aths. They 'had all contracted this Mischief before they
came into the House'.[224] One of these girls named Bellot, aged fifteen,
said 'that her Mother had taken her with her when she was very Young, and
had even carried her in her Arms to the Witches Sabbaths'.[225] Another
girl of twelve had been in the habit of going to the Sabbath since she also
was 'very Young'. As the girls seem to have been genuinely fond of Madame
Bourignon, she obtained a considerable amount of information from them.
They told her that all worshippers of the Devil 'are constrained to offer
him their Children. When a child thus offered to the Devil by its Parents,
comes to the use of Reason, the Devil then demands its Soul, and makes it
deny God and renounce Baptism, and all relating to the Faith, promising
Homage and Fealty to the Devil in manner of a Marriage, and instead of a
Ring, the Devil gives them a Mark with an iron awl [aleine de fer] in some
part of the Body.'[226]

It is also clear that Marguerite Montvoisin[227] in Paris had been
instructed in witchcraft from an early age; but as the trial in which she
figures was for the attempted poisoning of the king and not for witchcraft,
no ceremonies of initiation or admission are recorded.

In Great Britain the ceremonies for the reception of children are not given
in any detail, though it was generally acknowledged that the witches
dedicated their children to the Devil as soon as born; and from the
evidence it appears that in many cases the witches had belonged to that
religion all their lives. It was sometimes sufficient evidence against a
woman that her mother had been a witch,[228] as it presupposed that she had
been brought up as a worshipper of the Devil.

The Anderson children in Renfrewshire were all admitted to the society at
an early age.[229] Elizabeth Anderson was only seven when she was first
asked to swear fealty to the 'black grim Man.' James Lindsay was under
fourteen, and his little brother Thomas was still 'below pupillarity' at
the time of the trial, where he declared that he had been bribed, by the
promise of a red coat, to serve 'the Gentleman, whom he knew thereafter to
be the Devil'.[230] At Forfar in 1661, Jonet Howat was so young that when
Isabel Syrie 'presented hir to the divell, the divell said, What shall I do
with such a little bairn as she?' He accepted her, however, and she was
evidently the pet of the community, the Devil calling her 'his bonny
bird'.[231]