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Weird midnight orgies and mystic conjurations were invoked, the witch-woman and the voodoo-priest became the centre of Negro group life, and that vein of vague superstition which characterizes the unlettered Negro even to-day was deepened and strengthened.
Then he bade them put a seat for Theseus, and set before him the best of the feast; and Theseus sat and ate so much, that all the company wondered at him: but always he kept his club by his side. But Medeia the dark witch-woman had been watching him all the while. She saw how AEgeus turned red and pale when the lad said that he came from Troezene.
In Manuel's sandals the average person would have reflected, long before this, that Manuel and his wife and child were in this sorcerous place at the mercy of the whims and the unwholesome servitors of this not very dependable looking witch-woman.
That was in the year before Flodden Field, a hot, dry time that began with Lady Day and lasted till the Feast of All Souls without rain or storm. In that hot summer a witch-woman, very beautiful, had come to Lashnagar to win the soul of Andrew Lashcairn, winning with his soul his bed and his board. A wild wooing it was, and a wilder wedding.
As they neared what is now known as Prospect Point they heard from the heights above them a laugh, and looking up they beheld the witch-woman jeering defiantly at them.
She dared not try to get news of him, for she was sure her husband would find out if she did: she had an idea that he could find out anything. Even when a witch-woman who was a noted seer, and could show you the whole world in her crystal, came to the castle for a night's shelter, and the maids flocked to her, Anne held back. The winter was long and black and rainy.
"But she will be in good time," urged Laurence, "and she must persuade the Lady Margaret of my many and surprising virtues." "The Lady Margaret hath doubtless seen these for herself. Were you not bound beside her on the iron altar?" said Sholto. "Yes, but I dirked the old witch-woman, or so they say. And that was no clerkly action!" objected his brother.
"An' Goodwife Gosling seizing it, an' mindful of her being a witch-woman, calling on the name of God, straightway there fell out of the child's blanket a great toad which exploded in the fire like any gunpowder, an' the room that full o' smoke an' brimstone as none could Save us! What's that!" cried Gammer. What, indeed! That cry this rush along the passageway!
This witch-woman herself was immune from death; generations were born and grew to old age, and died, and other generations arose in their stead, but the witch-woman went about, her heart set against her kind; her acts were evil, her purposes wicked, she broke hearts and bodies, and souls; she gloried in tears, and revelled in unhappiness, and sent them broadcast wherever she wandered.
To your files there pikes to the front and rear, bows to the flanks forward!" But now, as with a ring and clash and tramp of feet the ragged company fell into rank and order, the witch-woman came swiftly beside Beltane and, touching him not, spake softly in his ear. "Beltane Beltane, lord Duke of Pentavalon!" Now hereupon Beltane started, and turning, looked upon her grave-eyed.
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