Anyone who grew up on Guernsey's west coast in the nineteenth century knew the Catioroc had a bad name. MacCulloch called it "the midnight haunt of our witches and wizards", and wrote that the neighbourhood of L'Erée "has never borne a very high character". The witches met there every Friday night, with larger gatherings on St Thomas's night, the longest night of the year, and on Christmas Eve. Their master sat in state on the capstone of Le Trépied and took their homage. People said they could hear the cry "Har-hèri! Qué-hou-hou! Sabbat! Sabbat!" on stormy nights as the witches flew overhead. Round the stones they sang "Qué-hou-hou, Marie Lihou", which people took as a jeer at Our Lady of Lihou, whose ruined priory stands on the islet just offshore.
The stories gathered around the place grew over time. In one, a peasant and his wife caught by a storm on a Friday night sheltered in a ruined house near the Catioroc, hid in the bread oven, and overheard a gathering of wizards discussing how to cure the sick daughter of the King of England. They passed on the cure and were paid enough to buy a farm. A greedy neighbour who hid in the same oven the next Friday was found and made to swear himself to the Devil. Another story, told to Edith Carey in the 1890s, concerned a French farm servant at St Saviour's who was followed one night to the Catioroc. His master saw him lie down in a field and a small bluish flame come out of his mouth and wander off across the fields. The body lay rigid until the flame came back. An old nurse told Carey that when she was young, an old woman seen in town wearing red stockings would be pointed out as "one of the witches of the Catioroc".
MacCulloch connected the place with the trials held under the Bailiff Amias de Carteret in the early 1600s, saying the accused confessed to dancing there on Friday nights in honour of a gigantic black cat or goat called "Baal-Bérith" or "Barberi". Those trials were real, and dozens of people were hanged, burned or banished. The confessions he printed in full, though, from the 1617 case against Collette Du Mont and her family, name a different meeting ground at Torteval churchyard and on the shore near Rocquaine Castle. The Catioroc may well have been named in other confessions that do not survive in print. It is fair to say only that by the nineteenth century island memory had settled on this headland as the witches' place.
Le Trépied still stands on the headland beside the coast road and is easy to visit. Tour guides and local writers still retell the Friday-night stories there.
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