Here we have a curious and perhaps unique example of the demoniac masquerade subtly used to obtain evidence of guilt by a trick. The Aberdeen witch Jonet Lucas (1597) said that the Devil was at the Sabbat “beand in likenes of ane beist.” But Agnes Wobster of the same company declared that “Satan apperit to them in the likenes of a calff,” so possibly two masquerades were employed. Gabriel Pellé (1608) confessed that he attended a Sabbat presided over by the Devil, and “le Diable estoit en vache noire.”68 Françoise Secretain, who was tried in August, 1598, saw the Devil “tantost en forme de chat.” Rolande de Vernois acknowledged “Le Diable se presenta pour lors au Sabbat en forme d’vn groz chat noir.”69 To the goat there are innumerable allusions. In the Basses-Pyrénées (1609): “Le Diable estoit en forme de bouc ayant vne queue & audessous vn visage d’homme noir.” (The Devil appeared in the form of a goat having a tail & his fundament was the face of a black man.) Iohannis d’Aguerre said that the Devil was “en forme de bouc.”70 “Marie d’Aguerre said that there was in the midst of the ring an immense pitcher whence the Devil issued in the form of a goat.” Gentien le Clerc, who was tried at Orleans in 1614, “said that, as he was told, his mother when he was three years old presented him at the Sabbat to a goat whom they saluted as l’Aspic.”71 “Sur le trône,” writes Görres, “est assis un bouc, ou du moins la forme d’un bouc, car le démon ne peut cacher ce qu’il est.”72
In 1630 Elizabeth Stevenson, alias Toppock, of Niddrie, avowed to her judges that in company with Catharine Oswald, who was tried for being by habite and repute a witch, and Alexander Hamilton, “a known warlock,” she went “to a den betwixt Niddrie and Edmiston, where the devill had trysted hir, where he appeared first to them like a foall, and then like a man, and appointed a new dyet at Salcott Muire.” When one of Catharine Oswald’s intimates, Alexander Hunter, alias Hamilton, alias Hattaraick, a “Warlok Cairle” who “abused the Countrey for a long time,”73 was apprehended at Dunbar he confessed that the Devil would meet him riding upon a black horse, or in the shape of a corbie, a cat, or a dog. He was burned upon Castle Hill, Edinburgh, 1631.
Sometimes those who are present at the Sabbat are
