WITCHES.
In years gone by witchcraft was one of the grossest forms of
superstition, and it would be difficult to estimate the extent of its
influence in this and other countries. It is not surprising that
Shakespeare should have made frequent allusions to this popular belief,
considering how extensively it prevailed in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries; the religious and dramatic literature of the
period being full of it. Indeed, as Mr. Williams[46] points out, "what
the vulgar superstition must have been may be easily conceived, when men
of the greatest genius or learning credited the possibility, and not
only a theoretical but possible occurrence, of these infernal
phenomena." Thus, Francis Bacon was "not able to get rid of the
principles upon which the creed was based. Sir Edward Coke, his
contemporary, the most acute lawyer of the age, ventured even to define
the devil's agents in witchcraft. Sir Thomas Browne and Sir Matthew
Hale, in 1664, proved their faith--the one by his solemn testimony in
open court, the other by his still more solemn sentence." Hence, it was
only to be expected that Shakespeare should introduce into his writings
descriptions of a creed which held such a prominent place in the history
of his day, and which has made itself famous for all time by the
thousands of victims it caused to be sent to the torture-chamber, to the
stake, and to the scaffold. Thus he has given a graphic account of the
celebrated Jeanne D'Arc, the Maid of Orleans, in "1 Henry VI.," although
Mr. Dowden[47] is of opinion that this play was written by one or more
authors, Greene having had, perhaps, a chief hand in it, assisted by
Peele and Marlowe. He says, "It is a happiness not to have to ascribe to
our greatest poet the crude and hateful handling of the character of
Joan of Arc, excused though to some extent it may be by the occurrence
of view in our old English chronicles."
[46] "Superstitions of Witchcraft," 1865, p. 220.
[47] "Shakspere Primer," 1877, p. 63.
Mr. Lecky,[48] too, regards the conception of Joan of Arc given in "1
Henry VI." as "the darkest blot upon the poet's genius," but it must be
remembered that we have only expressed the current belief of his day--the
English vulgar having regarded her as a sorceress, the French as an
inspired heroine. Talbot is represented as accusing her of being a
witch, serving the Evil One, and entering Rouen by means of her
sorceries (iii. 2):
"France, thou shalt rue this treason with thy tears,
If Talbot but survive thy treachery.
Pucelle, that witch, that damned sorceress,
Hath wrought this hellish mischief unawares,
That hardly we escaped the pride of France."
[48] "Rationalism in Europe," 1870, vol. i. p. 106.
Further on (v. 3) she is made to summon fiends before her, but she
wishes them in vain, for they speak not, hanging their heads in sign of
approaching disaster.
"Now help, ye charming spells and periapts;
And ye choice spirits that admonish me
And give me signs of future accidents.
You speedy helpers, that are substitutes
Under the lordly monarch of the north,
Appear and aid me in this enterprise."
But she adds:
"See, they forsake me! Now the time is come
That France must vail her lofty-plumed crest,
And let her head fall into England's lap.
My ancient incantations are too weak,
And hell too strong for me to buckle with:
Now, France, thy glory droopeth to the dust."
Finally, convicted of practising sorcery, and filling "the world with
vicious qualities," she was condemned to be burned. Her death, however,
Sir Walter Scott[49] says, "was not, we are sorry to say, a sacrifice to
superstitious fear of witchcraft, but a cruel instance of wicked policy,
mingled with national jealousy and hatred. The Duke of Bedford, when the
ill-starred Jeanne fell into his hands, took away her life in order to
stigmatize her memory with sorcery, and to destroy the reputation she
had acquired among the French."
[49] "Demonology and Witchcraft," 1881, pp. 192, 193.
The cases of the Duchess of Gloucester and of Jane Shore, also
immortalized by Shakespeare, are both referred to in the succeeding
pages.
The Witch of Brentford, mentioned by Mrs. Page in "The Merry Wives of
Windsor" (iv. 2), was an actual personage, the fame, says Staunton,[50]
of whose vaticinations must have been traditionally well known to an
audience of the time, although the records we possess of her are scant
enough. The chief of them is a black-letter tract, printed by William
Copland in the middle of the sixteenth century, entitled "Jyl of
Braintford's Testament," from which it appears she was hostess of a
tavern at Brentford.[51] One of the characters in Dekker and Webster's
"Westward Ho"[52] says, "I doubt that old hag, Gillian of Brainford, has
bewitched me."
[50] "Shakespeare," 1864, vol ii. p. 161.
[51] See Dyce's "Glossary," p. 51.
[52] Webster's Works, edited by Dyce, 1857, p. 238.
The witches in "Macbeth" are probably Scottish hags. As Mr. Gunnyon
remarks,[53] "They are hellish monsters, brewing hell-broth, having cats
and toads for familiars, loving midnight, riding on the passing storm,
and devising evil against such as offend them. They crouch beneath the
gibbet of the murderer, meet in gloomy caverns, amid earthquake
convulsions, or in thunder, lightning, and rain." Coleridge, speaking of
them, observes that "the weird sisters are as true a creation of
Shakespeare's as his Ariel and Caliban--fates, fairies, and materializing
witches being the elements. They are wholly different from any
representation of witches in the contemporary writers, and yet
presented a sufficient external resemblance to the creatures of vulgar
prejudice to act immediately on the audience. Their character consists
in the imaginative disconnected from the good, they are the shadowy
obscure and fearfully anomalous of physical nature, elemental avengers
without sex or kin."
[53] "Illustrations of Scottish History, Life, and
Superstition," 1879, p. 322.
It has been urged, however, by certain modern critics, that these three
sisters, "who play such an important part in 'Macbeth,' are not witches
at all, but are, or are intimately allied to, the Norns or Fates of
Scandinavian paganism."[54] Thus, a writer in the _Academy_ (Feb. 8,
1879) thinks that Shakespeare drew upon Scandinavian mythology for a
portion of the material he used in constructing these characters, and
that he derived the rest from the traditions of contemporary witchcraft;
in fact, that the "sisters" are hybrids between Norns and witches. The
supposed proof of this is that each sister exercises the special
function of one of the Norns. "The third," it is said, "is the special
prophetess, while the first takes cognizance of the past, and the second
of the present, in affairs connected with humanity. These are the tasks
of Urda, Verdandi, and Skulda. The first begins by asking, 'When shall
we three meet again?' The second decides the time: 'When the battle's
lost and won.' The third the future prophesies: 'That will be ere the
set of sun.' The first again asks, 'Where?' The second decides: 'Upon
the heath.' The third the future prophesies: 'There to meet with
Macbeth.'"
[54] Spalding's "Elizabethan Demonology," 1880, p. 86.
It is further added that the description of the sisters given by Banquo
(i. 3) applies to Norns rather than witches:
"What are these
So wither'd and so wild in their attire,
That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,
And yet are on't? Live you? or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me,
By each at once her chappy finger laying
Upon her skinny lips: you should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so."
But, as Mr. Spalding truly adds, "a more accurate poetical counterpart
to the prose descriptions given by contemporary writers of the
appearance of the poor creatures who were charged with the crime of
witchcraft could hardly have been penned." Scot, for instance, in his
"Discovery of Witchcraft" (book i. chap. iii. 7), says: "They are women
which commonly be old, lame, bleare-eied, pale, fowle, and full of
wrinkles; they are leane and deformed, showing melancholie in their
faces." Harsnet, too, in his "Declaration of Popish Impostures" (1603,
p. 136), speaks of a witch as "an old weather-beaten crone, having her
chin and knees meeting for age, walking like a bow, leaning on a staff,
hollow-eyed, un-toothed, furrowed, having her limbs trembling with
palsy, going mumbling in the streets; one that hath forgotten her
paternoster, yet hath a shrewd tongue to call a drab a drab."
The beard, also, to which Shakespeare refers in the passage above, was
the recognized characteristic of the witch. Thus, in the "Honest Man's
Fortune" (ii. 1), it is said, "The women that come to us for disguises
must wear beards, and that's to say a token of a witch." In the "Merry
Wives of Windsor" (iv. 2), Sir Hugh Evans says of the disguised
Falstaff: "By yea and no, I think the 'oman is a witch indeed: I like
not when a 'oman has a great peard; I spy a great peard under her
muffler."
It seems probable, then, that witches are alluded to by Shakespeare in
"Macbeth," the contemporary literature on the subject fully supporting
this theory. Again, by his introduction of Hecate among the witches in
"Macbeth" (iii. 5), Shakespeare has been censured for confounding
ancient with modern superstitions. But the incongruity is found in all
the poets of the Renaissance. Hecate, of course, is only another name
for Diana. "Witchcraft, in truth, is no modern invention. Witches were
believed in by the vulgar in the time of Horace as implicitly as in the
time of Shakespeare. And the belief that the pagan gods were really
existent as evil demons is one which has come down from the very
earliest ages of Christianity."[55] As far back as the fourth century,
the Council of Ancyra is said to have condemned the pretensions of
witches; that in the night-time they rode abroad or feasted with their
mistress, who was one of the pagan goddesses, Minerva, Sibylla, or
Diana, or else Herodias.[56] In Middleton's "Witch," Hecate is the name
of one of his witches, and she has a son a low buffoon. In Jonson's "Sad
Shepherd" (ii. 1) Maudlin the witch calls Hecate, the mistress of
witches, "Our dame Hecate." While speaking of the witches in "Macbeth,"
it may be pointed out that[57] "the full meaning of the first scene is
the fag-end of a witch's Sabbath, which, if fully represented, would
bear a strong resemblance to the scene at the commencement of the fourth
act. But a long scene on such a subject would be tedious and
uninteresting at the commencement of the play. The audience is therefore
left to assume that the witches have met, performed their conjurations,
obtained from the evil spirits the information concerning Macbeth's
career that they desired to obtain, and perhaps have been commanded by
the fiends to perform the mission they subsequently carry through."
Brand[58] describes this "Sabbath of the witches as a meeting to which
the sisterhood, after having been anointed with certain magical
ointments, provided by their infernal leader, are supposed to be carried
through the air on brooms," etc. It was supposed to be held on a
Saturday, and in past centuries this piece of superstition was most
extensively credited, and was one of the leading doctrines associated
with the system of witchcraft.
[55] "Notes to Macbeth" (Clark and Wright), 1877, p. 137.
[56] Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584, book iii. chap.
16. See Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 235.
[57] "Elizabethan Demonology," pp. 102, 103. See Conway's
"Demonology and Devil-lore," vol. ii. p. 253.
[58] "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 8.
Referring, in the next place, to the numerous scattered notices of
witches given by Shakespeare throughout his plays, it is evident that he
had made himself thoroughly acquainted with the superstitions connected
with the subject, many of which he has described with the most minute
accuracy. It appears, then, that although they were supposed to possess
extraordinary powers, which they exerted in various ways, yet these were
limited, as in the case of Christmas night, when, we are told in
"Hamlet" (i. 1), "they have no power to charm." In spite, too, of their
being able to assume the form of any animal at pleasure, the tail was
always wanting. In "Macbeth" (i. 3), the first witch says:
"And, like a rat without a tail,
I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do."
One distinctive mark, also, of a were-wolf, or human being changed into
a wolf, was the absence of a tail. The cat was said to be the form most
commonly assumed by the familiar spirits of witches; as, for instance,
where the first witch says, "I come, Graymalkin!"[59] (i. 1), and
further on (iv. 1), "Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd." In German
legends and traditions we find frequent notice of witches assuming the
form of a cat, and displaying their fiendish character in certain
diabolical acts. It was, however, the absence of the tail that only too
often was the cause of the witch being detected in her disguised form.
There were various other modes of detecting witches: one being "the
trial by the stool," to which an allusion is made in "Troilus and
Cressida" (ii. 1), where Ajax says to Thersites,
"Thou stool for a witch!"
--a practice which is thus explained in Grey's "Notes" (ii. 236): "In one
way of trying a witch, they used to place her upon a chair or a stool,
with her legs tied cross, that all the weight of her body might rest
upon her seat, and by that means, after some time, the circulation of
the blood would be much stopped, and her sitting would be as painful as
the wooden horse; and she must continue in this pain twenty-four hours,
without either sleep or meat; and it was no wonder that, when they were
tired out with such an ungodly trial, they would confess themselves many
times guilty to free themselves from such torture."
[59] Graymalkin--a gray cat.
Again, it was a part of the system of witchcraft that drawing blood
from a witch rendered her enchantments ineffectual. Thus, in "1 Henry
VI." (i. 5), Talbot says to the Maid of Orleans:
"I'll have a bout with thee;
Devil or devil's dam, I'll conjure thee:
Blood will I draw on thee, thou art a witch."
An instance of this superstition occurred some years ago in a Cornish
village, when a man was summoned before the bench of magistrates and
fined, for having assaulted the plaintiff and scratched her with a pin.
Indeed, this notion has by no means died out. As recently as the year
1870, a man eighty years of age was fined at Barnstaple, in Devonshire,
for scratching with a needle the arm of a young girl. He pleaded that he
had "suffered affliction" through her for five years, had had four
complaints on him at once, had lost fourteen canaries, and about fifty
goldfinches, and that his neighbors told him this was the only way to
break the spell and get out of her power.[60]
[60] Henderson's "Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," p. 181.
It was, also, a popular belief that a great share of faith was a
protection from witchcraft. Hence, in the "Comedy of Errors" (iii. 2),
Dromio of Syracuse says of Nell:
"if my breast had not been made of faith and my heart of steel,
She had transform'd me to a curtail-dog, and made me turn i' the
wheel."
In order, moreover, to check the power of witches, it was supposed to be
necessary to propitiate them, a ceremony which was often performed. It
is alluded to further on in the same play (iv. 3), where Dromio of
Syracuse says--
"Some devils ask but the parings of one's nail,
A rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin,
A nut, a cherry-stone;"
and in "Macbeth" we read of their being propitiated by gifts of blood.
Witches were supposed to have the power of creating storms and other
atmospheric disturbances--a notion to which much prominence is given in
"Macbeth." Thus, the witches elect to meet in thunder, lightning, or
rain. They are represented as being able to loose and bind the winds (v.
3), to cause vessels to be tempest-tossed at sea. Hence Macbeth
addresses them (iv. 1):
"Though you untie the winds, and let them fight
Against the churches; though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up;
Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down;
Though castles topple on their warders' heads;
Though palaces and pyramids do slope
Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure
Of nature's germins tumble all together,
Even till destruction sicken."
Thus, by way of illustration, we may quote a curious confession made in
Scotland, about the year 1591, by Agnes Sampson, a reputed witch. She
vowed that "at the time his majesty [James VI.] was in Denmark, she took
a cat and christened it, and afterwards bound to each part of that cat
the chiefest parts of a dead man, and several joints of his body; and
that in the night following, the said cat was conveyed into the midst of
the sea, by herself and other witches, sailing in their riddles, or
crieves, and so left the said cat right before the town of Leith, in
Scotland. This done, there arose such a tempest in the sea, as a greater
hath not been seen, which tempest was the cause of the perishing of a
boat or vessel coming from the town of Brunt Island to the town of
Leith, wherein were sundry jewels and rich gifts, which should have been
presented to the new Queen of Scotland at his majesty's coming to Leith.
Again, it is confessed that the said christened cat was the cause of the
king's majesty's ship, at his coming forth of Denmark, having a contrary
wind to the rest of the ships then being in his company, which thing was
most strange and true, as the king's majesty acknowledged." It is to
this circumstance that Shakespeare probably alludes in "Macbeth" (i. 3),
where he makes the witch say:
"Though his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-toss'd."
Witches were also believed to be able to sell or give winds, a notion
thus described in Drayton's "Moon-Calf" (865):
"She could sell winds to any one that would
Buy them for money, forcing them to hold
What time she listed, tie them in a thread,
Which ever as the seafarer undid
They rose or scantled, as his sails would drive
To the same port whereas he would arrive."
So, in "Macbeth" (i. 3):
"_2 Witch._ I'll give thee a wind.
_1 Witch._ Thou'rt kind.
_3 Witch._ And I another."
Singer quotes from Sumner's "Last Will and Testament:"
"In Ireland, and in Denmark both,
Witches for gold will sell a man a wind,
Which, in the corner of a napkin wrapp'd,
Shall blow him safe unto what coast he will."
At one time the Finlanders and Laplanders drove a profitable trade by
the sale of winds. After being paid they knitted three magical knots,
and told the buyer that when he untied the first he would have a good
gale; when the second, a strong wind; and when the third, a severe
tempest.[61]
[61] Olaus Magnus's "History of the Goths," 1638, p. 47. See
note to "The Pirate."
The sieve, as a symbol of the clouds, has been regarded among all
nations of the Aryan stock as the mythical vehicle used by witches,
nightmares, and other elfish beings in their excursions over land and
sea.[62] Thus, the first witch in "Macbeth" (i. 3), referring to the
scoff which she had received from a sailor's wife, says:
"Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger:
But in a sieve I'll thither sail."[63]
[62] See Hardwick's "Traditions and Folk-Lore," pp. 108, 109;
Kelly's "Indo-European Folk-Lore," pp. 214, 215.
[63] In Greek, [Greek: hepi rhipous plein], "to go to sea in a
sieve," was a proverbial expression for an enterprise of
extreme hazard or impossible of achievement.--Clark and
Wright's "Notes to Macbeth," 1877, p. 82.
Stories of voyages performed in this way are common enough in Germany.
A man, for instance, going through a corn-field, finds a sieve on the
path, which he takes with him. He does not go far before a young lady
hurries after him, and hunts up and down as if looking for something,
ejaculating all the time, "How my children are crying in England!"
Thereupon the man lays down the sieve, and has hardly done so ere sieve
and lady vanish. In the case of another damsel of the same species,
mentioned by Mr. Kelly, the usual exclamation is thus varied: "My sieve
rim! my sieve rim! how my mother is calling me in England!" At the sound
of her mother's voice the daughter immediately thinks of her sieve.
Steevens quotes from the "Life of Doctor Fian," "a notable sorcerer,"
burned at Edinburgh, January, 1591, how that he and a number of witches
went to sea, "each one in a _riddle or cive_." In the "Discovery of
Witchcraft," Reginald Scot says it was believed that "witches could sail
in an egg-shell, a cockle or muscle-shell, through and under the
tempestuous seas." Thus, in "Pericles" (iv. 4), Gower says:
"Thus time we waste, and longest leagues make short;
Sail seas in cockles, have, and wish but for't."
Their dance is thus noticed in "Macbeth" (iv. 1):
"I'll charm the air to give a sound
While you perform your antic round."
Witches also were supposed to have the power of vanishing at will, a
notion referred to in "Macbeth" (i. 3), where, in reply to Banquo's
inquiry as to whither the witches are vanished, Macbeth replies:
"Into the air; and what seem'd corporal melted
As breath into the wind."
In his letter to his wife he likewise observes: "They made themselves
air, into which they vanished." Hecate, in the third act, fifth scene,
after giving instructions to the weird host, says:
"I am for the air; this night I'll spend
Unto a dismal and a fatal end."
To this purpose they prepared various ointments, concerning which
Reginald Scot[64] says: "The devil teacheth them to make ointment of the
bowels and members of children, whereby they ride in the air and
accomplish all their desires. After burial they steal them out of their
graves and seethe them in a caldron till the flesh be made potable, of
which they make an ointment by which they ride in the air." Lord Bacon
also informs us that the "ointment the witches use is reported to be
made of the fat of children digged out of their graves, of the juices of
smallage, wolf bane, and cinquefoil, mingled with the meal of fine
wheat; but I suppose the soporiferous medicines are likest to do it,
which are henbane, hemlock, mandrake, moonshade--or rather
nightshade--tobacco, opium, saffron,"[65] etc. These witch recipes, which
are very numerous, are well illustrated in Shakespeare's grim caldron
scene, in "Macbeth" (iv. 1), where the first witch speaks of
"grease that's sweaten
From the murderer's gibbet."
We may compare a similar notion given by Apuleius, who, in describing
the process used by the witch, Milo's wife, for transforming herself
into a bird, says: "That she cut the lumps of flesh of such as were
hanged."[66]
[64] "Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584, book iii. chap. i. p. 40;
see Spalding's "Elizabethan Demonology," p. 103.
[65] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," vol. iii. pp. 8-10.
[66] Douce, "Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 245, says: "See
Adlington's Translation (1596, p. 49), a book certainly used by
Shakespeare on other occasions."
Another way by which witches exercise their power was by looking into
futurity, as in "Macbeth" (i. 3), where Banquo says to them:
"If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me."
Charles Knight, in his biography of Shakespeare, quotes a witch trial,
which aptly illustrates the passage above; the case being that of
Johnnet Wischert, who was "indicted for passing to the green-growing
corn in May, twenty-two years since, or thereby, sitting thereupon
tymous in the morning before the sun-rising; and being there found and
demanded what she was doing, thus answered, I shall tell thee; I have
been piling the blades of the corn. I find it will be a dear year; the
blade of the corn grows withersones [contrary to the course of the sun],
and when it grows sonegatis about [with the course of the sun], it will
be a good, cheap year."
According to a common notion firmly believed in days gone by, witches
were supposed to make waxen figures of those they intended to harm,
which they stuck through with pins, or melted before a slow fire. Then,
as the figure wasted, so the person it represented was said to waste
away also. Thus, in "Macbeth" (i. 3), the first witch says:
"Weary sev'n-nights, nine times nine,
Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine."
Referring to the histories of the Duchess of Gloucester and of Jane
Shore, who were accused of practising this mode of witchcraft,
Shakespeare, in "2 Henry VI." (i. 2), makes the former address Hume
thus:
"What say'st thou, man? hast them as yet conferr'd
With Margery Jourdain, the cunning witch,
With Roger Bolingbroke, the conjurer?
And will they undertake to do me good?"
She was afterwards, however, accused of consulting witches concerning
the mode of compassing the death of her husband's nephew, Henry VI. It
was asserted that "there was found in the possession of herself and
accomplices a waxen image of the king, which they melted in a magical
manner before a slow fire, with the intention of making Henry's force
and vigor waste away by like insensible degrees."
A similar charge was brought against Jane Shore, the mistress of Edward
IV., by Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Thus, in "King Richard III." (iii.
4), Gloucester asks Hastings:
"I pray you all, tell me what they deserve
That do conspire my death with devilish plots
Of damned witchcraft, and that have prevail'd
Upon my body with their hellish charms?"
And he then further adds:
"Look how I am bewitch'd; behold mine arm
Is, like a blasted sapling, wither'd up:
And this is Edward's wife, that monstrous witch,
Consorted with that harlot, strumpet Shore,
That by their witchcraft thus have marked me."
This superstition is further alluded to in "King John" (v. 4) by Melun,
who, wounded, says:
"Have I not hideous death within my view,
Retaining but a quantity of life,
Which bleeds away, even as a form of wax
Resolveth from his figure 'gainst the fire?"
And, again, in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" (ii. 4), Proteus says:
"for now my love is thaw'd;
Which, like a waxen image 'gainst a fire,
Bears no impression of the thing it was."[67]
[67] See Henderson's "Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties,"
1879, p. 181.
Images were frequently formed of other materials, and maltreated in some
form or other, to produce similar results--a piece of superstition which
still prevails to a great extent in the East. Dubois, in his "People of
India" (1825), speaks of magicians who make small images in mud or clay,
and then write the names of their animosity on the breasts thereof;
these are otherwise pierced with thorns or mutilated, "so as to
communicate a corresponding injury to the person represented." They were
also said to extract moisture from the body, as in "Macbeth" (i. 3):
"I will drain him dry as hay."
Referring to the other mischievous acts of witches, Steevens quotes the
following from "A Detection of Damnable Driftes Practised by Three
Witches, etc., arraigned at Chelmisforde, in Essex, 1579:" "Item--Also
she came on a tyme to the house of one Robert Lathburie, who, dislyking
her dealyng, sent her home emptie; but presently after her departure
his hogges fell sicke and died, to the number of twentie." Hence in
"Macbeth" (i. 3) in reply to the inquiry of the first witch:
"Where hast thou been, sister?"
the second replies:
"Killing swine."
It appears to have been their practice to destroy the cattle of their
neighbors, and the farmers have to this day many ceremonies to secure
their cows and other cattle from witchcraft; but they seem to have been
most suspected of malice against swine. Harsnet observes how, formerly,
"A sow could not be ill of the measles, nor a girl of the sullens, but
some old woman was charged with witchcraft."[68]
[68] See _Pig_, chap. vi.
Mr. Henderson, in his "Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties" (1879, p.
182), relates how a few years ago a witch died in the village of Bovey
Tracey, Devonshire. She was accused of "overlooking" her neighbors'
pigs, so that her son, if ever betrayed into a quarrel with her, used
always to say, before they parted, "Mother, mother, spare my pigs."
Multiples of three and nine were specially employed by witches, ancient
and modern. Thus, in "Macbeth" (i. 3), the witches take hold of hands
and dance round in a ring nine times--three rounds for each witch, as a
charm for the furtherance of her purposes:[69]
"Thrice to thine and thrice to mine,
And thrice again, to make up nine.
Peace! the charm's wound up."
[69] "Notes to Macbeth," by Clark and Wright, 1877, p. 84.
The love of witches for odd numbers is further illustrated (iv. 1),
where one of them tells how
"Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined,"
this being the witches' way of saying four times.
In Fairfax's "Tasso" (book xiii. stanza 6) it is said that
"Witchcraft loveth numbers odd."
This notion is very old, and we may compare the following quotations
from Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (xiv. 58):
"Ter novies carmen magico demurmurat ore."
And, again (vii. 189-191):
"Ter se convertit; ter sumtis flumine crinem
Irroravit aquis; ternis ululatibus ora
Solvit."
Vergil, too, in his "Eclogues" (viii. 75), says:
"Numero deus impare gaudet."
The belief in the luck of odd numbers is noticed by Falstaff in the
"Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 1):
"They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in
nativity, chance, or death!"
In "King Lear" (iv. 2) when the Duke of Albany tells Goneril,
"She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither
And come to deadly use"--
he alludes to the use that witches and enchanters were commonly supposed
to make of withered branches in their charms.[70]
[70] See Jones's "Credulities, Past and Present," 1880, pp.
256-289.
Among other items of witch-lore mentioned by Shakespeare may be noticed
the common belief in the intercourse between demons and witches, to
which Prospero alludes in the "Tempest" (i. 2):
"Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself
Upon thy wicked dam, come forth!"
This notion is seriously refuted by Scot in his "Discovery of
Witchcraft" (book iv.), where he shows it to be "flat knavery."
The offspring of a witch was termed "Hag-seed," and as such is spoken of
by Prospero in the "Tempest" (i. 2).
Witches were also in the habit of saying their prayers backwards: a
practice to which Hero refers in "Much Ado About Nothing" (iii. 1),
where, speaking of Beatrice, she says:
"I never yet saw man,
How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured,
But she would spell him backward."
Familiar spirits[71] attending on magicians and witches were always
impatient of confinement.[72] So in the "Tempest" (i. 2) we find an
illustration of this notion in the following dialogue:
"_Prospero._ What is't thou canst demand?
_Ariel._ My liberty.
_Prospero._ Before the time be out? No more."
[71] Allusions to this superstition occur in "Love's Labour's
Lost" (i. 2), "love is a familiar;" in "1 Henry VI." (iii. 2),
"I think her old familiar is asleep;" and in "2 Henry VI." (iv.
7), "he has a familiar under his tongue."
[72] See Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584, p. 85.
Lastly, the term "Aroint thee" ("Macbeth," i. 3), used by the first
witch, occurs again in "King Lear" (iii. 4), "Aroint thee, witch, aroint
thee." That _aroint_ is equivalent to "away," "begone," seems to be
agreed, though its etymology is uncertain.[73] "Rynt thee" is used by
milkmaids in Cheshire to a cow, when she has been milked, to bid her get
out of the way. Ray, in his "Collection of North Country Words" (1768,
p. 52), gives "Rynt ye, by your leave, stand handsomely, as rynt you
witch, quoth Bessie Locket to her mother. Proverb, Chesh." Some connect
it with the adverb "aroume," meaning "abroad," found in Chaucer's "House
of Fame" (book ii. stanza 32):
"That I a-roume was in the field."
Other derivations are from the Latin _averrunco_: the Italian _rogna_, a
cutaneous disease, etc.
[73] Sec Dyce's "Glossary," pp. 18, 19.
How thoroughly Shakespeare was acquainted with the system of witchcraft
is evident from the preceding pages, in which we have noticed his
allusions to most of the prominent forms of this species of
superstition. Many other items of witch-lore, however, are referred to
by him, mention of which is made in succeeding chapters.[74]
[74] "Notes to Macbeth" (Clark and Wright), pp. 81, 82.