It is possible that the killing of children by poison was one method of sacrifice when the cult was decadent and victims difficult to obtain. Reginald Scot's words, written in 1584, suggest that this was the case: 'This must be an infallible rule, that euerie fortnight, or at the least euerie moneth, each witch must kill one child at the least for hir part.'[626] Sinistrari d'Ameno, writing about a century later, says the same: 'They promise the Devil sacrifices and offerings at stated times: once a fortnight or at least each month, the murder of some child, or an homicidal act of sorcery.'[627] It is impossible to believe in any great frequency of this sacrifice, but there is considerable foundation in fact for the statement that children were killed, and it accounts as nothing else can for the cold-blooded murders of children of which the witches were sometimes accused. The accusations seem to have been substantiated on several occasions, the method of sacrifice being by poison.[628]
The sacrifice of a child was often performed as a means of procuring certain magical materials or powers, which were obtained by preparing the sacrificed bodies in several ways. Scot says that the flesh of the child was boiled and consumed by the witches for two purposes. Of the thicker part of the concoction 'they make ointments, whereby they ride in the aire; but the thinner potion they put into flaggons, whereof whosoeuer drinketh, obseruing certeine ceremonies, immediatelie becommeth a maister or rather a mistresse in that practise and facultie.'[629] The Paris Coven confessed that they 'distilled' the entrails of the sacrificed child after Guibourg had celebrated the mass for Madame de Montespan, the method being probably the same as that described by Scot. A variant occurs in both France and Scotland, and is interesting as throwing light on the reasons for some of the savage rites of the witches: 'Pour ne confesser iamais le secret de l'escole, on faict au sabbat vne paste de millet noir, auec de la poudre du foye de quelque enfant non baptisé qu'on faict secher, puis meslant cette poudre avec ladicte paste, elle a cette vertu de taciturnité: si bien que qui en mange ne confesse iamais.'[630] At Forfar, in 1661, Helen Guthrie and four others exhumed the body of an unbaptized infant, which was buried in the churchyard near the south-east door of the church, 'and took severall peices therof, as the feet, hands, a pairt of the head, and a pairt of the buttock, and they made a py therof, that they might eat of it, that by this meanes they might never make a confession (as they thought) of their witchcraftis.'[631] Here the idea of sympathetic magic is very clear; by eating the flesh of a child who had never spoken articulate words, the witches' own tongues would be unable to articulate.
4. Sacrifice of the God.—The sacrifice of the witch-god was a decadent custom when the records were made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The accounts of the actual rite come from France and Belgium, where a goat was substituted for the human victim. The sacrifice was by fire in both those countries, and there are indications that it was the same in Great Britain. It is uncertain whether the interval of time between the sacrifices was one, seven, or nine years.
Bodin and Boguet, each writing from his own knowledge of the subject, give very similar accounts, Bodin's being the more detailed. In describing a trial which took place in Poictiers in 1574, he says: 'Là se trouuoit vn grand bouc noir, qui parloit comme vne personne aux assistans, & dansoyent à l'entour du bouc: puis vn chacun luy baisoit le derriere, auec vne chandelle ardente: & celà faict, le bouc se consommoit en feu, & de la cẽdre chacun en prenoit pour faire mourir le bœuf [etc.]. Et en fin le Diable leur disoit d'vne voix terrible des mots, Vengez vous ou vous mourrez.'[632] Boguet says that in the Lyons district in 1598 the Devil celebrated mass, and 'apres auoir prins la figure d'vn Bouc, se consume en feu, & reduit en cendre, laquelle les Sorciers recueillent, & cachent pour s'en seruir à l'execution de leurs desseins pernicieux & abominables'.[633] In 1603, a Belgian witch, Claire Goessen, was present at such a sacrifice, and her account is therefore that of an eyewitness. 'Elle s'est laissée transporter à l'assemblée nocturne de Lembeke, où, après la danse, elle a, comme tous les assistans, baisé un bouc à l'endroit de sa queue, lequel bouc fut ensuite brûlé et ses cendres distribuées et emportées par les convives.'[634] Jeanne de Belloc in 1609 'a veu le Grand maistre de l'assemblee se ietter dans les flammes au sabbat, se faire brusler iusques à ce qu'il estoit reduit en poudre, & les grandes & insignes sorcieres prendre les dictes poudres pour ensorceler les petits enfants & les mener au sabbat, & en prenoient aussi dans la bouche pour ne reueler iamais'.[635] A French witch in 1652 declared that at the Sabbath 'le diable s'y at mis en feu et en donné des cendres lesquelles tous faisaient voller en l'air pour faire mancquer les fruits de la terre'.[636] At Lille in 1661 the girls in Madame Bourignon's orphanage stated that 'on y adoroit une bête; & qu'on faisoit avec elle des infamies; & puis sur la fin on la brûloit, & chacun en prenoit des cendres, avec lesquelles on faisoit languir ou mourir des personnes, ou autres animaux'.[637]
The collection and use of the ashes by the worshippers point to the fact that we have here a sacrifice of the god of fertility. Originally the sprinkling of the ashes on fields or animals or in running water was a fertility charm; but when Christianity became sufficiently powerful to attempt the suppression of the ancient religion, such practices were represented as evil, and were therefore said to be 'pour faire mancquer les fruits de la terre'.
The animal-substitute for the divine victim is usually the latest form of the sacrifice; the intervening stages were first the volunteer, then the criminal, both of whom were accorded the power and rank of the divine being whom they personated. The period of time during which the substitute acted as the god varied in different places; so also did the interval between the sacrifices. Frazer has pointed out that the human victim, whether the god himself or his human substitute, did not content himself by merely not attempting to escape his destiny, but in many cases actually rushed on his fate, and died by his own hand or by voluntary submission to the sacrificer.
The witch-cult being a survival of an ancient religion, many of the beliefs and rites of these early religions are to be found in it. Of these the principal are: the voluntary substitute, the temporary transference of power to the substitute, and the self-devotion to death. As times changed and the ceremonies could no longer be performed openly, the sacrifices took on other forms. I have already suggested that the child-murders, of which the witches were often convicted, were in many cases probably offerings made to the God. In the same way, when the time came for the God or his substitute to be sacrificed, recourse was had to methods which hid the real meaning of the ceremony; and the sacrifice of the incarnate deity, though taking place in public, was consummated at the hands of the public executioner. This explanation accounts for the fact that the bodies of witches, male or female, were always burnt and the ashes scattered; for the strong prejudice which existed, as late as the eighteenth century, against any other mode of disposing of their bodies; and for some of the otherwise inexplicable occurrences in connexion with the deaths of certain of the victims.
Read in the light of this theory much of the mystery which surrounds the fate of Joan of Arc is explained. She was put to death as a witch, and the conduct of her associates during her military career, as well as the evidence at her trial, bear out the fact that she belonged to the ancient religion, not to the Christian. Nine years after her death in the flames her commander, Gilles de Rais, was tried on the same charge and condemned to the same fate. The sentence was not carried out completely in his case; he was executed by hanging, and the body was snatched from the fire and buried in Christian ground. Like Joan herself, Gilles received a semi-canonization after death, and his shrine was visited by nursing mothers. Two centuries later Major Weir offered himself up and was executed as a witch in Edinburgh, refusing to the end all attempts to convert him to the Christian point of view.
The belief that the witch must be burnt and the ashes scattered was so ingrained in the popular mind that, when the severity of the laws began to relax, remonstrances were made by or to the authorities. In 1649 the Scotch General Assembly has a record: 'Concerning the matter of the buriall of the Lady Pittadro, who, being vnder a great scandall of witchcraft, and being incarcerat in the Tolbuith of this burgh during her triall before the Justice, died in prison, The Comission of the Generall Assembly, having considered the report of the Comittee appointed for that purpose, Doe give their advyse to the Presbyterie of Dumfermling to show their dislike of that fact of the buriall of the Lady Pittadro, in respect of the maner and place, and that the said Presbyterie may labour to make the persons who hes buried her sensible of their offence in so doeing; and some of the persons who buried hir, being personallie present, are desired by the Comission to shew themselvis to the Presbyterie sensible of their miscarriage therein.'[638]
At Maidstone in 1652 'Anne Ashby, alias Cobler, Anne Martyn, Mary Browne, Anne Wilson, and Mildred Wright of Cranbrook, and Mary Read, of Lenham, being legally convicted, were according to the Laws of this Nation, adjudged to be hanged, at the common place of Execution. Some there were that wished rather they might be burnt to Ashes; alledging that it was a received opinion among many, that the body of a witch being burnt, her bloud is prevented thereby from becomming hereditary to her Progeny in the same evill.'[639] The witches themselves also held the belief that they ought to die by fire. Anne Foster was tried for witchcraft at Northampton in 1674: 'after Sentence of Death was past upon her, she mightily desired to be Burned; but the Court would give no Ear to that, but that she should be hanged at the Common place of Execution.'[640]