From Bannatyne, continuing with Appalachian lore:
"Because the German backwoodsmen brought the witchlore of the Continent instead of England - that of Europe being more vivid and sensational of the two - there was a much larger proportion of sabbath meeting tales in the region.
Take, for example, the backwoods tale of a man who made the mistake of living with a woman and her daughter, known to be witches. He watched them prepare for their sabbath meeting and tried to follow them by duplicating their rituals. They smeared themselves with grease from a dish, chanted a rhyme, mounted black calves, and rode away through the night to a sabbath full of dancing and singing.
By 1900, accounts of witch sabbaths in the Appalachians had grown curiously American - no more the drunkenness or infant murdering of medieval European sabbaths; witches in Appalachia simply had a good old time. The following sabbath description is from a "Jack" tale, "Jack and the Witches", and reads more like a Halloween play-party than a sacrilegious feast:
Well, inside that house it was all lit up, and the fastest music you ever heard was goin', and the witches were laughin' and shoutin' and dancin' up and down and around and around, circlin' first one way and then another, and swingin' and sashayin' across the middle - cuttin' all kinds of shines! Jack leaned back against the wall and had him a time watchin' all that.
Heh. Yeah, "had a time watchin' all that" is one heck of a euphemism, if'n ya ask me.
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