Folk-lore of Shakespeare. Dyer Thomas Firminger Thiselton

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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 “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

      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

      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.”

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