Page:Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921).djvu/69

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THE GOD
69

de derriere.—Marie d'Aguerre dit qu'il y a vne grande cruche au milieu du Sabbat, d'où sort le Diable en forme de bouc.—D'autres disent qu'il est comme vn grand bouc, ayant deux cornes devant & deux en derriere; que celles de devant se rebrassent en haut comme la perruque d'vne femme. Mais le commun est qu'il a seulement trois cornes, & qu'il a quelque espece de lumiere en celle du milieu. On luy voit aussi quelque espece de bonet ou chapeau au dessus de ces cornes. On a obserué de tout temps que lorsqu'il veut receuoir quelcun à faire pacte auec luy, il se presente tousiours en homme, pour ne l'effaroucher ou effraier: car faire pacte auec vn Bouc ouuertement, tiendroit plus de la beste que de la creature raisonnable. Mais le pacte faict, lors qu'il veut receuoir quelqu'vn à l'adoration, communemêt il se represente en Bouc.'[1]

Silvain Nevillon confessed at Orleans in 1614 'qu'il a veu le Diable en plusieurs façons, tantost comme vn bouc, ayant vn visage deuant & vn autre derriere'.[2]

5. Horse.—I give here only the references to the Devil when actually disguised as a horse, but there are a very great number of cases where he appeared riding on a horse. These cases are so numerous as to suggest that the horse was part of the ritual, especially as the riding Devil usually occurs in places where an animal disguise was not used, e.g. in 1598, in Aberdeen, where Andro Man 'confessis that Crystsunday rydis all the tyme that he is in thair cumpanie'.[3] The actual disguise as a horse is not common. Elizabeth Stile of Windsor in 1579 'confesseth, her self often tymes to haue gon to Father Rosimond house where she found hym sittyng in a Wood, not farre from thence, vnder the bodie of a Tree, sometymes in the shape of an Ape, and otherwhiles like an Horse'.[4] Helen Guthrie in 1661 stated that when the Forfar witches were trying to sink a ship, 'the divell wes there present with them all, in the shape of ane great horse. They returned all in the same liknes as of befor, except that the divell wes in the shape of a man.'[5] Mary Lacey of Salem in 1692 said that

  1. De Lancre, Tableau, pp. 67, 68, 69, 126.
  2. Id., L'Incredulité, p. 800.
  3. Spalding Club Misc., i, p. 125. Cp. Elworthy on the Hobby-horse as the Devil, Horns of Honour, p. 140.
  4. Rehearsall both Straung and True, par. 24.
  5. Kinloch, pp. 122-3.