By C. R. Straton, FES. 151 
herself she mounted a broom, and took a sieve, either in her hand 
or on her head. There is a sculptured stone in Elgin Cathedral 
which shows a witch sitting on the edge of the moon holding her 
broom in her hand. According to the confessions of witches these 
meetings did not differ much from the description given in Tam 0’ 
Shanter when he saw “ Warlocks and witches in a dance.” A 
Jews’ harp supplied the music, and the meeting-place was usually 
decorated with coffins, murderers’ bones in gibbet-irons, and un- 
baptised infants; the Devil preached from a pulpit lighted with 
black candles. New-comers renounced their ““baptism at the font 
stone” and the Devil occasionally baptised them afresh “with a 
_ waft of his hand like a dewing.” At cock-crow there was a ory of 
_ “ Horse and Hattock in the Devil’s name,’’ when each mounted 
and flew through the air, “and in an instant all was dark.”” While 
witches were away from their homes on the Devil’s business it was 
necessary to conceal their absence from their husbands. To do this 
was one of the chief uses of the broom. A broom was laid in bed 
_ in the witch’s place, and as she did so the witch said three times :— 
*T lay down this besom in the Devil’s name, 
Let it not stir till I come again.” 
The broom then became a woman by the husband’s side, and re- 
mained so until the witch’s return. At witch trials it was useless 
for the husband to swear his wife had never been absent or engaged 
in witcheraft, for it was at once explained to him that his failure 
_ to discover his wife’s absence was only an additional proof of her 
guilt. The Devil always found women more easily approached 
j than men, so writers say, and the typical witches in the Middle 
_ Ages, and on to the 17th century, were “ withered hags most wild 
in their attire,” decrepit, wrinkled, with a hairy lip and gobber 
tooth, a squint eye and squeaking voice. They carried a distaff 
and were attended by a black cat. They travelled about on a 
broom, hovering “through the fog and filthy air.” They could 
foretell future events, produce vermin or destroy them, and like the 
_ Pied Piper of Hamelin, “draw the children of the town happy and 
Bieyous to the blue river where they leave all griefs behind.” A 
VOL. XXIX.—NO. LXXXVII. M 
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