WOMAN AS WITCH 35 



to daughter. Then we have the widely-spread German 

 proverb : Die Mutter eine Hexe, die Tochter auch eine 

 Hexe, or, " The mother a witch, the daughter one too." 

 The charms, spells, and potions seem to have been 

 handed down from mother to daughter in long line, 

 and were only learnt by men from women as a special 

 favour. Many are the legends of the witch who takes 

 her husband or the farm-servant with her to a witch- 

 gathering; but it is always in a subordinate position, 

 and the unfortunate man, not knowing the full ritual, 

 produces a confusion, which ends, as a rule, disastrously 

 for his skin. Another noteworthy fact is that in many 

 parts of Germany any heirloom banishes witches or 

 protects the person who carries it against them. Thus 

 to stand within an inherited chain, or upon an inherited 

 harrow, or with an inherited key or sieve, renders 

 witchcraft powerless. .It is difficult to look upon all 

 these very diverse inherited things as symbols of the 

 goddess which mark and protect her servants. I am 

 inclined to think that they are really typical of the 

 civilisation which first attained what we should term a 

 law of inheritance, of a civilisation which was distin- 

 guished from that of the old mother-age when pro- 

 perty belonged to the group and passed through the 

 women, by the custom of property passing from father 

 to son. Thus the man took as symbol of his new civil- 

 isation the heirloom, and used it as a sign to protect 

 himself against the priestesses of the old faith. 



That the goddesses served by the witches were essen- 

 tially goddesses of agriculture is demonstrated by the 

 various ceremonies with regard to plants and herbs 



