The Devil's piper was also an official appointment in Scotland, but does not occur elsewhere. John Douglas of Tranent (1659) was the Devil's piper,[752] and so also was a man mentioned by Sinclair: 'A reverend Minister told me, that one who was the Devils Piper, a wizzard confest to him, that at a Ball of dancing, the Foul Spirit taught him a Baudy song to sing and play.'[753]
The Queen of the Sabbath may perhaps be considered as an official during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, though in early times she was probably the chief personage in the cult, as Pearson has pointed out.[754] It is not unlikely that she was originally the same as the Queen of Elfhame; in Scotland, however, in the seventeenth century, there is a Maiden of the Coven, which was an important position in the Esbat but entirely distinct from the Queen of Faery, while in other places a woman, not the Queen, is often the officer and holds the highest place after the Grand Master.
Elizabeth Stile of Windsor (1579) said that 'mother Seidre dwelling in the Almeshouse, was the maistres Witche of all the reste'.[755] Marion Grant of Aberdeen (1597) confessed that 'the Devill thy maister causit the dans sindrie tymes with him and with Our Ladye, quha, as thow sayes, was a fine woman, cled in a quhyte walicot'.[756] In France (1609) the custom seems to have been universal, 'en chasque village trouuer vne Royne du Sabbat', who sat at the Devil's left hand during the celebration of the mass and received the offerings of the faithful.[757] The witches called her both the Grande Maîtresse and the Reine du Sabbat.[758] Isobel Gowdie's confession (1662) shows that the Queen of Elthame was not the same as the chief woman of the Coven, for she saw the Queen only on going into the fairy-howe, while the Maiden of the Coven was at each meeting. 'We doe no great mater without owr Maiden.—Quhan we ar at meat, or in any vther place quhateuir, the Maiden of each Coven sittis abow the rest, nixt the Divell.'[759] In New England (1692) Deliverance Hobbs confessed that 'the said G. B. preached to them, and such a woman was their Deacon'.[760]
2. The Covens
The word coven is a derivative of 'convene', and is variously spelt coven, coeven, covine, cuwing, and even covey. The special meaning of the word among the witches is a 'band' or 'company', who were set apart for the practice of the rites of the religion and for the performance of magical ceremonies; in short, a kind of priesthood.
The Coven was composed of men and women, belonging to one district, though not necessarily all from one village, and was ruled by an officer under the command of the Grand Master. The members of the Coven were apparently bound to attend the weekly Esbat; and it was they who were instructed in and practised magical arts, and who performed all the rites and ceremonies of the cult. The rest of the villagers attended the Esbats when they could or when they felt so inclined, but did not necessarily work magic, and they attended the Sabbaths as a matter of course. This view of the organization of the religion is borne out by the common belief in modern France:
'Il est de croyance générale qu'il faut un nombre fixe de sorciers et de sorcières dans chaque canton. Le nouvel initié reprend les vieux papiers de l'ancien.—Les mauvaises gens forment une confrérie qui est dirigée par une sorcière. Celle-ci a la jarretière comme marque de sa dignité. Elles se la transmettent successivement par rang d'ancienneté. Il n'existe que cette différence de rang entre les sorciers et les sorcières. Ceux-là se recrutent aussi bien parmi les gens mariés que chez les célibataires.'[761]
The 'fixed number' among the witches of Great Britain seems to have been thirteen: twelve witches and their officer. The actual numbers can be obtained, as a rule, only when the full record of the trial is available; for when several witches in one district are brought to trial at the same time they will always be found to be members of a Coven, and usually the other members of the Coven are implicated or at least mentioned.
The earliest account of a Coven is in the trial of Bessie Dunlop (1567); when Thom Reid was trying to induce her to join the society, he took her 'to the kill-end, quhair he forbaid her to speik or feir for onye thing sche hard or saw; and quhene thai had gane ane lytle pece fordwerd, sche saw twelf persounes, aucht wemene and four men: The men wer cled in gentilmennis clething, and the wemene had all plaiddis round about thame and wer verrie semelie lyke to se; and Thom was with thame.'[762] Clearly this was a Coven with Thom as the Officer, and he had brought Bessie to see and be seen. The witches tried at St. Osyth in Essex in 1582 were thirteen in number.[763] At the meeting of the North Berwick witches (1590) to consult on the means to compass the king's death, nine witches stood 'in ane cumpany', and the rest 'to the nowmer of threttie persons in ane vthir cumpany'; in other words, there were thirty-nine persons, or three Covens, present.[764] At Aberdeen (1596-7) sixty-four names of witches occur in the trials; of these, seven were merely mentioned as being known to the accused, though not as taking part in the ceremonies, and five were acquitted; thus leaving fifty-two persons, or four Covens. Out of these fifty-two, one was condemned and executed at the assize in 1596 and twelve in 1597, making in all thirteen persons, or one Coven, who were put to death.[765] The great trial of the Lancashire witches in 1613 gives a grand total of fifty-two witches, or four Covens, whose names occur in the record. This includes the three Salmesbury witches mentioned by Grace Sowerbuts, whose evidence was discredited as being the outcome of a 'Popish plot' to destroy the three women as converts to the Reformed Church; but as the record shows that the other accused witches were tried on similar charges and condemned, it may be concluded that other causes occasioned the acquittal. Taking together, however, only those witches who are mentioned, in these trials, as having actually taken part in the ceremonies and practices of witchcraft in the neighbourhood of Pendle, it will be found that there were thirty-nine persons, or three Covens.[766] In Guernsey in 1617 Isabel Becquet confessed that—
'at the Sabbath the Devil used to summon the Wizards and Witches in regular order (she remembered very well having heard him call the old woman Collette the first, in these terms: Madame the Old Woman Becquette): then the woman Fallaise; and afterwards the woman Hardie. Item, he also called Marie, wife of Massy, and daughter of the said Collette. Said that after them she herself was called by the Devil: in these terms: The Little Becquette: she also heard him call there Collas Becquet, son of the said old woman (who [Collas] held her by the hand in dancing, and some one [767]