and concocted drinks of healing and refreshment. So it was very easy to imagine that they experimented with poisons and herbs of magic power under the guidance of the now evil gods. If they were so directed, they must go on occasions to consult with their masters. The idea arose of a witches' Sabbath, when women were enabled by evil means to fly away, and adore in secret the gods from whom the rest of the world had turned. There were such meeting-places all over Europe. They had been places of sacrifice, of judgment, or of wells and springs considered holy under the old religion, and whither the gods had now been banished. The most famous was the Blocksberg in the Hartz mountains in Germany.
"Dame Baubo first, to lead the crew!
A tough old sow and the mother thereon,
Goethe: Faust. (Taylor trans.)
In Norway the mountains above Bergen were a resort, and the Dovrefeld, once the home of the trolls.
