[Footnote 4: Scot, book iii. ch. vi. p. 46.]
98. The only vestige of a difficulty, therefore, that remains is the use
of the term "weird sisters" in describing the witches. It is perfectly
clear that Holinshed used these words as a sort of synonym for the
"goddesses of Destinie;" but with such a mass of evidence as has been
produced to show that Shakspere elected to introduce witches in the
place of the Norns, it surely would not be unwarrantable to suppose that
he might retain this term as a poetical and not unsuitable description
of the characters to whom it was applied. And this is the less
improbable as it can be shown that both words were at times applied to
witches. As the quotation given subsequently[1] proves, the Scotch
witches were in the habit of speaking of the frequenters of a particular
sabbath as "the sisters;" and in Heywood's "Witches of Lancashire," one
of the characters says about a certain act of supposed witchcraft, "I
remember that some three months since I crossed a wayward woman; one
that I now suspect."[2]
[Footnote 1: § 107, p. 114.]
[Footnote 2: Act V. sc. iii.]
99. Here, then, in the very stronghold of the supposed proof of the
Norn-theory, it is possible to extract convincing evidence that the
sisters are intended to be merely witches. It is not surprising that
other portions of the play in which the sisters are mentioned should
confirm this view. Banquo, upon hearing the fulfilment of the prophecy
of the second witch, clearly expresses his opinion of the origin of the
"foreknowledge" he has received, in the exclamation, "What, can the
devil speak true?" For the devil most emphatically spoke through the
witches; but how could he in any sense be said to speak through Norns?
Again, Macbeth informs his wife that on his arrival at Forres, he made
inquiry into the amount of reliance that could be placed in the
utterances of the witches, "and learned by the perfectest report that
they had more in them than mortal knowledge."[1] This would be possible
enough if witches were the subjects of the investigation, for their
chief title to authority would rest upon the general opinion current in
the neighbourhood in which they dwelt; but how could such an inquiry be
carried out successfully in the case of Norns? It is noticeable, too,
that Macbeth knows exactly where to find the sisters when he wants them;
and when he says--
"More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,
By the worst means, the worst,"[2]
he makes another clear allusion to the traffic of the witches with the
devil. After the events recorded in Act IV. sc. i., Macbeth speaks of
the prophecies upon which he relies as "the equivocation of the
fiend,"[3] and the prophets as "these juggling fiends;"[4] and with
reason--for he has seen and heard the very devils themselves, the
masters of the witches and sources of all their evil power. Every point
in the play that bears upon the subject at all tends to show that
Shakspere intentionally replaced the "goddesses of Destinie" by witches;
and that the supposed Norn origin of these characters is the result of a
somewhat too great eagerness to unfold a novel and startling theory.
[Footnote 1: Act I. sc. v. l. 2.]
[Footnote 2: Mr. Fleay avoids the difficulty created by this passage,
which alludes to the witches as "the weird sisters," by supposing that
these lines were interpolated by Middleton--a method of criticism that
hardly needs comment. Act III. sc. iv. l. 134.]
[Footnote 3: Act V. sc. v. l. 43.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid. sc. viii. l. 19.]
100. Assuming, therefore, that the witch-nature of the sisters is
conclusively proved, it now becomes necessary to support the assertion
previously made, that good reason can be shown why Shakspere should
have elected to represent witches rather than Norns.
It is impossible to read "Macbeth" without noticing the prominence given
to the belief that witches had the power of creating storms and other
atmospheric disturbances, and that they delighted in so doing. The
sisters elect to meet in thunder, lightning, or rain. To them "fair is
foul, and foul is fair," as they "hover through the fog and filthy air."
The whole of the earlier part of the third scene of the first act is one
blast of tempest with its attendant devastation. They can loose and bind
the winds,[1] cause vessels to be tempest-tossed at sea, and mutilate
wrecked bodies.[2] They describe themselves as "posters of the sea and
land;"[3] the heath they meet upon is blasted;[4] and they vanish "as
breath into the wind."[5] Macbeth conjures them to answer his questions
thus:--
"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 germens tumble all together,
Even till destruction sicken."[6]
[Footnote 1: I. iii. 11, 12.]
[Footnote 2: Act I. sc. iii. l. 28.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid. l. 32.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid. l. 77.]
[Footnote 5: Ibid. ll. 81, 82.]
[Footnote 6: Act IV. sc. i. ll. 52-60.]
101. Now, this command over the elements does not form at all a
prominent feature in the English records of witchcraft. A few isolated
charges of the kind may be found. In 1565, for instance, a witch was
burnt who confessed that she had caused all the tempests that had taken
place in that year. Scot, too, has a few short sentences upon this
subject, but does not give it the slightest prominence.[1] Nor in the
earlier Scotch trials recorded by Pitcairn does this charge appear
amongst the accusations against the witches. It is exceedingly curious
to notice the utter harmless nature of the charges brought against the
earlier culprits; and how, as time went on and the panic increased, they
gradually deepened in colour, until no act was too gross, too repulsive,
or too ridiculously impossible to be excluded from the indictment. The
following quotations from one of the earliest reported trials are given
because they illustrate most forcibly the condition of the poor women
who were supposed to be witches, and the real basis of fact upon which
the belief in the crime subsequently built itself.
[Footnote 1: Book iii. ch. 13, p. 60.]
102. Bessie Dunlop was tried for witchcraft in 1576. One of the
principal accusations against her was that she held intercourse with a
devil who appeared to her in the shape of a neighbour of hers, one Thom
Reed, who had recently died. Being asked how and where she met Thom
Reed, she said, "As she was gangand betwixt her own house and the yard
of Monkcastell, dryvand her ky to the pasture, and makand heavy sair
dule with herself, gretand[1] very fast for her cow that was dead, her
husband and child that wer lyand sick in the land ill, and she new
risen out of gissane,[2] the aforesaid Thom met her by the way,
healsit[3] her, and said, 'Gude day, Bessie,' and she said, 'God speed
you, guidman.' 'Sancta Marie,' said he, 'Bessie, why makes thow sa great
dule and sair greting for ony wardlie thing?' She answered 'Alas! have I
not great cause to make great dule, for our gear is trakit,[4] and my
husband is on the point of deid, and one babie of my own will not live,
and myself at ane weak point; have I not gude cause then to have ane
sair hart?' But Thom said, 'Bessie, thou hast crabit[5] God, and askit
some thing you suld not have done; and tharefore I counsell thee to mend
to Him, for I tell thee thy barne sall die and the seik cow, or you come
hame; and thy twa sheep shall die too; but thy husband shall mend, and
shall be as hale and fair as ever he was.' And then I was something
blyther, for he tauld me that my guidman would mend. Then Thom Reed went
away fra me in through the yard of Monkcastell, and I thought that he
gait in at ane narrower hole of the dyke nor anie erdlie man culd have
gone throw, and swa I was something fleit."[6]
[Footnote 1: Weeping. I have only half translated this passage, for I
feared to spoil the sad simplicity of it.]
[Footnote 2: Child-bed.]
[Footnote 3: Saluted.]
[Footnote 4: Dwindled away.]
[Footnote 5: Displeased.]
[Footnote 6: Frightened.]
This was the first time that Thom appeared to her. On the third occasion
he asked her "if she would not trow[1] in him." She said "she would trow
in ony bodye did her gude." Then Thom promised her much wealth if she
would deny her christendom. She answered that "if she should be riven at
horsis taillis, she suld never do that, but promised to be leal and
trew to him in ony thing she could do," whereat he was angry.
[Footnote 1: Trust.]
On the fourth occasion, the poor woman fell further into sin, and
accompanied Thom to a fairy meeting. Thom asked her to join the party;
but she said "she saw na proffeit to gang thai kind of gaittis, unless
she kend wherefor." Thom offered the old inducement, wealth; but she
replied that "she dwelt with her awin husband and bairnis," and could
not leave them. And so Thom began to be very crabit with her, and said,
"if so she thought, she would get lytill gude of him."
She was then demanded if she had ever asked any favour of Thom for
herself or any other person. She answered that "when sundrie persons
came to her to seek help for their beast, their cow, or ewe, or for any
barne that was tane away with ane evill blast of wind, or elf grippit,
she gait and speirit[1] at Thom what myght help them; and Thom would
pull ane herb and gif her out of his awin hand, and bade her scheir[2]
the same with ony other kind of herbis, and oppin the beistes mouth, and
put thame in, and the beist wald mend."[3]
[Footnote 1: Inquired.]
[Footnote 2: Chop.]
[Footnote 3: Pitcairn, I. ii. 51, et seq.]
It seems hardly possible to believe that a story like this, which is
half marred by the attempt to partially modernize its simple pathetic
language, and which would probably bring a tear to the eye, if not a
shilling from the pocket, of the most unsympathetic being of the present
day, should be considered sufficient three hundred years ago, to convict
the narrator of a crime worthy of death; yet so it was. This sad
picture of the breakdown of a poor woman's intellect in the unequal
struggle against poverty and sickness is only made visible to us by the
light of the flames that, mercifully to her perhaps, took poor Bessie
Dunlop away for ever from the sick husband, and weakly children, and the
"ky," and the humble hovel where they all dwelt together, and from the
daily, heart-rending, almost hopeless struggle to obtain enough food to
keep life in the bodies of this miserable family. The historian--who
makes it his chief anxiety to record, to the minutest and most
irrelevant details, the deeds, noble or ignoble, of those who have
managed to stamp their names upon the muster-roll of Fame--turns
carelessly or scornfully the page which contains such insignificant
matter as this; but those who believe
"That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivel'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain,"
will hardly feel that poor Bessie's life and death were entirely without
their meaning.
103. As the trials for witchcraft increase, however, the details grow
more and more revolting; and in the year 1590 we find a most
extraordinary batch of cases--extraordinary for the monstrosity of the
charges contained in them, and also for the fact that this feature, so
insisted upon in Macbeth, the raising of winds and storms, stands out in
extremely bold relief. The explanation of this is as follows. In the
year 1589, King James VI. brought his bride, Anne of Denmark, home to
Scotland. During the voyage an unusually violent storm raged, which
scattered the vessels composing the royal escort, and, it would appear,
caused the destruction of one of them. By a marvellous chance, the
king's ship was driven by a wind which blew directly contrary to that
which filled the sails of the other vessels;[1] and the king and queen
were both placed in extreme jeopardy. James, who seems to have been as
perfectly convinced of the reality of witchcraft as he was of his own
infallibility, at once came to the conclusion that the storm had been
raised by the aid of evil spirits, for the express purpose of getting
rid of so powerful an enemy of the Prince of Darkness as the righteous
king. The result was that a rigorous investigation was made into the
whole affair; a great number of persons were tried for attempting the
king's life by witchcraft; and that prince, undeterred by the apparent
impropriety of being judge in what was, in reality, his own cause,
presided at many of the trials, condescended to superintend the tortures
applied to the accused in order to extort a confession, and even went so
far in one case as to write a letter to the judges commanding a
condemnation.
[Footnote 1: Pitcairn, I. ii. 218.]
104. Under these circumstances, considering who the prosecutor was, and
who the judge, and the effectual methods at the service of the court for
extorting confessions,[1] it is not surprising that the king's surmises
were fully justified by the statements of the accused. It is impossible
to read these without having parts of the witch-scenes in "Macbeth"
ringing in the ears like an echo. John Fian, a young schoolmaster, and
leader of the gang, or "coven" as it was called, was charged with having
caused the leak in the king's ship, and with having raised the wind and
created a mist for the purpose of hindering his voyage.[2] On another
occasion he and several other witches entered into a ship, and caused it
to perish.[3] He was also able by witchcraft to open locks.[4] He
visited churchyards at night, and dismembered bodies for his charms; the
bodies of unbaptized infants being preferred.[5]
[Footnote 1: The account of the tortures inflicted upon Fian are too
horrible for quotation.]
[Footnote 2: Pitcairn, I. ii. 211.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid. 212. He confessed that Satan commanded him to chase
cats "purposlie to be cassin into the sea to raise windis for
destructioune of schippis." Macbeth, I. iii. 15-25.]
[Footnote 4: "Fylit for opening of ane loke be his sorcerie in David
Seytounis moderis, be blawing in ane woman's hand, himself sittand att
the fyresyde."--See also the case of Bessie Roy, I. ii. 208. The English
method of opening locks was more complicated than the Scotch, as will
appear from the following quotation from Scot, book xii. ch. xiv. p.
246:--
"A charme to open locks. Take a peece of wax crossed in baptisme, and
doo but print certeine floures therein, and tie them in the hinder skirt
of your shirt; and when you would undoo the locke, blow thrice therein,
saieing, 'Arato hoc partico hoc maratarykin; I open this doore in thy
name that I am forced to breake, as thou brakest hell gates. In nomine
patris etc. Amen.'" Macbeth, IV. i. 46.]
[Footnote 5:
"Finger of birth-strangled babe,
Ditch-delivered by a drab."