Page:Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921).djvu/185

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THE RITES
185

a witch, as in the case of Janet Breadheid of Auldearne, whose husband 'enticed her into that craft'.[1] 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.'[2] At Edinburgh in 1658 a young woman called Anderson was tried: 'her confessioun was, that scho did marry the devill.'[3] The Swedish witches in 1670 confessed that at Blockula 'the Devil had Sons and Daughters which he did marry together'.[4] 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'.[5]

  1. Pitcairn, iii, p. 616.
  2. Howell, iv, 842.
  3. Nicoll's Diary, p. 212. Bannatyne Club.
  4. Horneck, pt. ii, p. 323.
  5. Davies, p. 183. Cp. also the birth of Merlin. Giraldus Cambrensis, Itinerary, Bk. I, xii, 91 b.