Chapter 34

Equally significant seems to me the use of horseflesh and of the horse altogether among wizards and witches. It was shown, p. 47, that the heathen sacrificed horses to their gods, and any inclination to eat their flesh was denounced for a long time as a hankering after heathen ways; it is only in these days that the prejudice against eating so clean an animal begins to give way. Well, the witches were accused of indulging in this food at their assemblies, i.e. of still keeping up heathen sacrifices. Henry Boguet in his Discours execrable des Sorciers, Rouen 1603, p. 82-3 asserts, not only 'qu'il y avoit une grande chaudiere sur le feu, dans laquelle chacun alloit prendre de la chair,' and 'mais il n'y a iamais du sel,' but also expressly 'que la chair n'est autre chair que de cheual.' If to this we add that the nailing up of horses' heads (p. 47) (27) must be identified with those sacrifices, that horses' heads are thrown into Midsummer fires (p. 618), that the piper at witches' meetings (p. 1046) or other ghostly beings (p. 849) play on horses' heads, (28) that the devil appears with horse's feet, and drinking is done out of horse-hoofs; the whole thing assumes a still more antique appearance of heathen sacrificial rites (see Suppl.).

But if in heathen times the preparation and distribution of hallowed salt, and the eating of horseflesh stood connected with sacrifices and popular assemblies (and these were often combined), such connection is equally proved or confirmed by all the remaining characteristics of witches' jaunts. Their Times and Places can in no other way be accounted for.

We know that all over Germany a grand annual excursion of witches is placed on the first night in May (Walpurgis), i.e. on the date of a sacrificial feast and the old May-gathering of the people. On the first of May, of all days, the periodical assizes continued for many centuries to be held, RA. 822-4; on that day came the merry May-ridings, p. 775, and the kindling of the sacred fire, p. 603: it was one of the highest days in all heathenism. (29) Or if two or three witch-festivals be enumerated, as 'in Whitsuntide and Autumn,' or 'on St. Walburg's, St. John's and St. Bartelmey's,' we have still the usual holidays and assize-days of the Mid. Ages. Danish witch-trials name 'Valdborg aften, S. Hans aften, Mariä besögelsesdags aften.' The people would never have given up their venerated season of justice to the witches, had not these been long in prescriptive possession (see Suppl.).

Still more plainly do the Localities coincide. The witches invariably resort to places where formerly justice was administered, or sacrifices were offered. Their meeting takes place on the mead, on the oak-sward, under the lime, under the oak, at the peartree; on the boughs of the tree sits that piper whose help they need in the dance. Sometimes they dance at the place of execution, under the gallows-tree, in the sand-pit. But for the most part mountains are named as their trysting-places, hills (at the three büheln, knolls, three köpchen, peaks), in fact, the highest points of a neighbourhood. We must not forget how elves and bilweises are housed in hills (p. 474), nor that the Servian vilas and Romance fays dwell on mountains: a notable passage about magic wrought on a mount (puegau, pueg, puy, Lat. podium) was quoted p. 411. The fame of particular witch-mountains extends over wide kingdoms, in the same way as high mountains are named after gods, sacrifices, courts of justice. Almost all the witch-mountains were once hills of sacrifice (p. 58), boundary-hills (malberge, RA. 801-2), or salt-hills. A hexenbukel is pointed out on the Hirschau boundary-line by Rothenburg on Neckar, and an unholdenberg near Passau; but most of them have proper names of their own. North Germany knows the Brocken, Brocks- or Blocks-berg, (30) the highest point of the Harz Mts, as the head meeting-place of witches. A confessional of the 15^th cent. speaks of sorceresses 'die uf den Brockisberg varen,' Hoffm. zeitschr. 753; that is the earliest documentary evidence I know of a superstition that doubtless reaches to a far older time. Seats of justice the Harz must have had more than one in the Mid. Ages; a salt spring it has still at Juliushall in Neustadt domain. But the name seems to cover a much wider area, as several hills in Mecklenburg (and no doubt in other parts of N. Germany) are called blocksbergs, Mekl. jahrsber. 2, 114. 3, 189; also in Prussia (Tettau and Temme p. 264). Other trysts of witches I can only enumerate incompletely. The Huiberg near Halberstadt is still spoken of; in Thuringia they flock to Horselberg by Eisenach, or Inselberg by Schmalkalden; in Hesse to Bechelsberg or Bechtelsberg by Ottrau, an old Ziegenhain seat of justice; in Westphalia to Köterberg by Corvei, to Weckingsstein (Wedigenstein, where Wittekind or Wittich dwells) by Minden; in Swabia to the Black Forest, to Kandel in Breisgau, or to Heuberg (31) by Balingen, which is noticed as a witches' mount as early as 1506, and resembles the Huiberg above; in Franconia to Kreidenberg by Würzburg, and Staffelstein by Bamberg; and probably the Fichtelberg and the Silesian Riesengebirge have witches' haunts of their own. In Alsace are named Bischenberg, Büchelberg (conf. Bechelsb.), Schauenberg and Kniebiss (knee-biting, from the steepness, elsewhere Knie-brecher); in the Vosges, Hupella. The Swedish meeting-places are Blåkulla (Ihre says, an island rock between Småland and Öland, liter. black mount, a name it prob. shares with other heights), (32) and Nasafjäll in Norrland. The Norwegian witches also repair to Blaakolle, further to Dovrefjeld, Lyderhorn by Bergen, Kiärru in Tvedsogn, to Vardö and Domen in Finmarken; all such trysting-places are called balvolde (bale-wold, campus malus). In Denmark they say 'fare til Hekkelfjelds' (p. 1001), i.e. to Mt Hekla in Iceland, Heklufiall; also 'ride to Trums, fare til Troms,' meaning Trommenfjeld, a mountain on the Norw. island Tromsö, high up off the Finmark. The Neapolitan streghe hold their tryst under a walnut-tree near Benevento, which the people call the Beneventine wedding; on that very spot stood the holy tree of the Langobards (pp. 101. 649), so here again witchcraft stands clearly connected with old heathen worship. Witches' hills in Italy are the Barco di Ferrara, Paterno di Bologna, Spinato della Mirandola, Tossale di Bergamo, and one, 'la croce del pasticcio,' whose situation I do not know. In France the Puy de Dôme near Clermont in Auvergne is renowned, and other districts have their hills. The Spanish hechizeras hold their dance on the heath of Baraona, in the sand of Sevilla, on the plain of Cirniegola; in Navarre on Aquelarre, said to mean in Basque 'goat's meadow.' The Servian witches dance 'na pometno guvno,' on the swept thrashingfloor, probably on a high mountain; those of Hungary on Kopasz tetö (the bald crown), a peak of the Tokay wine-hills, (33) with which the 'na ºysagore' of the Polish witches (Woycicki 1, 17. 2, 77) agrees. A part of the Carpathians between Hungary and Poland is called in Pol. babia gora, old wives' mountain; I cannot say if witch-festivals are placed there. The Kormakssaga pp. 76. 204. 222 has a similar Spâkonufell, wise-woman's mount. The Lithuanians say, on the eve of St. John all the magicians come flying to Mt. Szatria, where a mighty sorceress Jauterita entertains them. (34) It is singular, how all over Europe the heathen's pilgrimages to feasts and sacrifices are by christians converted into this uniform sorcery, everywhere alike. Did the notion take shape in each nation by itself? or, what is less credible, was the fashion set in one place, and followed everywhere else? (35) (see Suppl.).

That the heathen in old Scandinavia already had the notion of enchantresses riding or driving out at evening and night, is clear from the Edda. As Heðinn roamed the forest alone in the evening, he fell in with a tröllkona, who offered him her fylgð (attendance, like a guardian valkyrja), but he declined it, Sæm. 146a. A legend fraught with meaning is but slightly touched upon in Sn. 175: As Bragi the old (p. 1041) drove through a forest late in the evening, he met a tröllkona, who addressed him in a song and asked, who rideth there? She names to him her tröll names, and he, answering in song, tells her his poetic names. Hence an enchantress is called qveld-riða, evening-rider, Sæm. 143b, and myrk-riða 77a, by which monstrous mischievous giant-women are meant, wild women, waldminnes, iarnviðjur (p. 483), whom the heroes are bent on putting down: 'hefi ec qvaldar qveldriðor,' I have quelled the witches, says Atli. Their riding is called gandreið, vectura magica, Nialss. p. 195; gandr is properly wolf, they are said to have ridden wolves and bridled them with snakes: 'fann tröllkono, sû reið vargi ok hafði orma î taumom,' Sæm. 146a. 'Hyrrokin reið vargi ok hafði höggorm at taumum,' Sn. 66. A Rune figure (bautil 1157) represents a tröll riding a wolf, using a bent twig for reins. A Swed. folksong makes her ride on a bear, and use the wolf as a saddle, the snake as a whip: 'björnen den så red hon uppå, ulfven den hade hon till sadel derpå, och ormen den hade hon till piska,' Sv. vis. 1, 77. Nor must we overlook, that the Servian vila, who has much more of the elf about her, rides a stag, and bridles him with a snake. Among names of enchantresses Sn. 210b has Munnriða, mouth-rider, perhaps holding the snake-bridle in her mouth? Another is Munnharpa (Biörn says, rigor oris ex gelu); both demand a more precise explanation, but anyhow –riða must refer to nightriding. One poet, Sn. 102, uses the circumlocution qveldrunnin qven, femina vespere excurrens. The Vestgöta-lag, like the Salic (p. 1045), speaking of insulting accusations, instances that of sorcery, p. 38: 'iak sa at rêt a quiggrindu, lösharäþ ok i trolsham, þa alt var iam rift nat ok dagher,' and p. 153 has almost the same words, with lösgiurþ added to löshareþ: I saw thee ride on the hurdle, loose-haired, loose-girt, in troll's garb, where day and night divide (in twilight); if we might read qvîgindu, it would be 'ride on the calf,' as in the MHG. poem, p. 1048. Neither this Law nor the Edda tells us of sorceresses assembling in troops at appointed places, yet the valkyrs ride together by twelves and twenties. But the idea of night-riding itself may be derived even from goddesses: the Hyndlu-lioð has for its groundwork, that Freyja seated on her boar, whose bristles glow in the gloom of night, and her sister Hyndla (canicula) on a wolf, ride up to holy Valhöll (36) (see Suppl.).

In Germany proper, successive stages can be pointed out. Before christianity, the old giantesses (etenins) may well have been sorceresses amongst us also, as we still find such a one in our Heldenbuch (see p. 556), and a giant plays the host on a witches' hill, Lisch 5, 83. After the conversion, sorcery links itself with the discredited gods both foreign and domestic; not at once with the Devil yet, whose idea had scarce begun to take root among the people. The witches are of the retinue of former goddesses, who, hurled from their thrones, transformed from gracious adored beings into malign and dreaded ones, roam restless by night, and instead of their once stately progresses can only maintain stolen forbidden conferences with their adherents. Even when the bulk of the people was won over to the new doctrine, individual men would for a time remain true to the old faith, and perform their heathen rites in secret; but soon these pagan practices would cease as real facts, and abide in the memory and shaping fancy of mankind, and the more enduringly if they were connected with popular feasts and the permitted or prohibited usage about healings and poisonings. Performance, tradition, fancy were mixt up together, and no single century can possibly have been without the notion of illicit idolatrous magic, even if we are unable to specify the shape in which it entertained it. Amongst all christians the report of it lasted ineradicable, assuming a looser or firmer consistency, according as the Church indulged popular beliefs, or sought more sternly to suppress them. What she was determined to punish and exterminate, must gradually have been withdrawn from the mild realm of fancy, and assumed the harsh aspect of a horrible reality.

Enchanters and enchantresses (I will start with that) attach themselves to the spectral train of deities, to that Furious Host with which elvish and all manner of evil beings got associated: in the Vilk. saga cap. 328-9 the wild host of Ostacia (Ostansia, or whatever the genuine form may be) shows a significant connection. But enchantresses would be ranged specially with goddesses, out of whom the christian teachers might make up a Roman Diana, a Jewish Herodias, but the populace never entirely dropt the traditional native names. How natural then, if dame Holda, if that Freyja or Abundia (whether she be Folla p. 308, or a Celtic deity) had formerly led the round dance of elves and holden, that she herself should now be made an unholde and be escorted by unholden (p. 926)! In the Norw. fairytale no. 15 the troldkiäring takes quite the place of dame Holda. In the Jeu d'Adans (supra p. 412n.) the three fays assemble on a meadow, where the old women of the town await them: 'or tost allons ent par illeuc, les vielles femes de le vile nous i atendent.' There did exist a fellowship then between fays and witches.




Notes: