WOMAN AS WITCH 31 



and the pitchfork might be cited, the noteworthy point 

 being that these symbols occur in identical ways at 

 witch ceremonies and at peasant weddings in fact, at 

 the old and the new marriage rites. At the witches' 

 feast there is a great kettle, and the devil as cook 

 dances with the cooking ladle ; boys dance with 

 brooms and cooking ladles on Walpurgisnacht. On 

 the other hand, there is a special dance of the cook 

 with a ladle at peasant weddings in Mecklenburg and 

 in other parts of Germany. In the confession of Geseke 

 Hagenmeister, a sixteenth-century witch, she described 

 the cooking at witch-meetings as being exactly like 

 that at a wedding. Indeed, the correspondences are 

 most striking and suggestive. It is a charge against 

 witches that they dance back to back with the devils ; 

 this is precisely the form of peasant wedding dance 

 illustrated by Albrecht Durer. 1 The witches smear their 

 feet to pass rapidly through the air. The HocTizeits- 

 bitter, or person who bids to the peasant weddings in 

 Mecklenburg, asks the guests to smear their boots and 

 shoes that they may come the quicker. The witches 

 dance on hilltops ; in Uderstadt, in Thiiringen, on the 

 second day of the marriage feast, the whole marriage 

 company were bound by ancient custom to dance on 

 the top of the Tafelsberg, a neighbouring hill, whither 

 they proceeded in procession with music. The dancing 

 round the bride-stake and the distaff at weddings are 

 strangely akin to the dancing round the Maypole, about 

 the sacred tree, or with the broom on May Day, Mid- 

 summer Night, or at witch-gatherings. On Walpurgis- 



1 See also a 1600 Siegburger jug in the Berlin Gewerbe Museum. 



