We departed then. Some time later we three went to visit Meke, the brother of Chidava. We all rode hyenas. Near the kraal we talked amongst ourselves and decided to kill Meke. We went into the village and we found him sleeping. We each of us laid hands on him. The next morning Meke was ill. The kraal head then came to us and said that we should not bewitch the man Meke so we relented and Meke lived. After this the accused married and went to live in Maranda’s area. Quite recently myself and the mother of the accused were attending a beer drink. A report was made to us by Maswirira. Two days later I went to visit the accused in chief Maranda’s area. I went at night on a hyena’s back. I stood outside the hut where the accused was sleeping. The infant was in the accused’s arms. We pulled the baby and later I rode off on my hyena.... We wanted to bewitch the child — I cannot tell the reason because it only came to us as if we were dreaming. We fought over the child. We wanted to bewitch the child so it would die. We wanted to eat it. The child was never dropped during the struggle. I then returned to my kraal.... ’(43)
Muhlava’s confession was largely corroborated by that of her friend Chirunga Tsatsawani. To appreciate both at their full value it is necessary to add Crawford’s comment:
Any suggestion that the alleged witches were forced to confess is, I think, belied by the very nature of the confessions themselves. Forced confessions are generally grudgingly made and retracted as soon as the threat is removed. The confessions in [this case] were not of this nature and were first made in front of a definitely sceptical European policeman and then repeated or admitted in front of a European magistrate and later a European judge. As far as one can tell there is no reason to suppose that the police brought any pressure to bear on these people. There would, in any event, be no reason to bring pressure to bear on such talkative persons. Again, there seem to be no reasons one can suggest why the community in which these people were living should demand confessions of the sort which were made, for — even if a confession were demanded — a mere confession of witchcraft lacking in circumstantial detail would suffice.
While, no doubt, no normal, well-adjusted person would give the evidence these alleged witches gave, there is no reason to suppose that any of them was insane. Certainly they were considered sane enough to give evidence or to stand trial and, in any event, it is hardly possible that a group of women in one village should be similarly attacked by identical forms of the same mental disorder.(44)