сн. xii Whether Witches are Really Transported from Place to Place to their Nightly Assemblies

(...) the Fifth Book of the Ameid) says that it is the middle of the night: Macrc-bius* that it is just after midnight; since such time is aptest to the Prince of Darkness for his dealings with men, being an uncouth and vacant time. And, to return to the subject of the cock crow, Remy in the same place says that he had it in judicial examination from a witch named Latoma that nothing more baleful and hostile to them could happen than that the cock should crow while they were still about their business. Johann Pul-mer and his wife Desideria, both of them witches, likewise deposed in Court that their Masters often used to cry out, when it was nearly time to break up the Sabbat: "Now go quickly away all, for the cocks begin to crow." And this can only mean that they are unable to prolong their business any further. But I know not the reason of their fear of the cock crow. From Pliny and Aelian I know that the cock crow is feared by lions and Scolobendrat. Also that it portends much when they crow out of time during the night, as Zacchia da Volte rr a ! (Philotogiae, librc 25) records it to have happened on the birth night of the eldest son of Matteo Visconti the Great, Lord of Milan: for on that night the cocks did not cease from crowing to the point of tediousness, and therefore the child was named Gale-azzo, and grew up to great eloquence and military glory, as Paolo Giovio tells.

Remy (I, 16) tells that the witches themselves assert that a great number of both sexes meet at their nocturnal Sabbats, but that there are far more women than men. This was affirmed by Barbellina Raid of Blain-ville-la-Grande on the 13th January, 1587. In 1585 Jeanne de Bans and Nicole Ganette from the town of Mainz in Lorraine said that they were sometimes present among so great a number of witches that they felt no small pity for the human race when they saw it assailed by so many enemies and betrayers, and that it was indeed (...)