mettoit entre ses iambes.” (That she had been a great number of times to the Sabbat … and that she went there on a white stick which she placed between her legs.) It will be noticed that in the second instance she does not explicitly claim to have been borne through the air. Again: “Françoise Secretain y estoit portée [au Sabbat] sur vn baston blane. Satan y trāsporta Thieuenne Paget & Antide Colas estant en forme d’vn homme noir, sortans de leurs maison le plus souuent par la cheminée.” “Claudine Boban, ieune fille confessa qu’elle & sa mère montoient sur vne ramasse, & que sortans le contremont de la cheminée elles alloient par l’air en ceste façon au Sabbat.” (Françoise Secretain was carried [to the Sabbat] on a white stick. Satan, in the form of a tall dark man conveyed thither Thieuenne Paget & Antide Colas, who most often left their house by way of the chimney. … Claudine Boban, a young girl, confessed that both she and her mother mounted on a besom, & that flying out by the chimney they were thus borne through the air to the Sabbat.) A marginal note explains ramasse as “autrement balai, & en Lyonnois coiue.”
Glanvill writes that Julian Cox, one of the Somerset coven (1665), said “that one evening she walkt out about a Mile from her own House and there came riding towards her three persons upon three Broom-staves, born up about a yard and a half from the ground. Two of them she formerly knew, which was a Witch and a Wizzard.” It might easily be that there is some exaggeration here. We know that a figure in one of the witch dances consisted of leaping as high as possible into the air, and probably the three persons seen by Julian Cox were practising this agile step. A quotation from Bodin by Reginald Scot is very pertinent in this connexion. Speaking of the Sabbat revels he has: “And whiles they sing and dance, euerie one hath a broome in his hand, and holdeth it vp aloft. Item he saith, that these night-walking or rather night-dansing witches, brought out of Italie into France, that danse which is called La Volta.”44 Sir John Davies in his Orchestra or A Poeme on Dauncing (18mo, 1596) describes the lavolta as “A loftie iumping, or a leaping round.” De Lancre observes that after the regular country dance at the Sabbat the witches sprang high into the air. “Après la dance ils se mettent par fois à sauter.”45 At their assembly
