Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton

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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

      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.”

      The love of witches for odd numbers is further illustrated (iv. 1), where one of them tells how this being the witches’ way of saying four times.

      “Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined,”

      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

      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 spirits71 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.”

      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.

      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

      CHAPTER III

      GHOSTS

      Few subjects have, from time immemorial, possessed a wider interest than ghosts, and the superstitions associated with them in this and other countries form an extensive collection in folk-lore literature. In Shakespeare’s day, it would seem that the belief in ghosts was specially prevalent, and ghost tales were told by the firelight in nearly every household. The young, as Mr. Goadby, in his “England of Shakespeare,” says (1881, p. 196), “were thus touched by the prevailing superstitions in their most impressionable years. They looked for the incorporeal creatures of whom they had heard, and they were quick to invest any trick of moonbeam shadow with the attributes of the supernatural.” A description of one of these tale-tellings is given in the “Winter’s Tale” (ii. 1):

      “Her. What wisdom stirs amongst you? Come, sir, now

      I

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