* * * * *
"A thorn or a burr
She takes for a spur,
With a lash of the bramble she rides now.
Through brake and through briers,
O'er ditches and mires,
She follows the spirit that guides now."
Herrick: The Hag.
The meeting-place was arranged by the Devil, who sometimes rode there on a goat. At their supper no bread or salt was eaten; they drank out of horses' skulls, and danced, sometimes back to back, sometimes from west to east, for the dances at the ancient Baal festivals were from east to west, and it was evil and ill-omened to move the other way. For this dance the Devil played a bag-pipe made of a hen's skull and cats' tails.
"There sat Auld Nick, in shape o' beast;
A tousie tyke, black, grim, and large,
To gie them music was his charge:
He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl."[1]
Burns: Tam o' Shanter.
[1] Ring.
The light for the revelry came from a torch flaring between the horns of the Devil's steed the goat, and at the close the ashes were divided for the witches to use in incantations. People imagined that cats who had been up all night on Hallowe'en were tired out the next morning.
Tam o' Shanter who was watching such a dance
"By Alloway's auld haunted kirk"