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' 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, 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, but it was always done as a magical rite to ensure 1 The Walloon children still have a similar dance. E. Monseur, Folklore Wallon, p. 102, Bruxelles. 2 R. Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft, Bk. iii. ch. 2.'.. 3 Id. ib. Bk. iii. ch. 3. Kinloch and Baxter, Reliquiae Tableau de l'Inconstance, p. 128. Id. ib. Bk. ii. ch. 9. De Lancre, the silence of the witch when taken before a Christian judge. As the child was always an infant too young to speak, the witches apparently thought that to eat its flesh would prevent their tongues from uttering articulate words. The exhuming of dead bodies is explicitly stated to have been for use in making charms.1 In conclusion I have brought together certain facts. which appear to show a connection between the witches and fairies. By fairies I do not mean those little beings which the exquisite and delicate fancies of the poets have evolved; the fairies of the witch trials are the fairies of Scotch and Irish legend. In the early trials and in the more remote districts there are frequent mentions of elves and fairies, of the Fairy Queen and the Queen of Elfin 2; the imps or familiars are called individually Elva 3 or Robin, and generically Puckerels 5; the knowledge of the witches is said to be elf-lore. The ritual of the witches is like the ritual of the fairies; both sacrifice children to their god, whom the Christians stigmatised as the Devil; both stole unbaptised children for the sacrifice 8; both sacrificed their god or "devil" every year, apparently on May day; both had ritual dances, which were so like one another that Boguet can say of the witch dances that "they are like those of the fairies, true devils incarnate, 1 1 Pitcairn, Criminal Trials, i. pt. iii. p. 239. ch. I. R. Scot, op. cit. Bk. iii. 2 Pitcairn, Criminal Trials, i. pt. ii. p. 56, pt. iii. p. 162, iii. p. 604, etc. Sinclair, Satan's Invisible World Discovered, p. 24. Camden Society, Dame Alice Kyteler, p. 2. 5 Giffard, Dialogue of Witches, p. 9. Spalding Club Miscellany, i. 177-Ex. of John Walsh. 7 Cunningham, Traditional Tales, p. 251. 8 Ballad of Young Tamlane. 9 Rogen, Scotland Social and Domestic, p. 217. Cunningham, Traditional Tales, p. 251. R who reigned not long ago," and More gravely wonders whether the dark rings on the grass are made by the dances of witches or fairies.2 The Fairy Queen, like the fairy woman of modern Ireland, is not distinguishable at first sight from an ordinary woman. When Bessie Dunlop was ill, a stout woman came to her cottage and sat down and asked for a drink 3; this was the Queen of Elfhame. Andro Man as a little boy first saw "the Devil thy master in the likeness and shape of a woman, whom thou callest the Queen of Elphen," who was delivered of a child in Andro's mother's house. When grown-up, Andro again met "that devilish sprite, the Queen of Elphin, on whom thou begat divers bairns, whom thou has seen sinsyne." 5 Marion Grant of the same covine saw her as "a fine woman, clad in a white walicot." Isobel Gowdie said that "the Queen of Fearrie is brawly clothed in white linens, and in white and brown clothes." 7 Jean Weir sister of Major Weir, "took employment from a Woman to speak in her behalf to the Queen of ffearie, meaning the Devil." 8 Holinshed also says that the witches of Macbeth were fairies.9 6 If, as many authorities contend, the fairies are really the aboriginal inhabitants of these islands, there is nothing surprising in their ritual and beliefs being adopted by the invading race. And in that case I am right in my conjecture that the rites of the witches are the remains of the ancient and primitive cult of Great Britain. 7 Pitcairn, Criminal Trials, iii. p. 604. Records of Justiciary Court of Edinburgh, ii. p. 11. MAGIC AND RELIGION. BY F. B. JEVONS, LITT.D., ETC. (Read before the Society, 13th June, 1917.) THIS paper is based upon our President's article on Magic in the Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics and on a book by the Archbishop of Upsala, Gudstrons Uppkomst, of which a German translation (with additions by the author) appeared in 1916 (Das Werden des Gottesglaubens). The position taken in this paper will perhaps come out most clearly if it is contrasted with that maintained by Sir James Frazer in the second edition of his Golden Bough. His position is that magic "has probably everywhere preceded religion," and that the essence or distinguishing mark of religion is that it assumes the course of nature and of human life to be controlled by personal beings superior to man. A proof, or at least an instance and a confirmation of this theory, is supposed to be afforded by the Australian black-fellows, who practice magic and do not seem to believe that personal beings, superior to man, control the course of nature and of human life. The first thing to notice is that "magic" is an ambiguous term; we, who do not believe in magic, employ the term to designate both proceedings which are intended to injure an individual or a community, and proceedings which are intended to work good. But for those who do believe in magic there is a world of difference between the two sets of proceedings. The one set is condemned by public opinion, the other is approved. To call them both "magic" is not a mere inexactitude, not a mere error of expression. It involves a falsehood as serious and as misleading as if we were to say that killing is the same thing as murder. The execution of a murderer or the destruction of the enemy by a soldier is not murder. And there is the same difference between the proceedings which, being regarded by a community as magical, are condemned by it, and the proceedings which are approved by it and are by us falsely called magical. The modus operandi is doubtless the same in the two cases, just as the modus operandi-the use of a revolver for instance-may be the same in the case of a soldier and a criminal. But from the similarity in the modus operandi nothing whatever can be inferred as to the moral value of the act or the agent. The proceeding in the one case is magical or murderous, while in the other case it is not. And it is the difference between the two sets of proceedings which is of cardinal importance, not the similarity in the modus operandi. If then we are to bear in mind this difference and keep its importance constantly in view, it will be well to reserve the term "magic" exclusively for the proceedings which excite the disapproval of the community. It will be well also to bear in mind that the disapproval is evoked by the results which "magic" is intended or supposed to produce, rather than by any theory as to the source from which the magician's power comes : whether the power be inherent in the magician or not, its supposed effects are resented by the community. If we once clearly grasp the fact that magical proceedings are those which are disapproved and resented by the community, it becomes evident that it is impossible to speak consistently of "an age of magic," meaning thereby an age in which magic alone was believed in. The impossibility reveals itself when we turn to the Australian black-fellows who are supposed to be in "the age of magic." Amongst them we find indeed the magic |