The third dance was in line; men and women stood alternately, holding hands; in time to the music they shifted their positions till each pair stood back to back, and at a given chord in the tune each dancer took one quick step to the rear and cannoned against his or her partner.[1] The Devil apparently was expected to lead this dance, and could change partners as often as he pleased.
A study, however short, of witch-ritual would not be complete without a mention of child sacrifice, a crime of which the witches were accused in every country, and which they actually confessed they had committed. The child had to be either a witch's child or unbaptised though born of Christian parents. Reginald Scot[2] says that it was commonly reported that "every fortnight, or at the least every month, each witch must kill one child at the least for her part." This is a gross exaggeration as he points out, but he quotes from Psellus[3] a sacrifice of children by a sect of "magical heretikes" called Eutychians, whom he regards as the originals of, or allied to, witches. He gives also a list of fifteen crimes laid to the charge of witches,[4] among which are the two following: "They sacrifice their own children to the devil before baptism, holding them up in the aire to him, and then thrust a needle into their brains," and "they burne their children when they have sacrificed them."
The witches were also accused of feasting on the flesh of the sacrificed children. Though I have not found a description by an eye-witness of such a sacrifice, there is more than one confession of the eating of a dead child's flesh,[5] but it was always done as a magical rite to ensure
- ↑ The Walloon children still have a similar dance. E. Monseur, Folklore Wallon, p. 102, Bruxelles.
- ↑ R. Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft, Bk. iii. ch. 2.
- ↑ Id. ib. Bk. iii. ch. 3.
- ↑ Id. ib. Bk. ii. ch. 9.
- ↑ Kinloch and Baxter, Reliquiae Antiqitae Scoticae, p. 121. De Lancre, Tableau de l'Inconstance, p. 128.
