32 WOMAN AS WITCH 



naclit, in Westphalia, the young men go round with 

 music and song to honour their brides and sweethearts ; 

 elsewhere they plant May-trees before their sweethearts' 

 doors ; witches and wilde Frauen that is, the hags or 

 women of the woods come in Swabia to weddings and 

 to births. What is this but a relic of the day when the 

 priestess of the goddess of fertility came to marriages 

 and births as of right ? In North Germany the witch 

 has power over the new-born and the new-bought ; she 

 comes to take the tithe for sacrifice to the goddess. 

 In Swabia, and in the Pfalz,.also, the midwife, according 

 to the legends, is often a witch who baptizes the 

 children in the devil's name, or again she lends women 

 the Drutenstein or trud's stone to protect their babes 

 against witches ; it is the hag or woman of the woods 

 who knows and collects the herbs which relieve the 

 labours of birth. Here we have the priestess of the old 

 civilisation as medicine woman and midwife relieving 

 human suffering, putting the symbol of her goddess 

 on the cradle, but taking her tithe of human life for 

 sacrifice to the goddess to whom without question all 

 children born on Walpurgisnacht belong (Pfalz) and 

 exercising strange and hostile influences over women in 

 childbed who do not submit to the old religious rites. 

 The old human sacrifice is a marked feature of the 

 religion of which witchcraft is the fossil. Witches, we 

 are told, kill and eat children, especially the unbaptized. 

 They boil them down, as all early sacrificial feasts 

 and nearly all savage meals appear to be boilings and 

 not roastings. Eemarkable in this respect is the 

 offering of wax figures of babies at shrines of the Virgin 



