Agnes Sampson, the famous witch of North Berwick (1590), confessed “that the _Devil_ in mans lickness met her going out to the fields from her own house at _Keith_, betwixt five and six at even, being alone and commanded her to be at _North-berwick_ Kirk the next night. To which place she came on horse-back, conveyed by her Good-son, called Iohn Couper.”[37] The Swedish witches (1669) who carried children off to Blockula “set them upon a _Beast_ of the _Devil’s_ providing, and then they rid away.” One boy confessed that “to perform the Journey, he took his own Fathers horse out of the Meadow, where it was feeding.”[38] Upon his return one of the coven let the horse graze in her own pasture, and here the boy’s father found it the next day. In the popular imagination the witch is always associated with the broomstick, employed by her to fly in wild career through mid-air. This belief seems almost universal, of all times and climes. The broomstick is, of course, closely connected with the magic wand or staff which was considered equally serviceable for purposes of equitation. The wood whence it was fashioned was often from the hazel-tree, witch-hazel, although in De Lancre’s day the sorcerers of Southern France favoured the “Souhandourra”—_Cornus sanguinea_, dog-wood. Mid hurricane and tempest, in the very heart of the dark storm, the convoy of witches, straddling their broomsticks, sped swiftly along to the Sabbat, their yells and hideous laughter sounding louder than the crash of elements and mingling in fearsome discord with the frantic pipe of the gale.