Johnson said the same: 'Their spirittes vsuallie have knowledge of theire bodies … Shee also saith, that men Witches usualie have woemen spirittes and woemen witches men spirittes.'[1] The girls under Madame Bourignon's charge 'declared that they had daily carnal Cohabitation with the Devil; that they went to the Sabbaths or Meetings, where they Eat, Drank, Danc'd, and committed other Whoredom and Sensualities. Every one had her Devil in form of a Man; and the Men had their Devils in the form of a Woman. … They had not the least design of changing, to quit these abominable Pleasures, as one of them of Twenty-two Years old one day told me. No, said she, I will not be other than I am; I find too much content in my Condition; I am always Caressed.'[2] One girl of twelve said definitely that she knew the Devil very well, 'that he was a Boy a little bigger than her self; and that he was her Love, and lay with her every Night'; and another girl named Bellot, aged fifteen, 'said her Mother had taken her with her [to the Sabbath] when she was very Young, and that being a little Wench, this Man-Devil was then a little Boy too, and grew up as she did, having been always her Love, and Caressed her Day and Night.'[3] Such connexions sometimes resulted in marriage. Gaule mentions this fact in his general account: 'Oft times he marries them ere they part, either to himselfe, or their Familiar, or to one another; and that by the Book of Common Prayer (as a pretender to witchfinding lately told me in the Audience of many).'[4] This statement is borne out in the trials: 'Agnes Theobalda sagte, sie sey selbst zugegen auff der Hochzeit gewesen, da Cathalina und Engel von Hudlingen, ihren Beelzebub zur Ehe genommen haben.'[5] The Devil of Isobel Ramsay's Coven was clearly her husband,[6] but there is nothing to show whether the marriage took place before she became
- ↑ Baines, i, pp. 607-8, note.
- ↑ Bourignon, Parole, pp. 86, 87; Hale, pp. 26, 27.
- ↑ Id., Vie, p. 214, 211; Hale, pp. 29, 31.
- ↑ Gaule, p. 63.
- ↑ Remigius, p. 131.
- ↑ Record of Trial in the Edinburgh Justiciary Court.
Basses-Pyrénées, where the male attendants on the King and Queen of the dance are still called Satans. Moret, Mystères Égyptiens, p. 247.
