The Witch-cult in Western Europe: A Study in AnthropologyMurray, Margaret Alice
Religion
The Witch-cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology
Murray, Margaret Alice
Ethnology; Witchcraft -- Great Britain
than I am; I find too much content in my Condition; I am always
Caressed._'[725] One girl of twelve said definitely that she knew the Devil
very well, 'that he was a Boy a little bigger than her self; and that he
was her Love, and lay with her every Night'; and another girl named Bellot,
aged fifteen, 'said her Mother had taken her with her [to the Sabbath] when
she was very Young, and that being a little Wench, this Man-Devil was then
a little Boy too, and grew up as she did, having been always her Love, and
Caressed her Day and Night.'[726] Such connexions sometimes resulted in
marriage. Gaule mentions this fact in his general account: 'Oft times he
marries them ere they part, either to himselfe, or their Familiar, or to
one another; and that by the Book of Common Prayer (as a pretender to
witchfinding lately told me in the Audience of many).'[727] This statement
is borne out in the trials: 'Agnes Theobalda sagte, sie sey selbst zugegen
auff der Hochzeit gewesen, da Cathalina und Engel von Hudlingen, ihren
Beelzebub zur Ehe genommen haben.'[728] The Devil of Isobel Ramsay's Coven
was clearly her husband,[729] but there is nothing to show whether the
marriage took place before she became a witch, as in the case of Janet
Breadheid of Auldearne, whose husband 'enticed her into that craft'.[730] I
have quoted above (p. 179) the ceremony at the marriage of witches in the
Basses-Pyrénées. Rebecca Weste, daughter of a witch, married the Devil by
what may be a primitive rite; he came to her 'as shee was going to bed, and
told her, he would marry her, and that shee could not deny him; shee said
he kissed her, but was as cold as clay, and married her that night, in this
manner; he tooke her by the hand and lead her about the chamber, and
promised to be her loving husband till death, and to avenge her of her
enemies; and that then shee promised him to be his obedient wife till
death, and to deny God, and Christ Jesus.'[731] At Edinburgh in 1658 a
young woman called Anderson was tried: 'her confessioun was, that scho did
marry the devill.'[732] The Swedish witches in 1670 confessed that at
Blockula 'the Devil had Sons and Daughters which he did marry
together'.[733] Giraldus Cambrensis gives an account of a 'spirit' in the
form of a red-haired young man, called Simon, who 'was begotten upon the
wife of a rustic in that parish, by a demon, in the shape of her husband,
naming the man, and his father-in-law, then dead, and his mother, still
alive; the truth of which the woman upon examination openly avowed'.[734]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 664: Pitcairn, i, pt. ii, p. 206; Glanvil, pt. ii, p. 301.]
[Footnote 665: Pitcairn, i, pt. ii, p. 207.]
[Footnote 666: J. G. Campbell, pp. 293-4. The book was in manuscript, and
when last heard of was in the possession of the now-extinct Stewarts of
Invernahyle.]
[Footnote 667: _Spalding Club Misc._, i, p. 143.]
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