28 WOMAN AS WITCH 



when she is abroad. In Thiiringen, Frau Holda or 

 Holla rides with the wild hunt on Walpurgisnacht. 

 She looks after spinning, and punishes in the most 

 brutal and cruel fashion the idle as well as those who 

 insult her. She, too, is accompanied by her dogs. In 

 Hesse, Frau Holle yearly passes over the land, and gives 

 it fruitfulness. She can be friendly and helpful to her 

 worshippers. She has her dwelling in a mere or well, 

 and she makes women who go and bathe therein healthy 

 and fruitful. Only a century ago songs used to rise to 

 Frau Holle as the women dressed the flax, and to her 

 sacred hill peasants and their wives were wont to go at 

 Whitsuntide with music and dancing. A scarcely less 

 noteworthy figure is that of Berchta with her plough. She 

 waters the meadows, and on Twelfth Night she goes her 

 round to punish idle spinsters, often in the most brutal 

 manner. In Swabia, on Twelfth Night, a broom is 

 carried in her procession, or she is represented with a 

 broom in one hand and fruit in the other. This list of 

 goddesses might be largely extended did our time per- 

 mit ; but it may serve, as it is, to show that the devil's 

 mother is only a degraded form of a goddess of fertility 

 and domestic activity. She is but one of those god- 

 desses whose symbols are those of agriculture, the pitch- 

 fork and the plough, or of domestic usefulness, the 

 broom and the spindle. She is associated with symbols 

 of fertility, the ears of corn, fruit, the swine, and the dog. 

 Her well brings with its water fertility to the land and 

 fruitfulness to women. Her worship is associated with 

 cruelties, human sacrifices, which point to an early stage 

 of civilisation, and with licentiousness scarce paralleled 



