BELTANE CHANT ONE
Here we come a piping,
In Springtime and in May;
Green fruit aripening,
And Winter fled away.
The Queen she sits upon the strand,
Fair as lily, white as wand;
Seven billows on the sea,
Horses riding fast and free,
And bells beyond the sand.

Valiente, Doreen; "Witchcraft for Tomorrow"; Phoenix Publishing 1985

BELTANE CHANT TWO

The High Priestess and High Priest lead a ring dance around the bonfire. Start out with "A Tree Song" from Rudyard Kipling's "Weland's Sword" story in "Puck of Pook's Hill".

"Oh, do not tell the Priest of our Art,
Or he would call it sin;
But we shall be out in the woods all night,
A conjuring summer in!
And we bring you news by word of mouth
For women, cattle and corn
Now is the dun come up from the South
With Oak, and Ash and Thorn!"

Farrar, Janet and Stewart; "Eight Sabbats For Witches"; Robert Hale 1983

STAG CALL also MAYCHANT THREE
The men gather around the fire, next to their partners, and they say in unison:

"I am the stag of seven tines;
I am a wide flood on the plain;
I am a wind on the deep waters;
I am a shining tear of the sun;
I am a hawk on a cliff;
I am fair among flowers;
I am a god who sets the head afire with smoke."

Graves, Robert; "The White Goddess"; Farrar 197

Many of the witch suspects have left confessions behind. The prosecutors required confessions before they could execute a witch. But what did the witch suspects actually confess to doing? They confessed to meeting a man in black that they believed was the devil. Few of them confess to anything supernatural except for Helen Guthrie and Isobel Shyrie, who claimed she murdered Bailie George Wood by giving him a drink containing powder dead man’s skull and flesh. Elspeth Bruce, singled out as a pretty woman, admitted to preparing a roast goose for the devil.

The witch suspects were held in Forfar’s tolbooth in appalling conditions. They were arrested at the start of winter and yet were kept in cold dark conditions. They were deprived of sleep, warmth and light for weeks if not months on end. They were also prodded all over their bodies with long thin pins to discover their witches mark. John Kincaid from Tranent was hired to conduct the proddings. Forfar presented him with an honorary burgess-ship as a reward for his work. Some witch prodders were discovered to be charlatans who used retractable pins in order to "manufacture" a witch. One Mr Paterson from Inverness was actually a woman.Confessions were not freely obtained from witch suspects. It was common to use what we would now call torture to get confessions of guilt from the accused. Any museum in any Scottish burgh will have thumbscrews and a branks, or scold’s bridle as it is also known, a device for depressing the tongue and keeping suspects.

There were also a number of more subtle torture’s used on Scottish witch suspects such as waking and light deprivation. In "waking" or sleep deprivation witch suspects were deliberately kept from sleeping. Local guards took turns to stay in the tolbooth with the suspects. If the women fell asleep it was the job of the guards to march the women up and down the prison to keep them from sleeping. This process continued until they made a confession. After a number of nights without rest people would do anything to be allowed to sleep. It can also cause hallucinations. Light deprivation can have much the same effect. Although it was winter the women were not allowed a candle to see by or a fire to warm themselves. If they had access to a naked flame the witch hunters believed that they would use their magical powers to summon the devil to set them free.