icy present auec tous les biens que ie feray à iamais: excepté la valeur du Sacrement pour le regard de ceux qui le recevront: Et ainsi le signe et atteste.'[1]
Jeannette d'Abadie, aged sixteen, said that she was made to 'renoncer & renier son Createur, la saincte Vierge, les Saincts, le Baptesme, pere, mere, parens, le ciel, la terre & tout ce qui est au monde'.[2] The irrevocability of this renunciation was impressed upon the Swedish witches in a very dramatic manner: 'The Devil gave them a Purse, wherein there were shavings of Clocks with a Stone tied to it, which they threw into the water, and then were forced to speak these words: As these Shavings of the Clock do never return to the Clock from which they are taken, so may my Soul never return to Heaven.'[3]
The vows to the new God were as explicit as the renunciation of the old. Danaeus says, 'He commaundeth them to forswere God theyr creator and all his power, promising perpetually to obey and worship him, who there standeth in their presence.'[4] The English witches merely took the vow of fealty and obedience, devoting themselves body and soul to him; sometimes only the soul, however, is mentioned: but the Scotch witches of both sexes laid one hand on the crown of the head, the other on the sole of the foot, and dedicated all that was between the two hands to the service of the Master.[5] There is a slight variation of this ceremony at Dalkeith in 1661, where the Devil laid his hand upon Jonet Watson's head, 'and bad her "give all ower to him that was vnder his hand", and shoe did so'.[6]
In Southern France the candidates, after renouncing their old faith, 'prennent Satan pour leur pere et protecteur, & la Diablesse pour leur mere'.[7] At Lille the children called the ceremony the Dedication,[8] showing that the same rite obtained there.
- ↑ De Lancre, Tableau, p. 182.
- ↑ Id. ib., p. 131.
- ↑ Horneck, pt. ii, p. 322.
- ↑ Danaeus, ch. ii, E 1.
- ↑ Lord Fountainhall mentions a case where a pregnant woman excepted the unborn child, at which the devil was very angry. Decisions, i, p. 14.
- ↑ Pitcairn, iii. p. 601.
- ↑ De Lancre, Tableau, p. 123.
- ↑ Bourignon, Vie, p. 214; Hale, p. 31.
