‘You are thinking that I am riding my hobby-horn a little hard,’ he said – beaming at my guilty start – ‘and I confess to finding the subject almost unwholesomely engaging.’

I mumbled a few disclaimers which he waved aside.

‘The words “hobby-horse” and “levitation”,’ he resumed, ‘bring us to the next point, the riding-jollop.’

How’s that again?’

‘Riding-jollop. There are many names for it but the formulae are all very similar. It is the pungent mixture a witch smears on his or her body before going to the Sabbat. The greasy base stops up the pores and thus subtly alters the body’s chemistry, another ingredient reddens and excites the skin, while the bizarre stench – added to the guilty knowledge of what the jollop is made of – heightens the witch’s impure excitement to the point where he knows that he can fly. In the case of she-witches, a canter round the kitchen with the broom-stick between her legs adds a little extra elation, no doubt.’

‘No doubt,’ I agreed.

‘Whether any of them succeeds in flying is an open question: it is their certain conviction that they can that is important. Do you care to know the ingredients of the jollop?’

‘No thanks. My dinner sits a little queasily on my stomach as it is.’

‘You are probably wise. By the bye, did you happen to notice in your local paper that any new-born babies had been missing shortly before Easter?’

“Whatever has that – ?’ I said. ‘Oh, yes, I see; how very nasty. Do they really? No, I wouldn’t have noticed that sort of thing. People shouldn’t have babies if they’re not prepared to look after them is what my old nanny used to say.’

‘You might just check, dear boy. It would have been in the dark of the moon before Easter. But of course it might have been the sort of baby which doesn’t get recorded. You know, “ditch-delivered of a drab”.’

‘Just so. “Eye of newt and blood of bat”.’

‘Precisely. But try. Now we come to the toads. I’ve always felt that Jersey’s particular fondness for toads might indicate that it was perhaps the last outpost of the Old Religion, for the toad was easily the most popular Familiar for witches. The warts on its skin, you see, remind one of the extra nipples which every she-witch was supposed to have and that goes back (am I boring you, dear boy? How is your glass?) that goes back to the polymastia or superfluity of breasts of the ancients. I need not remind you of Diana of the Ephesians, who must have looked like a fir-cone, as dear Jim Cabell pointed out.’

‘But I thought that the cat was the favourite familiar? I mean, Grimalkin and all that?’