Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton

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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 Scot64 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

      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

      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

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