with women it is usually on the breasts or the privy parts. Now, the stamp which imprints these marks is none other but the Devil’s claw.)
This Mark was made by the Devil, or by the Devil’s vicegerent at the Sabbats upon the admission of a new witch. “The Diuell giveth to euerie nouice a marke, either with his teeth or his clawes,” says Reginald Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584. The young witches of Lille in 1661 confessed that “the Devil branded them with an iron awl upon some part of the body.”56 In Scotland, Geillis Duncane, maid-servant to the deputy bailiff of Tranent, one David Seaton, a wench who was concerned in the celebrated trial of Doctor Fian, Agnes Sampson, Euphemia McCalyan, Barbara Napier, and their associates, would not confess even under torture, “whereuppon they suspecting that she had been marked by the devill (as commonly witches are) made a diligent search about her, and found the enemies mark to be in her fore crag, or fore part of her throate; which being found, shee confessed that all her doings was done by the wicked allurements and entisements of the devil, and that she did them by witcheraft.”57 In 1630 Catharine Oswald of Niddrie was found guilty of sorcery, “the advocate for the instruction of the assyze producing the declaration of two witnesses, that being in the tolbuith, saw Mr. John Aird, minister, put a pin in the pannell’s shoulder, (where she carries the devill’s mark) up to the heid, and no bluid followed theiron, nor she shrinking thereat; which was againe done in the justice-depute his own presence.” In 1643 Janet Barker at Edinburgh confessed to commerce with the demon, and stated that he had marked her between the shoulders. The mark was found “and a pin being thrust therein, it remained for an hour unperceived by the pannell.”58
On 10 March, 1611, Louis Gaufridi, a priest of Accoules in the diocese of Marseilles, was visited in prison, where he lay under repeated charges of foulest sorcery, by two physicians and two surgeons who were appointed to search for the Devil’s mark. Their joint report ran as follows: “We, the undersigned doctors and surgeons, in obedience to the directions given us by Messire Anthoine de Thoron, sieur de Thoron, Councillor to the King in his Court of Parliament, have visited Messire L. Gaufridy, upon whose
