Chapter 34
morning you may see a circular track in the grass, showing the print of cows' and goats' feet. The dance, according to Hessian trials of 1631, is like that of the sword-dancers (p. 304); we often hear of one of the women wearing the güldne schuh on her right foot, would she be queen or commandress? Martin von Amberg speaks of 'making red shoes (schuechel) for the trut'; to dance in? When the ring-dance is over, they beat each other with swingle-staves and mangle-bats, and practice lewdness. At last the great goat burns himself to ashes, and these are distributed among the witches to work mischief with. A young untried witch is not at once admitted to the feast and dance, but set on one side to tend toads with a white wand; (67) at home also they breed and maintain these animals: the Hätzlerin lxviii(a) already chides a witch as 'inhitzige krotensack!' Such a novice witch the Devil inverts, and sticks a candle in a part of her person, Thür. mitth. vi. 3, 69. They go home the same way as they came: the husband, who all the while has mistaken a staff laid in the bed for his sleeping spouse, knows nothing of what has passed. Whoever happens to get sight of a witches' dance, need only utter the name of God or Christ: it all stops in a moment, and disappears. (68) The harm that witches do is chiefly to the cattle and crops of their neighbours. They know how to drain other people's cows of every drop of milk, without coming near them, Superst. G, line 132: they stick a knife in an oaken post, hang a string on it, and make the milk flow out of the string (Reusch's Samland p. 66); or they drive an axe into the doorpost, and milk out of the helve; they draw milk out of a spindle, out of a suspended handkerchief. (69) They turn good milk blue, or bloody-colour; their compliments on entering your house are bad for the milk: if you were just going to churn, the butter will not come, Sup. I, 823. Hence any witch is called milch-diebin (as the butterfly is a milk or butter thief), milch-zauberin, molken-stehlerin, molken-töversche, whey-bewitcher. (70) Here again comes to light the connection between witches, elves and butterflies, for vulgar opinion blamed dwarfs also for drawing milk from the udders of kine: ON. dverg-speni means papilla vaccarum vacua. If your milk is bewitched, whip it in a pot, or stir it about with a sickle: every lash or cut makes the witch wince, Sup. I, 540. A Wetterau superstition takes this shape: when a beast is bewitched, they set the frying-pan on, and chop into it with the grass-chopper behind bolted doors; the first person who comes after that is the witch. The power of witches to draw milk and honey from a neighbour's house to their own is already noticed by old Burchard, Sup. C, p. 199d. Lashing the brooks with their brooms, squirting water up in the air, shooting gravel, scattering sand toward sunset, witches bring on storm and hail (p. 909), to beat down their neighbour's corn and fruit. For the same purpose they are said to boil bristles or else oak-leaves in the pots, or strew some of those devil's-ashes on the fields. These are the lightning or weather-witches, whose doings will come to be treated more fully hereafter. It is said they stroke or strip the dew off the grass, and with it do harm to cattle, Sup. I, 1118; also that early before sunrise they skim the dew off other people's meadows, and carry it to their own, to make the grass grow ranker; hence they may be recognised by their large clumsy feet, and are called thau-streicher (in E. Friesland dau-striker), though other suspicious characters, even men, are called the same bad name. This clearly hangs together with the dew-brushing after the nightly efl-dance, and the dew the valkyrian steeds shake out of their manes; only here it is perverted to evil. A witch, by binding up the legs of a footstool, can heal the broken bones of one who is absent. If she is present at a wedding, just as the blessing is pronouncing, she snaps a padlock to, and drops it in the water: this is called tying up the laces; until the padlock can be fished up and unlocked, the marriage proves unfruitful. Witches can kill men by dealing pricks to images or puppets; in churchyards they dig up the bodies of young children, and cut the fingers off; (71) with the fat of these children they are supposed to make their salve. This seems to be their chief reason for entrapping children; to the sorceress of older times kidnapping was imputed far more freely (p. 1059). From the Devil's commerce with witches proceeds no human offspring, but elvish beings, which are named dinger (things, conf. wihtir, p. 440), elbe, holden, but whose figure is variously described: now as butterflies, then as humble-bees or queppen (quab, burbot), and again as caterpillars or worms. Even an OHG. gloss in Graff 1, 243 has: alba, brucus, locusta quae nondum volavit. The enigmatic beetle and larva shape is very appropriate to such beings. (72) They are called by turns good and bad things, good and bad elves, good (73) and bad holden, holderchen, holdiken. Witches use them to produce illness and swellings in man and beast, by conjuring them into the skin and bones. But they also make them settle on forest-trees, they dig them in under elder-bushes: the 'elves,' in gnawing away the wood of the aspen, waste away the man at whom they are aimed. The same witch as set the 'holden' on a man must take them off again; when she wants them, she goes into the wood and shakes them off the trees, or digs them out from under the elder (the elves' grave). You may know a man into whom holden have been charmed, by there being no manikin or baby (korh, pupa) visible in his eyes, or only very faintly (Voigt pp. 149. 152). This is like the devil's drawing a toad on the pupil of a witch's left eye. The nine species of holden I shall specify in the chap. on Diseases. But not unfrequently the demon lover himself appears in the form of an elf or butterfly. Their daughters born in human wedlock the witches have to promise to the devil at their birth, and to bring them up in his service; at great assemblies they present to him any children they have, lifting them up backwards. Sometimes they sacrifice black cattle to him. They love to gather where roads divide; (74) like the devil (p. 999), they can pop in and out of houses through the keyhole (Sup. G, line 106-7. Tobler 146a); where three lights burn in a room, the witch has power; ringing of bells they cannot bear. Before the judge they must not be allowed to touch the bare ground, or they will change themselves in a moment; they are incapable of shedding a tear; thrown into water, they float on the top, (75) upon which fact the ancient usage of the witches' bath (ducking) was founded, once a divine ordeal, RA. 925. If at the beginning of the action they contrive to catch the judge's eye, he turns soft-hearted, and has not the power to doom them.
Now it is a characteristic fact, that witches, with all their
cunning and the devil's power to boot, remain sunk in misery and deep poverty:
there is no instance to be found of one growing rich by sorcery, and making
up for the loss of heavenly bliss by at least securing worldly pleasure, a thing
that does occur in tales of men who sign themselves away to the fiend (p. 1017).
These hook-nosed, sharp-chinned, hang-lipped, wry-toothed, chap-fingered beldams
(76) practise villainy that never profits them, at most
they may gratify a love of mischief. Their dalliance with the devil, their sharing
in his feasts, never procures them more than a half-enjoyment (77)
(see Suppl.).
This one feature might have opened people's eyes to the basis
of all sorcery. The whole wretched business rested on the imagination and compulsory
confessions of the poor creatures. Of fact there was none, save that they had
a knowledge of medicines and poisons, and quickened their dreams
(78) by the use of salves and potions. Called upon to
name their confederates, they often mentioned dead persons, to shield the living
or to evade inquiry; any vile thing they stated was set down as gospel truth.
We read of witches confessing the murder of people who turned out to be alive.
(79) It never occurred to the judges to consider, how
on earth it happened that innumerable meetings of witches, all at well-known
accessible places, had never been surprised by witnesses whom their road must
have taken that way. By what special licence from God in those times should
a pack of miscreants previously unheard of nestle down all of a sudden in towns
and villages all over the country!
Long before witches were tortured, great criminals had been put
to bodily sufferings intended to wring from them a confession of their guilt.
The Lex Visig. iii. 4, 10-11 already speaks of 'torquere'; and the triangular
beam on which the accused had to ride was called equuleus, poledrus, whence
comes our folter, Fr. poultre, poutre. That ON. extortion of a full declaration,
'pîna til sagna' p. 1043, need not have been borrowed from witch-trials.
The signing away to the devil, abjuring of God and adoring of
the goat in witch-stories seems to be of heretic origin; at the same time the
abjurer parodies the Abrenuntiatio Diaboli enjoined on catechumens;
(80) in every other point the heathen element preponderates.
Even the goat, and the offering of black beasts (pp. 52. 493. 1009), cannot
but remind us of the old worship of gods; it is remarkable that a Dalecarlian
tradition makes the devil not occupy the chair of state, but lie under the table,
bound with a chain (just as with those spinsters in German legend, p. 1011).
The witches there have much to tell about this chain: when its links wear out,
an angel comes and solders them to again, Bergm. 217-9. Various witcheries were
wrought by the efficacy of salt, Sup. I, 713. 846; it seems almost as if we
might assume a connection between the salt-boiling, salt-grinding, salt-strewing,
salt-burning, salt-fetching at p. 1047, and the burning of the goat, the carrying
away and strewing of his ashes. (81)
Equally heathen we found the consumption of horseflesh p. 1049. The witches'
flights were usually performed on May-night, St. John's night, and at Christmas,
but also at Shrovetide, Easter and other seasons; these were the days of great
heathen festivals, of Easter-fires, May-fires, Solstitial and Yule fires, and
there is no occasion to see in them a parody of the christian feasts. The riding
by night, the torchlight procession, the penetrating of locked-up houses, are
exactly as in the case of Holda's host; the seducers' names, the spells, the
brood of 'holden,' the round dance, all this is elvish. (82)
A witch's being strengthened by touching the bare ground (iarðar-megin p. 642)
may remind us of the heathen belief about giants. An application of the Old-German
ducking to witches sprang out of the early practice of courts which had long
used it against sorceresses who committed actual crimes. I do not know that
the blood-mark imprinted on witches (p. 1070) on forming their heretics (p.
1065). Mingling of blood in oaths and covenants was ancient and widely spread,
RA. 192-3; the stigma was known in Germany long before witches were prosecuted,
(83) the regular name for it being anamâli (Graff 2,
715). The corresponding âmæli in ON. I find only in the ethical sense of nota
= vituperium; but when heroes of old Scandinavia found themselves dying the
strâ-dauði in bed, they used first to consecrate themselves to Oðinn, who would
only take a bleeding hero, by scratch of spear, even as he before dying gave
himself a gash with Gûngnir (p. 147); this they called marka sik geirs oddi,
marka sik Oðni, Yngl. saga cap. 10. 11. And I incline moreover to connect the
'tîres tâcen,' p. 200, and even the 'Tôdes zeichen,' p. 847; about all this
there was not a thought of criminal sorcery (see Suppl.).
The details of witchcraft, the heart-eating, the storm-raising,
the riding through air, are all founded on very ancient and widely scattered
traditions, which I will now examine more minutely.
Let a glance at Servian superstitions lead the way. The veshtitsa
is possessed by an evil spirit: when she falls asleep, he comes out of her,
and then takes the form of a butterfly or a hen, but he is essentially one with
the witch. As soon as he is out, the witch's body lies as if dead, and then
always turns its head about to where the feet lay; in that state she cannot
be awaked. The witch tries to catch people, to eat up, especially young children.
If she finds a man asleep, she pushes a rod through his left nipple, opens his
side, takes out the heart and eats it, and the breast closes up again. Some
of the people thus 'eaten out' die directly, others live on for a time. A witch
will eat no garlic; and at Shrovetide many people smear themselves with garlic
on the breast, soles and armpits as a safeguard, believing that she eats more
people in Lent than at other times. Young and handsome women are never suspected
of sorcery, witches are always old women, (84)
but there goes a proverb: 'mlada kurva, stara veshtitsa,' young wanton makes
old witch. If once the witch has confessed and criminated herself, she can never
eat people or practise witchcraft any more. When witches fly out by night, they
shine like fire, their meeting-place is a thrashing floor (guvno), and each
when starting from her kitchen anoints herself with a salve, and repeats a spell
which will be quoted further on. If many children or other people die in a village,
and suspicion falls on some old woman, they bind and throw her in the water:
if she sinks, she is pulled out and let go; if not, she is put to death, for
witches cannot sink in water. Whoever kills a snake before Lady-day, and ties
a piece of garlic in its head, and on Lady-day goes to church with the snake's
head stuck on a cap, can tell what women are witches by their congregating round
him and trying to filch the snake or a piece of it (Vuk sub v. vjeschtitza,
pometno, blagovjest).
This remarkable account opens the way to explanations. We too
had similar means of recognising witches. He that has about him a harrow's tooth
he has picked up, or grains of corn found baked into the loaf, or a Maundy Thursday's
egg, will see the witches at church with milking-pails on their heads, Sup.
I, 636. 685. 783. Just the same in Denmark, Sup. 169. Bergman p. 219 says, in
Dalarne the witches rarely come to church: it is really a sheaf of straw or
a swine-trough that occupies their place, only no one is the wiser but they
of the Blåkulla sisterhood. I do not know if this pail or trough has to do with
their bewitching the milk, or with the Norse belief that giantesses, ellekoner
and huldre-wives carry a trough on their backs (Faye 118. Müll. sagabibl. 1,
367. Molb. dial. lex. 98). Keisersberg in Omeiss 36c tells of a night-faring
woman who sat down in a dought-trough, anointed herself with oil, spoke magic
words and slipt away (?). So early as in Sn. 210a we find among names of sorceresses
a Bakrauf, riven-backed, fissura dorsi. In Dan. 'ellekone bagtil huul som et
deigtrug,' Thiele 4, 26. All these resemblances are important. In the Appendix
I quote a spell, where the alb is thus addressed: 'with thy back like a dough-trough!'
Both elf and witch are beautiful only in front, behind they are disgustingly
deformed, like Gurorysse p. 945, or dame World in Conrad's poem. Out of the
Maundy Thursday egg, when hatched, comes a fowl of gay plumage, which changes
colour every year: take such an egg with you to church on Easter Sunday morning,
and in sunshine you can tell all the women who belong to the devil; but they
smell it out, and try to crush the egg in your pocket, so you must be careful
to carry it in a little box, for if they succeed in crushing it, your heart
will be broken too. Tobler 102a informs us of the Swiss superstition: 'weme
ma n' am Sonntig vor sonna nufgang e nübblättlets chlee (clover) ine schue ina
thued, ond mit dem schue i d'chilacha god (goes to church), so sieht ma's, wenn
e häx d'inen ist: die wo hönder för sitzid (sit hind foremost) sönd häxa.' Also,
whoever at Christmas matins stands on a footstool of nine sorts of wood, can
tell all the witches in the congregation: they all turn their backs to the altar.
But the witches can see him too, and woe to him if they get hold of him after
service; he is a dead man, unless he has provided himself with something to
tempt their cupidity, which he must keep throwing out bit by bit (as in ancient
legend the pursued scatter rings and gold before the pursuing foe), and while
they are picking it up, run as fast as he can, till his home receives him. A
parchm. MS. of the 14th cent.
at Vienna (Cod. bibl. graec. 39/63 bl. 133a) gives a simpler recipe: 'wil du,
daz di unholden zu dir chomen, so nym ein leffel an dem fassangtag, vnd stoz
in in gesoten prein, vnd behalt in also vntz in die drey metten in der Vasten
(3 matins in Lent), vnd trag den leffel in dy metten, so wird ez dir chunt,
wor sew sint.' Much the same in Mone's Anz. 4, 310: He that on the first 'knöpflein'
day shall pull the spoon out of the dough unseen, and on the second and third
day shall again put it in and pull it out unperceived, so that at length some
dough from each day sticks to it, and shall then take it to church with them
on Christmas day, will there see all the witches facing the wrong way (or, upside
down?); but he must get home before the benediction is pronounced, or it may
cost him his life. It is only upon going to church that any of these recognitions
can take place; but they seem also to depend on your being the first to see,
as in meeting a wolf or basilisk. Another means of recognising a witch is, that
when you look into her eyes, you see your image reflected upside down.
(85) Running at the eyes is a mark of old witches, Sup.
I, 787 (see Suppl.).
Notes:
67. O. Fr. poets also put peeled wands in the hands of witches: 'une vielle barbelée, qui porté a verge pelée plus de qatre vingts ans,' Renart 28286; conf. Méon 4, 478, 'remest ausi monde com la verge qui est pelée.' Back
68. DS. no. 251. Wolf's Niederl. sagen 245. 381-2. Wodana xxxvi. Back
69. So, by magic, wine is struck out of the post, Superst. G, line 262; conf. the legend of Doctor Faust. Back
70. On the eve of S. Philip and S. James, i.e. May 1, people in the I. of Rügen run about the fields with large fire-bladders: this they call molkentöverschen brennen Rugian. landgebr. cap. 243. 'milchdiebin und unhold,' H. Sachs iii. 3, 5d. Back
71. Fingers of a babe unborn are available for magic: when lighted, they give a flame that keeps all the inmates of a house asleep; equally useful is the thumb cut off the hand of a hanged thief. Conf. Schamberg de jure digitor. p. 61-2, and Praetorius on thieves' thumbs, Lips. 1677. The Coutume de Bordeaux § 46 treats of magic wrought with dead children's hands. Thief's hand was the name of a plant, p. 1029. Back
72. The caterpillar is also called devil's cat (p. 1029), and a witch, like the dragonfly, devil's bride, devil's doxy. The Finn. Ukon koira (Ukkonis canis) means papilio or larva papilionis, tuonen koira (mortis canis) and suden korendo (lupi vectis) butterfly, and Ukon lehmä (U. vacca) another insect. Swed. trollstända (daemonis fusus) butterfly. In the Grisons they call a caterpillar baluise, in Switz. (acc. to Stalder) palause, which is our old acquaintance pelewise, pilweise, p. 472-5. A mythic meaning also lurks in the OHG. huntes-satul (eruca), Graff 6, 167, as in ON. geit-hamr (vespa). Back
73. Called gute holden even when harmful magic is wrought with them, Braun-schw. anz. 1815, p. 726 seq. In the Malleolus I find: 'vermes nocivi qui vulgariter dicuntur juger,' and 'Alemannico nomine juger nuncupantur, sunt albi coloris et nigri capitis, sex pedum, in longitudine medii digiti.' Is jug the same thing as gueg (pp. 188. 692)? Many other designations of the phalaenae overlap those of will o'wisps or of wichtels, as zünsler, from fluttering round a light, land-surveyors, (p. 918), night-owls, etc. Back
74. At cross-roads the devil can be called up, so can the Alraun. Back
75. Pliny 7, 2 of sorcerers: 'eosdem praeterea non posse mergi ne veste quidem degravatos.' We are told several times, that the devil, after promising to bring the witches in the water an iron bar to make them sink, brings them only a fine needle. Back
76. 'Crooked nose and pointed chin, look to find the fiend therein!' I find a parallel in ON. names, Hengikepta, Grôttintanna, Loðinnfingra, Sn. 220-1. Back
77. Berthold p. 58: 'sô gênt etelîche mit bœsem zöuberlehe umb, daz si wænent eins gebûren (boor's) sun oder einen kneht bezoubern. pfî dû rehte tœrin! war umbe bezouberst dû einen grâven oder einen künec niht (fool, why not bewitch a count, a king)? sô wærestu ein küneginne!' They say a witch gets three farthings richer every seven years, Simplic. 625. Back
78. Alter wîbe troume, Wh. 1, 82a. kerlînga villa, Sæm. 169. Back
79. Frommann de fascinatione p. 850. Montaigne notices the same fact, livre 3, chap. 11. Back
80. In the formulas: 'ik fate an (grasp) disen witten stock, und verlate (forsake) unsen herre Gott (Cathol.: Marien son und Got)!' or 'her trede ik in din nist (nest), und verlate unsen herre Jesum Christ!' In Hessian records of 1633: 'hie stehe ich uf dieser mist, und verleugne (deny) des lieben herrn J. Christ!' In abjuring, she stands on the dunghill, which begins to burn round her, and with a white stick she stabs a toad (ütsche). The standing on dung is also in conjuring spells. The white staff is a symbol of surrender, and after being grasped is thrown into the water. Back
81. Shepherds reputed to be sorcerers were accused of baptizing their sheep with salt. Factums et arrest du parlem. de Paris contre des berges sorciers executez depuis peu dans la prov. de Brie sur l'imprimé a Paris 1695. 8, p. 57. Back
82. The honeysuckle, or perh. another plant, is in Lr. Germany called alf-ranke (elf-vine), hexen-schlinge (Ritter's Mekl. gram. p. 107. Arndt's Märch. p. 404). Any creepers, climbers, or intertwined branches, are named hexen-schlupf, because a witch or elf, when pursued, can always slip through them. Back
83. Berthold p. 381, of the devil: they that fall into capital sin make him glad, he quickly paints his mark on them, and will fain have honour by their bearing his esutcheon. Back
84. It is chiefly in Sweden that even innocent children, boys as well as girls, are drawn into the web of sorcery. The devil requires every witch to bring some children with her; she wakes them out of sleep with the words 'Devil's brat, come to the feast!' sets them on the roof till her number is full, then carries them through the air to the Fiend, who asks them if they will serve him, and writes them down in his book. He endows them with wisdom, and they are called vîs-gåssar, wise lads. Conf. the children piped out of Hameln. In our Freising records are some poor beggar boys seduced by the devil. Back
85. Pliny 7, 2 notices a similar test for magicians: 'in altero oculo geminam pupillam, in altero equi effigiem.' Conf. the people possessed by holden, p. 1074. Back
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