Witchcraft is now a thing of the past, as far as England is concerned,
unless there still lingers in some very remote corners a belief in
the power for evil of some poor old body, whose only claim for such
distinction is, perhaps, her loneliness and ugliness. But in ancient
days, and even into the last century, such a belief was a very usual
thing. “Wise women,” as they were often called, who pretended they
had the power of foretelling the future, were by no means uncommon,
and even learned people and those in high positions were not ashamed
to consult them with regard to coming events. In Scotland this belief
lingered much longer than in England, and even to this day, in remote
parts of the Highlands, there are some who claim they have the gift of
“second sight”--that is, that they can see in advance events that will
happen several years hence.
The time when the present story occurred was hundreds of years ago, in
the year 1039, before William the Conqueror had come to Britain, and
when England and Scotland were entirely separate kingdoms.
The throne of Scotland was then occupied by a King called Duncan.
The country at all times was much at the mercy of Northern invaders,
and just at that period it was suffering from the inroads of the
Norwegian hosts, who, secretly aided by the traitor Thane of Cawdor,
had obtained a footing in the eastern county of Fife. But their brief
victory was changed to defeat by the valour of the Scotch Generals,
Macbeth and Banquo. Sweyn, King of Norway, was forced to sue for a
truce, and had even to pay a fine of ten thousand dollars to obtain
leave to bury his men who had fallen in the fight.
News was brought to King Duncan of the victory that had been gained
by the valour of Macbeth, and, pronouncing the doom of instant death
on the traitor Thane of Cawdor, he ordered that his title should be
bestowed as a reward on Macbeth.
* * * * *
It was a wild night, on a desolate heath near Forres. The setting
sun, low down on the horizon, cast a blood-red glow over the withered
bracken and a group of blasted fir-trees. The thunder rolled overhead,
the wind howled in long moaning gusts, the lightning flashed in jagged
streaks. But to the three strange figures that approached from
different quarters, and met in the centre of this lonely heath, such
wild weather was of no import, or, rather, it suited well with their
grim and sinister mood. Children of the night, their deeds were those
of darkness. The wholesome sunlight and the breath of day made them
shrink and cower in secret lurking-places, but when midnight veiled
the sky they stole out to their unholy revels, or on the wings of the
tempest they rode forth, bringing death or disaster to all who crossed
their track.
“Where hast thou been, sister?” asked the first witch.
And the second replied: “Killing swine.”
“Sister, where thou?” asked the third witch.
“A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap, and munched, and munched,
and munched,” said the first witch. “‘Give me,’ quoth I. ‘Aroint thee,
witch!’ the pampered creature cried. Her husband’s to Aleppo gone,
master of the _Tiger_; but in a sieve I’ll thither sail, and, like a
rat without a tail, I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do,” ended the witch
spitefully.
“I’ll give thee a wind,” said the second witch.
“Thou art kind.”
“And I another,” said the third witch.
“I myself have all the other,” continued the first witch, gloating
over the revenge she intended to take on the husband of the woman who
had repulsed her, and she continued in a sort of chant:
“And the very ports they blow,
All the quarters that they know
In the shipman’s card.
I will drain him dry as hay;
Sleep shall neither night nor day
Hang upon his pent-house lid;
He shall live a man forbid:
Weary seven-nights nine times nine
Shall he dwindle, peak and pine:
Though his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-tost.
Look what I have.”
“Show me, show me!” cried the second witch eagerly.
“Here I have a pilot’s thumb,
Wrecked as homeward he did come.”
At this moment across the heath came the roll of a drum and the tramp
of marching feet.
“A drum, a drum! Macbeth doth come!” cried the third witch.
Then the three fearsome creatures, linking hands, solemnly performed a
wild dance, waving their skinny arms in strange gestures, and uttering
a discordant wail:
“The weird sisters, hand in hand,
Posters of the sea and land,
Thus do go about, about;
Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,
And thrice again to make up nine.
Peace! The charm’s wound up.”
Macbeth and Banquo, marching across the heath on their way home, after
the campaign with the Norwegians, were startled at the sight of these
three uncanny figures barring their path.
“What are these, so withered and so wild in their attire, that look
not like the inhabitants of earth, and yet are on it?” said Banquo.
“Are you alive? Or are you anything that man may question?”
“Speak, if you can; what are you?” said Macbeth.
And the three witches answered by saluting him, each in turn:
“All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!”
“All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!”
“All hail, Macbeth! Thou shalt be King hereafter.”
“Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear things that do sound so
fair?” said Banquo, for Macbeth stood as if rapt in a dream, amazed at
what he heard.
Then Banquo asked the witches, if indeed they could look into the
future, to say something to him, who neither begged nor feared their
favours nor their hate.
The witches thereupon replied:
“Hail!” “Hail!” “Hail!”
“Lesser than Macbeth and greater!”
“Not so happy, yet much happier!”
“Thou shalt beget Kings, though thou be none. So all hail, Macbeth and
Banquo!”
“Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!”
Macbeth would fain have questioned these mysterious creatures further,
but not a word more would they speak. By the death of a relative, he
was certainly Thane of Glamis, but, as far as he knew, the Thane of
Cawdor lived, an honourable gentleman, for Macbeth had not yet heard
of his treachery, and how his title was forfeited. And to be King
stood not within the prospect of belief, no more than to be Thane of
Cawdor. But when Macbeth again charged the witches to speak, they
vanished, seeming almost to melt like bubbles into the misty twilight
from which they had emerged.
The two victorious generals stood and looked at each other, mute for
awhile with awe and wonder. They had fought with armed hosts on the
field of battle, but here was a mystery which might amaze the stoutest
heart. The poison was already beginning to work. Deeply ambitious
at heart, though lacking in resolution to cut his way ruthlessly to
the highest goal, the witches’ words had found a ready welcome in
Macbeth’s secret desires. But not yet could he openly avow them.
“Your children shall be Kings,” he said to Banquo; and back came the
answer which perhaps he was longing to hear:
“You shall be King!”
“And Thane of Cawdor, too, went it not so?” he asked, with a
half-assumed air of incredulity.
“To the self-same tune and words,” said Banquo.
The mysterious greeting of the witches now received strange
confirmation, for messengers arrived from King Duncan, bringing news
that the Thane of Cawdor had been condemned to death for treason, and
that his title and estate were conferred on Macbeth. Such an instant
proof of the witches’ powers of divination could not fail to fill
Macbeth’s mind with strange imaginings.
“Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor!” he murmured to himself. “The greatest
is behind.” Then he spoke to Banquo apart: “Do you not hope your
children shall be Kings, when those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to
me promised no less to them?”
But Banquo’s nature was less easily carried away than Macbeth’s. He
warned him that it was dangerous to put any trust in doers of evil;
often to win people to their harm they would tell truth in trifles,
in order to betray them in matters of the deepest consequence.
Macbeth scarcely paid any attention to what Banquo said. His thoughts
were fixed now on one idea. The witches had foretold truly that he
should be Thane of Cawdor when there seemed no likelihood of such an
event taking place. Why, then, should they not have spoken equal truth
when they foretold a higher honour?
A dreadful idea was already beginning to take shape in Macbeth’s mind.
At first he shrank from it in horror, but again and again it came back
with renewed force. At last he tried resolutely to thrust it from him.
“If chance will have me King, why, chance may crown me, without my
stir,” he said to himself. Then, with the feeling that he would leave
events to work out as fate chose, he added: “Come what come may, time
and the hour runs through the roughest day.”
But even yet he could not put the matter from him, and determine to
think no more about it, as a wise man would have done. He wanted to
reflect over what had passed, and discuss it again with Banquo.
“Let us go to the King,” he said to Banquo; for the messengers had
come to summon him to Duncan, in order to receive his thanks for the
victory. “We will think over what has chanced, and later on, having
in the meanwhile pondered it, let us speak our hearts freely to each
other.”
“Very gladly,” agreed Banquo.
“Till then, enough,” said Macbeth. “Come, friends;” and away he went
with Banquo and the other lords to receive his new honours from the
King’s hands.