by a dance of nearly one hundred persons, and so probably did not commence until midnight. Thomas Leyis, Issobell Coky, Helen Fraser, Bessie Thorn, and the rest of the Aberdeen witches, thirteen of whom were executed in 1597, and seven more banished, generally met “betuixt tuell & ane houris at nycht.”24 Boguet notes that in 1598 the witch Françoise Secretain “adioustoit qu’elle alloit tousiours au Sabbat enuiron la minuit, & beaucoup d’autres sorciers, que i’ay eu en main, ont dit le mesme.” In 1600 Anna Mauezin of Tubingen confessed that she had taken part in witch gatherings which she dubbed Hochzeiten. They seem to have been held by a well just outside the upper gate of Rotenburg, and her evidence insists upon “midnight dances” and revelling. A Scotch witch, Marie Lamont, “a young woman of the adge of Eighteen Yeares, dwelling in the parish of Innerkip” on 4 March, 1662, confessed most ingenuously “that when shee had been at a mietting sine Zowle last, with other witches, in the night, the devill convoyed her home in the dawing.”25
The Sabbat lasted till cock-crow, before which time none of the assembly was suffered to withdraw, and the advowal of Louis Gaufridi, executed at Aix, 1610, seems somewhat singular: “I was conveyed to the place where the Sabbat was to be held, and I remained there sometimes one, two, three, or four hours, for the most part just as I felt inclined.”26 That the crowing of a cock dissolves enchantments is a tradition of extremest antiquity. The Jews believed that the clapping of a cock’s wings will make the power of demons ineffectual and break magic spells. So Prudentius sang: “They say that the night-wandering demons, who rejoice in dunnest shades, at the crowing of the cock tremble and scatter in sore affright.”27 The rites of Satan ceased because the Holy Office of the Church began. In the time of S. Benedict Matins and Lauds were recited at dawn and were actually often known as Gallicinium, Cock-crow. In the exquisite poetry of S. Ambrose, which is chanted at Sunday Lauds, the praises of the cock are beautifully sung:
Light of our darksome journey here,
With days dividing night from night!
Loud crows the dawn’s shrill harbinger,
And wakens up the sunbeams bright.
