Thirteen year old Isabel Garcia was washing her clothes in a stream one day when she was approached by an old woman named Maria de Illara, who offered her money if she would do some errands for her that afternoon.  The girl agreed and Maria de Illara said she would call for her.

But the woman did not return that afternoon.  It was night when she came and Isabel was in bed with her mother.  The girl told how Maria had dragged her out of bed and rubbed some ointment on her armpits.  The next moment, Isabel had flown out the window and across town until she came to a hill called the Jaizquibel, near the chapel of Santa Barbara.

There were others there too.  It had been obvious, the girl said, that a Sabbat was taking place, and she went on to describe the meeting.

The Devil, in the form of a man but with horns and a tail, was sitting on a golden throne.  The girl was presented to him and he asked her to renounce her faith, Jesus, and her godparents. 

The members of the coven then began to dance to the music of drums, fifes and flutes.  All the dancers wore masks, but Isabel recognized several of them.  She also said she had seen the Devil engage in intercourse with women, young girls and young men.  Two hours later. Isabel was taken home.  Her mother was still asleep and had not noticed her absence.

Another thirteen year old girl, Maria de Alzueta, also testified that she had been kidnapped and taken to a Sabbat in much the same manner as Isabel.  In fact, her story was pretty much identical.            

The year was 1611, the place was Fuenterrabia, a town in the heart of the Basque country on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees.  The two girls made their sworn statements in front of the town council, who gave orders for the women mentioned in the girls’ accounts to be arrested.

There were four of them, and they promptly denied all the charges.  One of them,  Inès de Gaxen, had already been tried for witchcraft in France, but had been found not guilty.  Soon after the four had denied the charge however, 69 year old Maria de Illara asked to make a further statement, and this time she confessed to being a witch.  She admitted that she had become a witch 48 years ago, while in the service of one Joan de Tapia.

Maria confessed that she had bewitched several children, including Isabel Garcia, and that she had had intercourse with the Devil scores of times.  After her statement, more children came forward and laid accusations against the four women.  Two more subsequently confessed, the sole exception being Inès de Gaxen.

All four witches were imprisoned while the town council sent full details of the affair to Salazar de Frias, an Inquisitor of the Church, who was carrying out investigations into the alleged activities of witches in the region of Navarre.  Surprisingly, de Frias didn’t seem to be interested.  He wrote a long letter to the council, giving permission for the witches’ belongings to be returned to them, and that was all.  The council had no alternative but to release the women on condition that they left Fuenterrabia and never returned.

Salazar de Frias’s attitude was surprising, because in the previous year he had been a leading figure in a great purge of witches that had taken place at Zugarramurdi, in the northwest region of Navarre. This was one of the leading centres of witchcraft in the Basque country, and Sabbats were held in a place known as the “Field of the He Goat” just outside the town.  There was a sheer cliff at one end of the field and in it was a large cave that the witches used as their temple.  A river known as the Stream of Hell ran through this cave and above it on a ledge, stood the Devil’s throne.

The witches held ordinary ritual meetings every Friday night throughout the year, but special rituals were celebrated on the night before certain Christian festivals such as Christmas, Easter and Whitsun. The Devil himself was said to officiate on these occasions, assisted by his acolytes, and the Black Mass was said in Basque instead of Latin.

Contemporary accounts attribute a great variety of crimes to the Basque witches and the Devil, or high priest, who presided over their gatherings.  Zugarramurdi was not very far from the coast, and the witches were frequently accused of conjuring up the terrible storms that swept the Bay of Biscay, sending many a sailor to his death.  They were also accused of producing freak storms to ruin the harvest, but according to local belief, these could be silenced simply by pronouncing the name of Jesus.  In the early autumn, when a southerly wind called the Egoa was blowing, the witches were also said to use poisonous powders to ruin the crops.  Even today, the Egoa is known as the Sorguin Aizia, or wind of the witches.

The Zugarramurdi witch trial ended in November 1610, and the witches heard their sentences, which were characteristically harsh.  Eighteen repented and were reinstated in the church, but seven others were burned at the stake, as were the effigies of five more who had died under torture.

A 17^th century historian who recorded the alleged activities of witches in the Basque country, Pierre de Lancre, acted as judge in a series of trials in the Labourd region of the Pyrenees.  He was a harsh judge, but he was an excellent chronicler, and his works contain valuable descriptions of the alleged witches’ ceremonies.

De Lancre believed that Satan had chosen the Basque region to be the centre of witchcraft in Europe because it stood apart from the religious and political influences of the rest of Europe.  Even the language spoken by the people, a language that bore no comparison to any other, and whose origin is still unknown today, helped to increase the isolation.  The Basques were a turbulent and restless people, fond of magic and wild dancing, and were very superstitious as well.  Apart from that, the great majority of the men were seafarers, and absent from home for lengthy periods, and while they were away the Devil found it easy to sow the seeds of evil in the women.

When de Lancre and his witchfinders arrived in the Basque country from the French side of the frontier, thousands of people fled southwards to Spain to escape the persecution.  They were the lucky ones.  De Lancre described how, when he arrived in one parish, the local witches asked the Devil for special protection against the bonfires that were being lit all over the country by de Lancre and his men for burning witches.  The bonfires, at least, were real enough.

During his investigation, de Lancre was scandalized by the number of priests who confessed to being implicated in Satanic activities.  One priest stated that he had worsipped the Devil until 15 or 16 years earlier, when he had decided to return to the church.

The priest admitted having taken part in the rituals of the Sabbat, and signed three confessions.  As de Lancre revealed in his notes that this priest had been put to the torture, the poor priest probably would have confessed to anything if it meant his agony would come to an end.  The confession was his death warrant, he was defrocked and then burnt to death in his own town as “as example to good Christians”.

After the execution, many priests joined the ranks of those who were already on the run from de Lancre’s witch hunting activities.  Nevertheless, de Lancre succeeded in catching seven of the leading priests of the Labourd region.  Three of these were found guilty of celebrating the Black Mass and were executed.  One of the men, an independent chronicler notes, had not celebrated anything for years because he was completely mad, but it seems that de Lancre and his associates didn’t notice this fact, or if they did, they ignored it.

De Lancre’s “commission” employed the same techniques as witchfinders elsewhere in Europe.  Their accusations and trials were based on denunciations made by children, the senile, those who harboured grudges against others and those who had been tortured until they were insane.  The information de Lancre gathered in this way must have been made more suspect by the fact he spoke no Basque.

Among de Lancre’s accomplices were several quack doctors who claimed to be expert in discovering “witch marks” on the bodies of their unfortunate victims.  With the assistance of people such as these, de Lancre managed to “prove” that more than 3000 people in Labourd had the witch’s mark, an insensitive spot on the body that registered no pain when a needle was plunged into it.  Yet, although he referred to it frequently, de Lancre was unable to prove that the 2mark of the toad” existed in the witches’ eyes either.  Yet this lack of firm evidence did nothing to prevent him from sending his victims to the flames, witch marks or not.

Despite the havoc he wrought, and the innocent people he condemned to death, de Lancre was without doubt one of the most ludicrous witchfinders in Europe.  Even the brutal and ignorant Matthew Hopkins, England’s Witchfinder General, was motivated by greed, as he received a fixed sum for every witch he convicted.  De Lancre had no such motive.  He sowed a trail of terror and bloodshed throughout the Basque country because he genuinely believed that every dark shadow concealed a witch.

Whether the Basque country was in fact the hotbed of witchcraft that de Lancre and others claimed it to be is a matter for conjecture.  The fact remains, however, that witchcraft continued to be practised long after the 17^th century trials, and is still practised in many a Pyrenean village today.  Some parts of the Basque country are said to produce more witches than others.  Superstition still holds the Basque peasants in fear of witchcraft, and strangers, particularly if the speak Basque fluently, are looked upon with suspicion in many of the more remote areas, for it is believed that a witch can be detected by the manner in which he or she speaks.  Another belief is that a person can become a witch simply by owning something that has belonged to a known sorceror, or by certain acts, such as walking round a church three times.  In addition, if a person is touched by a dying witch, the witch’s powers are transmitted to that person.

The power of the witch that is most feared in the Basque country is the Evil Eye, and Basque folklore is rich in stories about this belief.  One story, dating from the early part of the 20^th century, tells how several children living in the same street in Fuenterrabia fell ill.  An old woman who walked along the street every morning was blamed for putting the Evil Eye on them.  The angry mothers of the children caught the old woman and were about to burn her when she was saved in the nick of time by some men who happened to be passing.

According to Basque tradition, the best way to lift a spell is to make a careful inspection of the mattresses in the house where the spell is working, since spells are believed to be carried in little tufts of wool taken from the stuffing of a mattress and then fashioned into the shapes of animals.  If a spell is a relatively unimportant one, a pair of scissors placed on the mattress in the form of a cross will ward it off.  If it is a powerful one, the whole mattress must be burnt to a cinder.

According to the Basques, there are various ways in which one can tell whether a witch is near, when a cock crows at an unusual time, for instance.  When that happens, the best thing to do is to throw a handful of salt on the fire, or cross the fingers of both hands.  Many Basques will not go near a cave at night, because to them caves are the traditional meeting places of witches.  Other meeting places include dolmens, freshwater springs and steep hillsides where streams flow.  The idea that witchcraft ceremonies must be practised near water is not a just a Basque superstition, however, as it extends throughout the world.

Throughout the centuries, witchcraft has been the strongest among peoples who are devoutly religious.  This is true of the Basques, and there can be little doubt that as long as the Basques retain their old traditions and some measure of independence, witchcraft will continue to be practised in the Pyrenees.

But the witchcraft of the Basques is unique in Europe, for it is not confined to a particuar cult.  There is magic behind every tree, in every stream, and it is in the hearts of the people themselves, no matter how hard they try to suppress it.  The Basques are an old and mysterious race, and it is to be devoutly wished that they remain so.