And mark how their sheep prosper; or what soup Each milch-kine gives to th' pail: I'll send these snakes Shall milk 'em all beforehand: the dew'd-skirted dairy wenches Shall stroke dry dugs for this, and go home cursing: I'll mar their syllabubs, and swathy feastings Under cows' bellies, with the parish youths." Maudlin, the witch of Ben Jonson's 'Sad Shepherd,' is scarcely more elevated. He has indeed, thrown some poetry over her abiding place - conventional poetry, but sonorous : "Within a gloomy dimble she doth dwell, Down in a pit o'ergrown with brakes and briars, Close by the ruins of a shaken abbey, Torn with an earthquake down unto the ground, But her pursuits scarcely required so solemn a scene for her incantations. Her business was "To make ewes cast their lambs, swine eat their farrow, Of all her mischiefs, which are manifold." For these ignoble purposes she employs all the spells of classical antiquity; but she is nevertheless nothing more than the traditional English witch who sits in her form in the shape of a hare: "I'll lay My hand upon her, make her throw her skut The peculiar elevation of the weird sisters, as compared with these representations of a vulgar superstition, may be partly ascribed to the higher character of the scenes in which they are introduced, and partly to the loftier powers of the poet who introduces them. But we think it may be also shown, in a great degree, that some of their peculiar attributes belong to the superstitions of Scotland rather than to those of England; and, if so, we may next inquire how the poet became familiarly acquainted with those superstitions. The first legislative enactment against witchcraft in England was in the 33rd of Henry VIII. This bill is a singular mixture of unbelief and credulity. The preamble recites, that "Where [whereas] divers and sundry persons unlawfully have devised and practised invocations and conjurations of spirits, pretending by such means to understand and get knowledge for their own lucre in what place treasure of gold and silver should or might be found or had in the earth or other secret places, and also have used and occupied witchcrafts, enchantments, and sorceries, to the destruction of their neighbours' persons and goods." Thus the witches have pretended to get knowledge of treasure, but they have used enchantments to the injury of their neighbours. The enactment makes it felony to use or cause to be used "any invocations or conjurations of spirits, witchcrafts, enchantments, or sorceries, to the intent to get or find money or treasure, or to waste, consume, or destroy any person in his body, members, or goods." So little was the offence regarded in England, or the protection of the law desired, that this statute was repealed amongst other new felonies in the first year of Edward VI., 1547. The Act of the 5th of Elizabeth, 1562-3, exhibits a considerable progress in the belief in witchcraft. It recites that since the repeal of the statute of Henry VIII., "Many fantastical and devilish persons have devised and practised invocations and conjurations of evil and wicked spirits, and have used and practised witchcrafts, enchantments, charms, and sorceries, to the destruction of the persons and goods of their neighbours, and other subjects of this realm." The enactment makes a subtle distinction between those who "use, practise, or exercise any invocations or conjurations of evil and wicked spirits to or for any intent or purpose," and those who "use any witchcraft. enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby any person shall happen to be killed or destroyed." The conjuration of spirits, for any intent, was a capital crime: plain witchcraft was only capital when a person was through it killed or destroyed. It would seem, therefore, that witchcraft might exist without the higher crime of the conjuration of evil spirits. By this enactment the witchcraft which destroyed life was punishable by death; but the witchcraft which only wasted, consumed, or lamed the body or member, or destroyed or impaired the goods of any person, was punishable only with imprisonment and the pillory for the first offence. The treasure-finders were dealt with even more leniently. The climax. of our witch legislation was the Act of the 1st of James I., 1603-4. This statute deals with the offence with a minute knowledge of its atrocities which the learning of England had not yet attained to. The King brought this lore from his own land: "And for the better restraining the said offences, and more severe punishing the same, be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that if any person or persons, after the said Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel next coming, shall use, practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil and wicked spirit to or for any intent or purpose, or take up any dead man, woman, or child out of his, her, or their grave, or any other place where the dead body resteth, or the skin, bone, or any other part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment; or shall use, practise, or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined, or lamed in his or her body, or any part thereof; that then every such offender or offenders, their aiders, abettors, and counsellors, being of any the said offences duly anc lawfully convicted and attainted, shall suffer pains of death as a felon or felons and shall lose the privilege and benefit of clergy and sanctuary." It is a remarkable proof of the little hold which the belief in witchcraft had obtained in England, that the legislation against the crime appears to have done very little for the production of the crime. "In one hundred and three years from the statute against witchcraft, in the 33rd of Henry VIII. till 1644, when we were in the midst of our civil wars, I find but about sixteen executed." The popular fury against witchcraft in England belongs to a later period, which we call enlightened; when even such a judge as Hale could condemn two women to the flames, and Sir Thomas Browne, upon the same occasion, could testify his opinion that "the subtlety of the devil was co-operating with the malice of these which we term witches." It was in 1597 that James VI. of Scotland [James I.] published his Dæmonology,' written "against the damnable opinions of two principally, in our age, whereof the one called Scott, an Englishman, is not ashamed, in public print, to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft." The opinions of the King gave an impulse, no doubt, to the superstitions of the people, and to the frightful persecutions to which those superstitions led. But the popular belief assumed such an undoubting form, and displayed itself in so many shapes of wild imagination, that we may readily believe that the legal atrocities were as much a consequence of the delusion as that they fostered and upheld it. If Shakspere were in Scotland about this period, he would find ample materials upon which to found his creation of the weird sisters,— materials which England could not furnish him, and which it did not furnish to his contemporaries. On the 2nd of February, 1596, a commission was issued by the King of Scotland "in favour of the Provost and Baillies of the burgh of Aberdeen, for the trial of Janet Wishart and others accused of witchcraft." Other commissions were obtained in 1596 and 1597, and during the space of one year no less than twenty-three women and one man were burned in Aberdeen, upon conviction of this crime, in addition to others who were banished and otherwise punished. Many of the proceedings on this extraordinary occasion were recently discovered in an apartment in the Town House of that city, and they were published in 1841 in the first volume of The Miscellany of the Spalding Club,'-a Society established "For the printing of the historical, ecclesiastical, genealogical, topographical, and literary remains of the north-eastern counties of Scotland." These papers occupy more than a hundred closely-printed quarto pages; and very truly does the editor of the volume say, "There is a greater variety of positive incident, and more imagination, displayed in these trials than are generally to be met with in similar records. They reflect a very distinct light on many obsolete customs, and on the popular belief of our ancestors." We opened these most curious documents with the hope of finding something that might illustrate, however inadequately, the wonderful display of fancy in the witches of Shakspere-that extraordinary union of a popular belief and a poetical creation which no other poet has in the slightest degree approached. We have not been disappointed. The documents embody the 'An Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft,' by Francis Hutchinson, D.D., 1720. superstitions of the people within four years of the period when Shakspere is supposed to have visited Scotland; and when the company of which he was one of the most important members is held to have played at Aberdeen. The popular belief, through which twenty-four victims perished in 1597, would not have died out in 1601. Had Shakspere spent a few weeks in that city, it must have encountered him on every side, amidst the wealthy and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, the clergy and the laity. All appear to have concurred in the unshaken confidence that they were acting rightly in the allegation and the credence of the most extraordinary instances of supernatural power. It was unnecessary that Shakspere should have heard the trials or read the documents which are now open to us, if he had dwelt for a short time amongst the people who were judges and witnesses. The popular excitement did not subside for many years. To the philosophical poet the common delusion would furnish ample materials for wonder and for use. 'Graymalkin' the cat, and Paddock' the toad, belong to the witch superstitions of the south as well as the north. The witches of the extreme north, the Laplanders and Finlanders, could bestow favourable winds. Reginald Scott, with his calm and benevolent irony, says, "No one endued with common sense but will deny that the elements are obedient to witches and at their commandment, or that they may, at their pleasure, send rain, hail, tempests, thunder, lightning, when she, being but an old doting woman, casteth a flint stone over her left shoulder towards the west." Shakspere in Macbeth dwells upon this superstition : "Fair is foul, and foul is fair," say the witches in the first scene. The second and third sisters will each give their revengeful sister "a wind:" "I myself have all the other; Macbeth and Banquo, before they meet the sisters, have not seen "so foul and fair a day." Macbeth, in the incantation scene, invokes them with, "Though you untie the winds, and let them fight : In the Dittay against Issobell Oige' at Aberdeen she is thus addressed :Thou art indicted and accused of practising of thy witchcraft in laying of the wind, and making of it to become calm and lowdin [smooth], a special point teached to thee by thy master Satan."* In those humble practices of the witches in Macbeth which assimilate them to common witches, such as "killing swine" in the third scene of the first act, Shakspere would scarcely need the ample authority which is furnished by charge upon charge in the * In these quotations we shall take the freedom to change the Scottish orthography into English, to save unnecessary difficulty to our readers. trials at Aberdeen. But even amongst these there is one incident so peculiar that we can scarcely believe that the poet could have conceived it amongst the woods and fields of his own mid-England : "A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap, And mounch'd, and mounch'd, and mounch'd:-'Give me,' quoth I: 'Her husband 's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger: But in a sieve I'll thither sail, And like a rat without a tail, One of the images here employed certainly came from Scotland. The witches who were evidence against Dr. Fian, the notable sorcerer who was burnt at Edinburgh in 1591, in their discovery "how they pretended to bewitch and drown his Majesty in the sea coming from Denmark," testified "that all they together went to sea, each one in a riddle or sieve." The revengeful witch goes on to say, "Though his bark cannot be lost, In the indictment against Violet Leys, she is told that "Alexander Lasoun thy husband, being one long time mariner in William Finlay's ship, was put forth of the same three years since. Thou and thy umquhile mother together bewitched the said William's ship, that since thy husband was put forth of the same she never made one good voyage; but either the master or merchants at some times through tempest of weather were forced to cast overboard the greatest part of their lading, or then to perish, men, ship, and gear.” This is a veritable sea-port superstition; and it is remarkable that nearly all the dialogue of the witches before "Macbeth doth come," is occupied with it. Such delusions must have been rife at Aberdeen at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the witch superstitions of England, whether recorded in legislative enactments, in grave treatises, or in dramatic poetry, we find nothing of witchcraft in connexion with maritime affairs. We have seen that in the enactment of Henry VIII., the superstitious belief that the power of witchcraft could waste the body was especially regarded. Shakspere need not, therefore, have gone farther for, "Sleep shall neither night nor day Hang upon his pent-house lid; He shall live a man forbid : Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine." But the extent to which this belief was carried in Aberdeen, in 1596-7, is almost beyond credence. There was no doubt a contagious distemper ravaging the city and neighbourhood; for nearly all the witches are accused of having produced the same effects upon their victims-" The one half day rossin [roasting] as in a fiery furnace, with an extraordinary kind of drought that she could not be slockit [slaked], and the other half day in an extraordinary kind of sweat |