THE GOD OF THE WITCHES - World eBook Library - World Public ...

usual household implement but a besom of birch-twigs or of heather such as is now used only by gardeners. In
the nursery rhyme of the Old Woman tossed up in a Basket, she does not ride on the broom, she carries it in her
hand.
The connection in the popular mind between a won-tan and a broom probably took its rise in very early times,
the explanation being that the broom is essentially an indoor implement, belonging therefore to the woman; the
equivalent implement for a man is the pitchfork, which is for outdoor work only. This is the reason why, in
medieval representations of witch-dances, the women or witches often hold brooms, while the men or devils
carry pitchforks. The broom being so definitely a feminine tool came to be regarded as the symbol of a woman.
Until within very recent times cottage-women in Surrey, when going out and leaving the house empty, put a
broom up the chimney so that it was visible from the outside, in order to indicate to the neighbours that the
woman of the house was from home. In other parts of England until the last century, a broom standing outside a
door showed that the wife was absent and the husband at liberty to entertain his male friends. This identification
of the woman and the broom is probably the true meaning of Isobel Gowdie's[62] statement that before leaving
home to attend the Sabbath an Auldearne witch would place her broom on the bed to represent her to her
husband, at the same time saying the words, "I lay down this besom in the Devil's name; let it not stir till I come
again." The husband would then know that his wife had gone to her devotions.
The riding on a broom seems to be merely a variant of riding on some kind of stick. It appears to have been
performed only by the members of a coven, and only for going to a Sabbath or for use in the processional
dance. The sticks were stalks of the broom-plant, of ragwort, hemp, bean, or any hollow stalk; occasionally
ash-branches were used, and in the Near East witches rode on palm-branches. It seems clear, then, that the act
of riding, not the stick used, was the important part of the ceremony. In Europe, though the witches rode on the
stems of various plants, there is little first-hand evidence of their flying through the air; the recorder has only
"heard tell" of such a feat.
In and before the sixteenth century the accounts of the means of locomotion to and from the Sabbath are
reasonable. In 1592, Agnes Sampson acknowledged that she rode to the meeting at the church of North
Berwick on a pillion behind her son-in-law, John Couper; the Lancashire witches were also horse-riders; and the
Swedish witches rode to Blockula. This last is indicated by the evidence of a boy,[63] whose mistress wished
him to go with her to the Sabbath, so he took his father's horse out of the field for the purpose; the animal was
not sent back when the lady returned and the owner thought it lost, but found it again when the boy told him what
had occurred. The rich Alsatian witches[64] went to the meetings in carriages or waggons; the poorer sort rode
on sticks or walked. Usually when a witch claimed to have flown through the air to the Sabbath she had to
acknowledge that by some untoward accident that means of conveyance failed and she had to return on foot.
Silvain Nevillon, executed at Orleans in 1615, said that he "went often to the Sabbath on foot being quite awake,
and that he did not anoint (literally, grease) himself, as it was folly to grease oneself if one were not going
far".[65] Rather later in the seventeenth century the reports become more highly coloured, until in 1662, Isobel
Gowdie[66] told the court that "we take windle-straws or beanstalks and put them between our feet and say
thrice, 'Horse and hattock, Horse and go! Horse and pellatis, ho, ho!' and immediately we fly away wherever we
would."
One of the earliest references to the ritual riding of witches is in the Decree attributed to the Council of Ancyra in
the ninth century.[67] The Decree does not mention that the witches flew through the air, but it states definitely
that they rode on animals: "Certain wicked women, reverting to Satan, and seduced by the illusion and
phantoms of demons, believe and profess that they ride at night with Diana on certain beasts, with an
innumerable multitude of women, passing over immense distances, obeying her commands as their mistress,
and evoked by her on certain nights". That such a Decree should have been made is proof that ritual riding was
well known and considered a heathenish practice.
The first witch recorded to have been tried by the Church for her Faith was Dame Alice Kyteler, in 1324.[68] The
lady owned a staff "on which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin, when and in what manner she
listed, after having greased it with the ointment which was found in her possession". The ambling through thick
and thin shows that the riding was on the ground, not in the air.
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