22 WOMAN AS WITCH 



mother or mother, and ultimately the chief functions of 

 the witch's sabbath devolved upon her son, taken to be 

 the devil himself. 



Perhaps some of the Swabian witch-trials provide us 

 with the most valuable evidence in this matter. In 

 Giinzburg the witches meet on the Howberg, the Bres- 

 gau witches on the Kandel, a mountain in the Black 

 Forest, and in particular at a stone called the Kandel- 

 stein, probably a trace of an old altar. Here their most 

 skilful piper was the bailiff of Mederwinden. In the 

 Nagolder Wdldle the witches danced on a meadow, 

 while in Oberstdorf they meet at the chapel of the 

 fourteen Nothelfer, saints who assist women in child- 

 birth. This chapel was called the witch's chapel, and 

 evidently had been placed upon the site of an altar to 

 an old mother-goddess. All these points are brought 

 out in the protocols of actual witch -trials. But the 

 Eottenburger witch -trials (1600) give us still further 

 details. We learn from Anna Mauczin that the witch- 

 gatherings were called Hochzeiten, and treated as a type 

 of marriage feast; we learn from Anna Kegreifen the 

 names of the actual people (including the priest's ser- 

 vant) who came to the dances ; we find on the one 

 hand disappointed or deserted wives and foolish village 

 maidens, on the other village loafers and students from 

 Tubingen, who joined in the midnight dances, and the 

 feasting and drinking beneath the Nunenbaum, or by 

 the well at the upper gate of Eottenburg. The trials 

 bring out clearly enough who came to these witches' 

 sabbaths ; how the usual piper was a well-known shep- 

 herd, but on some occasions one was brought specially from 



