different countries insist on the third part of the earth, the third
child born, the third soul as belonging to the 'good lady', who leads
the revel; for this right of a third, or even of a half, was one
which Freyja possessed. 'But Freyja is most famous of the Asynjor.
She has that bower in heaven hight Folkvangr, and 'whithersoever she
rideth to the battle, there hath she one half of the slain; but Odin
the other half.' Again 'when she fares abroad, she drives two cats
and sits in a car, and she lends an easy ear to the prayers of men.'
[Snorro's _Edda_, Dasent's Translation, pp. 29 (Stockholm
1842).]

We have got then the ancient goddesses identified as evil influences,
and as the leader of a midnight band of women, who practised secret
and unholy rites. This leads us at once to witchcraft. In all ages
and in all races this belief in sorcery has existed. Men and women
practised it alike, but in all times female sorcerers have
predominated. [18] This was natural enough. In those days women were
priestesses; they collected drugs and simples; women alone knew the
virtues of plants. Those soft hands spun linen, made lint, and bound
wounds. Women in the earliest times with which we are acquainted with
our forefathers, alone knew how to read and write, they only could
carve the mystic runes, they only could chant the charms so potent to
allay the wounded warrior's smart and pain. The men were busy out of
doors with ploughing, hunting, barter, and war. In such an age the
sex which possessed by natural right book-learning, physic,
soothsaying, and incantation, even when they used these mysteries for
good purposes, were but a step from sin. The same soft white hand
that bound the wound and scraped the lint; the same gentle voice that
sung the mystic rune, that helped the child-bearing woman, or drew
the arrow-head from the dying champion's breast; the same bright eye