Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton

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rel="nofollow" href="#n54" type="note">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.’”

      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 that57 “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.” Brand58 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.

      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.”

      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

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