Chapter 34

Connecting links may be found in abundance. Ghostly beings could form close and intimate ties with men; a long line of neighbourly elves links its destiny to the good or ill fortunes of a human family, home-sprites devote themselves to a man's service, and cling to him with obstinate and troublesome fidelity (p. 513); only these attachments are neither founded on formal compact, nor are they pernicious to man. An equally tender and an innocent relation subsists between him and the attendant guardian spirit given him at birth, p. 875.

The witches' devils have proper names so strikingly similar in formation to those of elves and kobolds, that one can scarcely think otherwise than that nearly all devils' names of that class are descended from older folk-names for those sprites. A collection of such names, which I have culled out of witch-trials, may afford us a welcom glimpse into old elvish domestic economy itself. Some are taken from healing herbs and flowers, and are certainly the product of an innocent, not a diabolic fancy: Wolgemut (origanum), Schöne (bellis minor, daisy), Luzei (aristolochia), Wegetritt (plantago), Blümchenblau (conf. the marvelous flower, p. 971), Peterlein (parsley); exactly such are the names of two fairies in Midsum. N. Dr., Peaseblossom and Mustardseed. Names equally pretty are borrowed from the forest life of the sprites: Grünlaub (-leaf), Grünewald, Lindenlaub, Lindenzweig (-twig), Eichenlaub (oak), Birnbaum (pear), Birnbäumchen, Rautenstrauch (rue), Buchsbaum (box), Hölderlin (elder), Kränzlein (garland), Spring-ins-feld, Hurlebusch, Zum-wald-fliehen; clad in green (as the devil is in Kinderm. 101) appear the Scotch elves (Minstrelsy 2, 152-4. 160-4) and Norse huldre (Faye p. 42); foliage garlands must have been largely used in ancient sacrifices as well as in sorcery, oak-leaves in particular are enjoined on witches, and are used in brewing storms (Mone's Anz. 8, 129). As the Devil often presents himself in fair angelic guise ('in young man's sheen' occurs already in Ls. 3, 72), he receives such names as Jüngling, Junker, Schönhans, and feather-ornaments or wings are a favourite ascription, hence the names Feder, Federhans, Federling, Federbusch, Weissfeder (white-f.), Straussfeder (ostrich-f.), Strausswedel (-plume), Grünwedel. Of all the names confessed by witches, none is commoner than Flederwisch (Voigt's Abh. 62-8-9. 105-9. 113. 129), but folktales give that name to kobolds (Jul. Schmidt 158), and carousers in their cups used to drink 'to all flederwischen!' (Franz. Simpl. 1, 47. 57): by flederwisch we mean the end limb of a (goose) wing, used for the purpose of dusting, hence Kehrwisch also occurs as a devil's name, aptly denoting the rapid whisking to and fro of a spirit. Then again proper names of men are in great request, especially in the familiar fondling form which is also used for kobolds (p. 504): Hans, Hänschen, junker Hans (squire Jack), Grauhans (conf. Grayman, p. 993), Grünhans, Hans vom busch; Heinrich, Grauheinrich, Hinze; Kunz, Künzchen (conf. Kueni, p. 1003), Konrad; Nickel, Grossnickel; Martin (p. 931), Merten; Kaspar, Käsparle; Dewes, Rupel, Rüppel (p. 504), Rausch (p. 517n.), Wendel (p. 375 last l.), Hemmerlin (p. 182), Stöphel, junker Stof (Christoph, the first syll. shortened with a purpose? conf. Stöpchen, p. 1003), some few of them equally savouring of the heathenish and the devilish; Perlebitz (in some Hessian trials Berlewitzchen, -witchen), probably the same as pilwitz (p. 472). (45) The following begin to look suspicious: Leidenoth, Machleid, Unglück, Reicheher, Hintenhervor, Allerlei-wollust (perh. a flower's name), Schwarzburg, Dreifuss, Kuhfuss, Kuhöhrnchen, Dickbauch; yet they may also turn upon the satyr-like shape of the schrats, or upon the weird and worrying nature of any intercourse with the demonic world. The old Easter-play supplies the following names, belonging at latest to the beginning of the 15^th century: Kottelrey, Rosenkranz, Krezlin, Federwisch, Raffenzan, Binkebank, Spiegelglanz, Schorbrant, Schoppenstak, Hellekrug, (46) Schorzemage; they are easy to explain from what has gone before. Italian streghe call their devil Martinello, Martinetto, and again Fiorino; French trials furnish maistre Persil, Verdelet, Verdjoli, Jolibois, Sautebuisson. Two more fairies in Mids. N. Dream, Moth and Cobweb, are worth remembering. All these names have nothing in common with the names of the Jewish or Christian devil, except with those quoted pp. 988-9. 1003, and they are kobolds' names. (47) Some of the names in my list appear to belong equally to the witches themselves, just as elves have several common to both sexes. Thus the feminine names of plants and flowers are more suitable to sorceresses (see Suppl.).

Love-affairs between spirits and men arise out of their familiar intercourse. She-kobolds are nowhere mentioned, and we are never told of kobolds having designs upon women; elves on the contrary do carry off maidens, and men live in secret intimacy with elfins; thus Helgi became the father of Skuld by an âlfkona, Fornald. sög. 1, 32. 96. But except that Elberich having made himself invisible overpowers Otnit's mother, and an âlfr does the like to king Aldrian's wife and begets Högni, I cannot think of any instance of such amours as lie at the bottom of all the witch-stories. The notions of incubus and succubus seem to me not of German origin, though afterwards they got mixed up with those of elf and night-spirit. An AS. manuscript in Wanley, either of the 12^th, 11^th , or some earlier cent., speaks of 'monnom, þe deofol mid hæmð.' In the later doctrine about witches their prostitution is an essential feature, it seals the compact, and gives the Devil free control over them: in a pure maid he can have no part. (48) Without this abomination we never come across a witch at all. (49)

It is a question, at what period witches' convenants and amours are first mentioned in Germany. No doubt the first impulse to them was given by the persecution and consequent spread of heresies, which after the middle of the 13^th cent. came from Italy and France into Germany. However guilty or innocent the heretics may have been, report, magnifying and distorting, charged their assemblies with idolatrous excesses, whose affinity to witches' doings is beyond dispute. Among the heretics themselves, with their seclusion, reserve, and constantly repeated success in attaching new disciples and adherents, some ancient departures from orthodox faith and ritual kept stubbornly reproducing themselves; as persistently did calumnies start up against them. They were accused of adoring a beast or beast's head, which presently turned into the Devil, who became visible, now as a black spirit, now as a bright beguiling angel, his favourite animal shape being that of a he-cat, or else a toad. At their meetings, it was said, they slaughtered children and kneaded their blood in flour or ashes, and after extinguishing the lights, practised together the lusts of the flesh. Newly admitted members were marked by the prick of a needle, the while they cursed their Maker, and signified their faith and homage to the Evil one, as to worldly rulers, by a kiss. (50) Even in the less offensive teaching and practice of some heretics there could not fail to be a mixture of heathen things with christian; the church's zeal had to bestir itself at once against new errors of doctrine and against remnants of heathenism that were combined with them. Along with heretic-prosecutions went rumours of diabolic compacts and conferences, which the populace connected with their ancient belief in dæmonic beings. Traditions of certain men being leagued with the Devil had already circulated in the West, at all events from the 10^th cent. (p. 1017); the more readily would they now be extended to women. The earliest certain mention of an intrigue between witch and devil is of the year 1275 under an inquisitor at Toulouse (Soldan p. 147); the first half of the 14^th cent. seems to have established more firmly, especially in Italy, the belief in a diabolic sisterhood (secta strigarum). Bartolus (d. 1357) delivered a judgment on a witch of Ortha and Riparia in Novara bpric., (51) the charge was novel to him, and he appeals to theologians as to the nature of the crime; from the whole tenor of his sentence we may assume that seldom or never had a witch been tried in the Milanese before. Amongst other things he says: 'Mulier striga sive lamia debet igne cremari, confitetur se crucem fecisse ex paltis et talem crucem pedibus conculcasse........... se adorasse, diabolum, illi genua flectendo.......... pueros tactu stricasse et fascinasse, adeo quod mortui fuerunt. Audivi a sacris quibusdam theologis, has mulieres quae lamiae nuncupantur tactu vel visu posse nocere etiam usque ad mortem fascinando homines seu pueros ac bestias, cum habeant animas infectas, quas daemoni voverunt.' ---Between 1316 and 1334 pope John XXII had issued a bull without date, ordering the property of convicted sorcerers to be confiscated like that of heretics. What was then done by inquisitors and judges Soldan has subjected to a minute investigation (pp. 160-210), and I need only single out one or two facts. Alfonsus de Spina in his Fortalitium fidei (written about 1458) lib. 5 informs us: 'Quia nimium abundant tales perversae mulieres in Delphinatu et Gaschonia, ubi se asserunt concurrere de nocte in quadam planitie deserta, ubi est aper quidam in rupe, qui vulgariter dicitur el boch de Biterne, et quod ibi conveniunt cum candelis accensis, et adorant illum aprum, osculantes eum in ano suo; ideo captae plures earum ab inquisitoribus fidei, et convictae, ignibus comburuntur; signa autem combustarum sunt depicta, qualiter scilicet adorant cum candelis praedictum aprum, in domo inquisitoris Tholosani in magna multitudine camisearum, sicut ego propriis oculis aspexi.'---Read throughout caper for aper, as bock, boc, bouc evidently means the former. Adoring and kissing of the he-goat or he-cat was just the charge brought against heretics, whose very name (ketzer, cathari) some derived from that circumstance. (52) This parody of divine worship may either be connected with goat-sacrifices of the heathen (p. 52) and the sacredness of that animal, or explained by the goat's feet ascribed to the devil from of old (p. 995). Kissing the toad (Soldan p. 133-6) is wonderfully like those conditions necessary to the release of 'white women' (p. 969); here heretical opinions coincide with superstition. In 1303 a bishop of Coventry was accused at Rome of a number of heinous crimes, amongst others 'quod diabolo homagium fecerat, et eum fuerit osculatus in tergo'; Boniface 8 acquitted him (Rymer 2, 934 old ed.). The same charge is commonly brought against the later witches. Dr. Hartlieb in 1446 mentions 'abjuring God and giving oneself up to three devils,' Superst. H, cap. 34.

For four centuries, beginning with the 14^th; what with the priestly Inquisition, with the formality of the Canon and Civil law process simultaneously introduced in the courts, and to crown all, with Innocent 8's bull of 1484 (MB. 16, 245-7), as well as the Malleus Maleficarum (53) and the tortures of the criminal court; the prosecutions and condemnations of witches multiplied at an unheard of rate, and countless victims fell in almost every part of Europe. The earlier Mid. Ages had known of magicians and witches only in the milder sense, as legendary elvish beings, peopling the domain of vulgar belief, or even as demoniacs, not as actual apostates from God and malefactors arraigned before a court of justice. A good deal has been made of the Annales Corbeienses, which do expressly state under the year 914, 'multae sagae combustae sunt in territorio nostro'; but these Annals were not written till 1464, and have of late been totally discredited. Several ancient Codes lay penalties on sorcery; (54) but all the cases that occurred had for their basis real crimes, murder, poisoning; the stria is a 'herbaria,' i.e. venefica; (55) for alleged storm-raising few can have forfeited their lives. Especially worthy of note are the punishments denounced against precisely those persons who from a vain belief in sorcery have burnt or put to death either man or woman; (56) not sorcery, but the slaying of supposed sorcerers is what the enlightened law pronounces heathenish and diabolic. On the mere ground of a night-excursion with 'unholden' nobody dreamt of bringing a criminal charge against women; that father confessor of the 13^th cent. (p. 1060) refutes the confession of his 'domina sortilega' by rational argument. (57) But when once, by a fatal confusion of sorcery with heresy, the notion gained a footing that every witch renounces God and becomes the Devil's, everything assumed a new aspect: as the Devil's ally, apart from any crimes she might have committed, she was deserving of death, and her sin was one of the greatest and horriblest. But from that time the earlier notion of possession by the devil almost entirely ceased: imagination had taken a new direction.

Witch-trials of the 16-17-18^th centuries have been amply made known, of the 15^th few completely. (58) One need only have read two or three of them: everywhere an unaccountable uniformity of procedure, always the same result. At first the accused denies; tortured, (59) she confesses what all those doomed before her have confessed, and without delay she is condemned and burnt (incinerata, as the Malleus expresses it). This agreement in depositions of imaginary facts is to be explained by the traditional illusions that filled the popular fancy. I will here attempt to summarize all the essential points (see Suppl.). (60)

The Devil appears in the shape of a fine young man, gaily plumed and amorous; not till too late does the witch observe the horsefoot or goosefoot (wilde pflotte füsse, Nördl. hexenpr. 35). He then compels her to abjure God (p. 818), baptizes her over again, making her choose sponsors, gives her a new name, and reveals his own. A mark is printed on her body (p. 1077), and the place has no feeling ever after; in some cases hair is plucked out from the front of the head. He comes sometimes as a mouse, goat, crow or fly, but soon changes into human shape. Even after repeated dalliances the witch receives but small presents of money; what he gave as glittering coin is by daylight muck and dirt. (61) The main thing is, that on certain days the Devil fetches her, or appoints her to go, to nightly feasts, which are held in company with other witches and devils. After anointing her feet and shoulders with a salve, (62) or tying a girdle round her, she bestrides a stick, rake, broom, distaff, shovel, ladle or oven-fork, and muttering a spell, flies up the chimney, and away through the air over hill and dale. (63) A dehselrite, Helbl. 1, 1196 (p. 1049), a fork-rider, besom-rider all mean a witch, so does quostenpinderin, sash-binder, Clara Hätzl. lxvii b (quaste = perizoma, cingulum). A 14^th cent. story told in Herm. von Sachsenheim (Wackern. lb. 1005-6) makes an old woman at Urach anoint with salve the calf on which she is to ride. If the hellish wooer comes to fetch the witch, his seat on the stick is in front, and hers behind; or he is a goat, and she mounts him; or she drives horses that come out of the ground. Older accounts have it, that the devil takes her inside his cloak, and carries her through the air, whence she is called mantelfahre, mantelfahrerin. At the trysting-place are many more witches, often such as have long been dead, some (the superior sort) muffled and masked. But their wooers are mere servants of the Chief Devil, who in goat-shape, but with black human face, sits silent and solemn on a high chair or a large stone table in the midst of the ring, and all do him reverence by kneeling and kissing. When the Chief Devil takes a particular fancy to one woman, she is named the witches' queen, and ranks above all the rest, (64) answering to that Norse trölla konûngr, p. 1043. The undelightful meal is illumined by black torches, all kindled at a light that burns between the horns of the great goat. Their viands lack salt and bread, (65) they drink out of cows' hoofs and horses' heads. Then they relate what mischief they have wrought, and resolve on new: if their misdeeds fail to satisfy the Devil, he beats them. After the feast, (66) that neither fills nor nourishes, the dance begins: up in a tree sits the musician, his fiddle or bagpipe is a horse's head (p. 1050), his fife a cudgel or a cat's tail. In dancing the partners face outwards, turning their backs to each other: in the



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