Nutter woman.[1]

We have all the elements here of a mountain feud; but, in place of the
revolvers and Kentucky moonshine of to-day, we have clay images and
Satanic banquets. The battles were to be fought out with imps of Hell as
participants and with ammunition supplied by the Evil One himself. It
was this connection with a reservoir of untouched demoniacal powers that
made the quarrel of the miserable mountaineers the most celebrated
incident in Lancashire story. Here were charmers and "inchanters,"
experienced dealers in magic, struggling against one another. Small
wonder that the community became alarmed and that Roger Nowell, justice
of the peace, suddenly swooped down upon the Pendle families. It was but
a short time before he had four women cooped up in Lancaster castle. In
a few days more he was able to get confessions out of them. They
admitted acquaintance with the Devil and implicated one another.

Now comes the strange part of the story. According to confessions made
later, Elizabeth Device, not yet shut up, but likely to be at any time,
called a meeting on Good Friday of all the witches in Pendle forest.
They were to come to her home at Malking Tower to plot the delivery of
the imprisoned women by the blowing up of Lancaster castle.[2] The
affair took the form of a dinner; and beef, bacon, and roasted mutton
were served. "All the witches went out of the said House in their owne
shapes and likenesses. And they all, by that they were forth of the
dores, gotten on Horsebacke, like unto Foales, some of one colour, some
of another; and Preston's wife was the last; and, when shee got on
Horsebacke, they all presently vanished out of ... sight." This was the
story, and the various witnesses agreed remarkably well as to its main
details. Those who believed in the "sabbath" of witches must have felt
their opinions confirmed by the testimony of the witnesses at Lancaster.
Even the modern reader, with his skepticism, is somewhat daunted by the
cumulative force of what purports to be the evidence and would fain
rationalize it by supposing that some sort of a meeting actually did
take place at Malking Tower and that some Pendle men and women who had
delved in magic arts till they believed in them did formulate plans for
revenge. But this is not a probable supposition. The concurring evidence
in the Malking Tower story is of no more compelling character than that
to be found in a multitude of Continental stories of witch