took him one night to a den betwixt Niddrie and Edmiston, where the devill had trysted hir.” Helen Guthrie, a Forfar witch, and her coven frequented a churchyard, where they met a demon, and on another occasion they “went to Mary Rynd’s house, and sat doune together at the table … and made them selfes mirrie, and the divell made much of them all” (1661). The Lancashire witches often held their local Sabbat at Malking Tower. From the confession of the Swedish witches (1670) at Mohra and Elfdale they assembled at a spot called Blockula “scituated in a delicate large Meadow … The place or house they met at, had before it a Gate painted with divers colours; … In a huge large Room of this House, they said, there stood a very long Table, at which the Witches did sit down; And that hard by this Room was another Chamber in which there were very lovely and delicate Beds.”14 Obviously a fine Swedish country house, perhaps belonging to a wealthy witch, and in the minds of the poorer members of the gang it presently became imaginatively exaggerated and described.
Christian Stridtheckh De Sagis (XL) writes: “They have different rendezvous in different districts; yet their meetings are generally held in wooded spots, or on mountains, or in caves, and any places which are far from the usual haunts of men. Mela, Book III, chapter 44, mentions Mount Atlas; de Vaulx, a warlock executed at Etaples in 1603, confessed that the witches of the Low Countries were wont most frequently to meet in some spot in the province of Utrecht. In our own country, the Mountain of the Bructeri, which some call Melibœus, in the duchy of Brunswick, is known and notorious as the haunt of witches. In the common tongue this Mountain is called the Blocksberg or Heweberg, Brockersburg or Vogelsberg, as Ortelius notes in his Thesaurus Geographicus.”15 The day of the week whereon a Sabbat was held differed in the various districts and countries, although Friday seems to have been most generally favoured. There is indeed an accumulation of evidence for every night of the week save Saturday and Sunday. De Lancre records that in the Basses-Pyrénées “their usual rendezvous is the spot known as Lane du Boue, in the Basque, tongue Aquelarre de verros, prado del Cabron, & there the Sorcerers assemble to worship their master on three particular
