Preface

The Witch-Cult
-
m Western
Alice
78 ADMISSION CEREMONIES
icy present auec tous les biens que ie feray a iainais : excepte la valeur du Sacrement pour le regard de ceux qui le recevront : Et ainsi le signe et atteste.' T
Jeannette d'Abadie, aged sixteen, said that she was made to ' renoncer & renier son Createur, la saincte Vierge, les Saincts* le Baptesme, pere, mere, parens, le ciel, la terre & tout ce qui est au monde '.2 The irrevocability of this renunciation was impressed upon the Swedish witches in a very dramatic manner : ' The Devil gave them a Purse, wherein there were shavings of Clocks with a Stone tied to it, which they threw into the water, and then were forced to speak these words : A s these Shavings of the Clock do never return to the Clock front which they are taken^ so may my Soul never return to Heaven.' :l
The vows to the new God were as explicit as the renuncia- tion of the old. Danaeus says, ' He commaundeth them to forswere God theyr creator and all his power, promising perpetually to obey and worship him, who there standeth in their presence.' * The English witches merely took the vow of fealty and obedience, devoting themselves body and soul to him ; sometimes only the soul, however, is mentioned : but the Scotch witches of both sexes laid one hand on the crown of the head, the other on the sole of the foot, and dedicated all that was between the two hands to the service of the Master.5 There is a slight variation of this ceremony at Dalkeith in 1661 , where the Devil laid his hand upon Jonet Watson's head, ' and bad her " give all ower to him that was vnder his hand ", and shoe did so '.c
In Southern France the candidates, after renouncing their old faith, ' prennent Satan pour leur pere et protecteur, & la Diablesse pour leur mere '.7 At Lille the children called the ceremony the Dedication,8 showing that the same rite obtained there.
1 De Lancre, Tableau^ p. 182. 2 Id. ib., p. 131.
3 Horneck, pt. ii, p. 322. * Danaeus, ch. ii, E i.
' Lord Fountainhall mentions a case where a pregnant woman excepte d the unborn child, at which the devil was very angry. Decisions, i, p. 14. 1 Pitcairn, iii, p. 601. 7 De Lancre, Tableau, p. 123.
8 Bourignon, We, p, 214 ; Hale, p. 31.
ADMISSION CEREMONIES 79
4. The Covenant
The signing of a covenant does not occur in every case and was probably a late introduction. Forbes, as quoted above, gives the contract between the Devil and his follower, with the part which each engages to perform. In Somerset the witches signed whether they could write or not, those who could not write putting a cross or circle as their mark.1
The free consent of the candidate is a point always insisted on, and by the confessions of the witches themselves the con- sent was often not merely freely but actually willingly given. Isobel Crawford of the Irvine Coven in 1618 was accused that the devil 'come to hir awin dur in similitud of ane blak man, and prommeist, gif sche wold be his servand, sche sould have geir aneuch, and sould not want. Quhairunto sche was ever reddy to accord.12 Little Jonet Howat said that the Devil ' bade her renounce her God, and she answered, Marry, shall I V In the dittay against Christian Grieve, it is stated that 4 Sathan desired you to be his servant whilk ye willingly granted to be ... And sicklike the minister posing you upon the foresaid particulars especially anent the renunciation of your Baptism, ye answered that Sathan speired at you if ye would do it and ye answered " I warrand did I."'4 Bessie Henderson and Janet Brugh, of the same Coven, acknowledged the same. To the former ' the Devil appeared and asked you gif you would be his servant whilk ye freely and instantly accepted and granted thereto V' Janet Brugh was rather more emphatic : ' Sathan desired you to be his servant whilk ye willingly promised to be and likeways desired you to renounce your baptism whilk ye willingly did.1 °
The written contract appealed very strongly to the legal minds of the judges and magistrates, and it is therefore often mentioned, but in Great Britain there is no record of the actual wording of any individual covenant ; the Devil seems to have kept the parchment, paper, or book in his own custody. In France, however, such contracts occasionally fell into the
1 Glanvil, ii, pp. 136, 148. 2 Isabel Inch, p. 16.
3 Kinloch, p. 125. Spelling modernized.
4 Burns Begg, p. 239. * Id., pp. 223-4. 6 Id., p. 237.
THE WITCH-CULT IN WESTERN EUROPE
A STUDY IN ANTHROPOLOGY
THE WITCH-CULT IN WESTERN EUROPE
Study in ^Anthropology
BY
MARGARET ALICE MURRAY
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1921
Oxford University Press
London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen Neiv York Toronto Melbourne Cape Town
Bombay Calcutta Madras Shanghai Humphrey Milford Publisher to the UNIVERSITY
1406
PREFACE
THE mass of existing material on this subject is so great that I have not attempted to make a survey of the whole of European ' Witchcraft ', but have confined myself to an inten- sive study of the cult in Great Britain. In order, however, to obtain a clearer understanding of the ritual and beliefs I have had recourse to French and Flemish sources, as the cult appears to have been the same throughout Western Europe. The New England records are unfortunately not published in cxlenso ; this is the more unfortunate as the extracts already given to the public occasionally throw light on some of the English practices. It is more difficult to trace the English practices than the Scotch or French, for in England the cult was already in a decadent condition when the records were made ; therefore records in a purely English colony would probably contain much of interest.
The sources from which the information is taken are the judicial records and contemporary chroniclers. In the case of the chroniclers I have studied their facts and not their opinions. I have also had access to some unpublished trials among the Edinburgh Justiciary Records and also in the Guernsey Greffe.
The following articles have already appeared in various journals, to whose editors I am indebted for kind permission to republish : ' Organization of Witch Societies ' and ; Witches and the number Thirteen ' in Folk Lore ; ' The God of the Witches ' in the Journal 'of 'the Manchester Oriental Society ; ' Child Sacrifice ', l Witches' Familiars ', ' The Devil's Mark ', 1 The Devil's Officers ', ' Witches' Fertility Rites ', ' Witches
6 PREFACE
Transformations \ in Man ; and 'The Devil of North Berwick ' in the Scottish Historical Review.
My thanks are due to Georgiana Aitken, W. Bonser, and Mary Slater for much kind help, also to Prof. C. G. Seligman for valuable suggestions and advice as to lines of research.