A Popular History of Witchcraft (RLE Witchcraft) by Montague Summers

Author:Montague Summers [Summers, Montague]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Social History, Reference
ISBN: 9781136740183
Google: C9Q9kzcpkt8C
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-05-23T15:53:50+00:00

“These confessions made the King [James I, then James VI of Scotland] in a wonderful admiration, and he sent for the said Geillis Duncan, who, upon the like trump, did play the said dance before the King’s Majesty.”

The Capuchin Jacques D’Autun in his encyclopaedic treatise on magic (The Folly of the Wise and the Wisdom of the Simple) speaks of sorcerers who gyrate hand in hand in a circle as if inspired by maniac frenzy. He further remarks that whereas a dance should be distinguished by propriety and decorum, by a certain stateliness or it may be by lively frolic, the dances of witches are uncouth and ugly, extravagant and lewd. Such are the dances of savages, and it is worth remark that among the North American Indians there is but one word to express both dancing and coitus. Meanwhile the whole company are whooping and howling, hissing and yelling, in an access of horrid rage that is akin to an absolute frenzy.

There is evidence that various instruments accompanied the dance. Violins, flutes, tambourines, citterns, hautboys, and in Scotland the pipes made music at the Sabbat. Those of the witches who had any skill were called upon to perform, and very often they obliged the company with favourite airs of a vulgar kind, but the concert always ended in hideous cacophony and bestial clamour. In North Italy the covens were wont to “sing in honour of the devil the most obscene songs to the sound of a bawdy pipe and tabor played by one seated in the fork of a tree George Sinclar in his Satan’s Invisible World Discovered says: “A reverend Minister told me, that one who was the Devils Piper, a wizzard confest to him, that at a Ball of dancing, the Foul spirit taught him a Baudy song to sing and play, as it were this night, and ere two days past all the Lads and Lasses of the town were lilting it throw the street. It were abomination to rehearse it.” At Tranent in 1659 one man witch and eight women witches confessed that they had merry meetings with Satan, enlivened with music and dancing. John Douglas, the warlock, was the piper, and the two favourite airs of the Grand Master were “Kilt thy coat, Maggie, and come thy way with me”, and “Hulie the bed will fa’”.

At Aix the witches danced “at the sound of Viols and other instruments, which are brought thither by those that were skilled to play upon them”. None the less the sorcerers and hags joined in a kind of howling music with raucous cries imitating song. The Somerset witches of the Wincanton covens said that “The Man in black, sometimes playes on a Pipe or Cittern, and the company dance”.

The music in fine was of many kinds, varying from harmonies “softly sweet, in Lydian measures”, voluptuous and venereal, to the most horrid cacophony resembling the modern jazz, wherein (be it noted) some acute observers have shrewdly scented the devil’s own orchestra.

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