WOMAN AS WITCH 33 



Mary as thank- offerings for easy birth. The Virgin 

 Mary takes the place in innumerable ways of the old 

 mother-goddess of fertility. But the human sacrifice 

 to the goddess was not confined to children. In Heil- 

 bronn we have the common feast, the common dance, 

 and the burning of a scarecrow or guy as trace of 

 sacrifice ; elsewhere in Swabia a female figure in the 

 form of a witch is burnt, and her ashes scattered over 

 the land to increase its fertility ; in Spain it is an old 

 woman with a distaff in her hand, and it seems more 

 than probable that the priestess herself was occasion- 

 ally, perhaps as representative of the goddess, sacrificed 

 by burning on the sacred hill or drowning in the sacred 

 well. The goddess of fertility is killed in autumn, that 

 she may arise rejuvenated in spring. This may possibly 

 be the origin of Dido's self-immolation, and the popular 

 legend of the sacrifice of the queen-priestess which is 

 found in so many different localities. That male victims 

 were also common is proved not only by the direct 

 evidence of early historians but by many still extant 

 folk-customs. These instances of witches as fossils of 

 the priestesses of a goddess of fertility are not con- 

 tradicted by the hostility which witches exhibit to 

 marriage, or the fact that marriages on their great 

 days, such as Twelfth Day and Walpurgis Day, are 

 considered very unlucky. When we remember that 

 the marriage of the civilisation, of which witches are 

 fossils, was a group -marriage and not a monogamic 

 marriage, we easily grasp why the old priestly caste 

 would oppose the changes which led to the patriarchal 

 system and the downfall of the old civilisation. Thus 



VOL. II D 



