But to return to the "ladies of the night." Alvernus says, "They sometimes enter stables with wax tapers, the drippings of which appear on the hairs and necks of the horses, whilst their manes are carefully plaited." May we not exclaim with Mercutio,
"This is that very Mab
That plaits the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elf locks in foul, sluttish hairs"?
Alvernus' expression is "guttatos crines," wax-clotted hairs. Shakespeare's Mab seems to have played the same trick upon human beings.
The Lady Abundia is distinctly identified with Diana's crew, nay, herself represents that goddess, in a most curious passage from an early MS. of the Roman de la Rose, which was a composition of this same thirteenth century:
"Et les cinq sens ainssi deçoivent
Par les fantosmes qu'ils recoivent
Dont maintes gens par leur folies
Quident estre par nuit estries
Errans avecque dame Habonde
Et dient que par tout le monde
Le tiers enfant de nascion
Sont de cette condition;
Qu'ils vont trois fois en la semaine
Si çon destinée les mainne,
Et par tous les ostiex se boutent
Ne clos ne barres ne redoutent
Ains' sen entrent par les fendaces
Par charnieres et par crevaces
Et se partent des cors les ames,
Et vont avec les bonnes dames
Par lieux forains et par maisons."[109]
Bensozia, or Bezezia, as she is called in the Glossarium Novum from some MSS. statutes of S. Florus, has been a great puzzle to antiquarians. Montfaucon is inclined to identify her with the domina noctis, or Abundia. The Glossarium Novum suggests desperately that it may be a name for Herodias' daughter. Mr. Baring-Gould, following Grimm, has unwittingly furnished, I think, the true solution. He thus comments upon a remark of Tacitus in his Germania—"a part of the Suevi sacrifice to Isis": "This Isis has been identified by Grimm with a goddess Ziza, who was worshipped by the inhabitants of the parts about Augsburg. Kuchlen, an Augsburg poet of the XIVth century, sings:
"'They built a great temple therein
To the honor of Zize, the heathen goddess.'"
This Ziza, Mr. Gould suggests, is no other than Holda, or Holle, the wandering moon-goddess of the Teutons, in other parts called Gôde, under which name she resembled Artemis as the heavenly huntress accompanied by her maidens; in Austria and Bavaria, Berchta, or Bertha (the shining); in Suabia and Thuringia, Hörsel, or Ursel; in other places, the night-bird, Tutösel. Bezezia would there be Bena Ziza—the good Ziza. Alvernus' "Satia" is, in all probability, an attempt to Latinize the sound, as "Abundia" the sense; and so the three names are reducible to one.
Although the suggestion of the Glossarium Novum is inadmissible, I cannot but feel that its attempt to introduce Herodias' daughter into the "Sabbath" crew is reasonable enough.
I should myself be tempted to think that Herodias should be understood as Herodias Junior. Not only is there a propriety in this, considering the daughter's antecedents, but it is clear that fancy was early busy with her name; witness the weird story told by the Greek historian, Nicephorus, of her setting to dancing on the ice in her mother's sight, and persisting therein until she gradually broke through, and finished by dancing her head off against the sharp edge. On the other hand, this is, of course, in the teeth of what must be accepted as the authentic account given by Josephus, who calls her Salome, and allots her two husbands and three children. Moreover, Cesare Cantù is able to produce a myth accounting for the mother's presence, though he omits all reference to his authority, which I have vainly attempted to discover. It is at least ben trovato: "Credevasi pure che Erodiade ottenuto il teschio del Battista volle bacciarlo, ma quello si ritrasse e soffio, di che ella fu spinta in aria, e ancora si va tutte le notte."[110] There is nothing surprising in meeting with Jewish features in the rites of mediæval magic, since Jews were notoriously the leading magicians, both in Christian and Moorish states; as, indeed, they had been before the Christian era, wherever they had been known throughout the pagan world. The term "Sabbath," as applied to the magic gathering, naturally suggests itself; but I think it is not really any direct outcome of Jewish influence. The word, before its use in diablerie, had come to be a general expression for a feast in the Spanish Peninsula, and had thence no doubt found its way into France and Germany. The Glossarium Novum gives an extract from the will of Sancho of Portugal (A.D. 1269): "Item ad unum Sabbatum faciendum mando duas libras."