G, GORT, ivy in the Ogham alphabet. The bird ... - Rodney Mackay

Witches were sometimes considered a variety of
demon
and it was generally known that they created wind to
damage their enemies and to transport themselves from
place to place. The wind was ,laterally, considered an
inferior spirit, more easily intimidated, killed or driven
away than sun and rain gods.
The relationship of the witch to her wind-demon, who
the German settlers called the geisboch (he-goat) is
revealled in a tale from Lunenburg County which was
collected by Dr. Creighton: "Every night after tea a woman
used to take a broomstick and put it between her legs and go
to the chimney and then she'd go up the chimney. She'd say
words, "no straffe he, no straffe go..." A servant in the
house, observing this decided to try the magic brromstick
after hours. On a subsequent night he followed the
procedure and found himself above the chimney in the night
air. Knowing something of the usual procedure, he utter an
incantation for the geisboch and it arrived and took him on
his back. Unfortunately, his education was incomplete and
he didn't know how to control this "devil", which took him
out over the Atlantic Ocean and dumped him.
Flying through the air classifies as wonder-work
rather than sympathetic magic or divination. Traditionally,
most of the northern gods could shape-change into eagles,
crows or ravens and take flight. The god Odin flew aboard a
magical stallion and his Valkyries followed on similar
steeds. The fairies always flew from place to place and so
did the baobhs, the druids, witches and Christian angels.
Some of my ancestors probably believed that David
Rae's wife, a resident of Tullibody, Scotland was spirited
into the air by fairies. Twenty years after, there were
Scots who attested to seeing her "sitting on a dark cloud
drifting over a peak of Dumyat." She was supposedly
abducted after "straying from her ain man's side."