ACT III.
Scene 4. Page 476.
Macb. ... Get thee gone; to-morrow
We'll hear, ourselves again.
i. e. when I have recovered from my fit, and am once more myself. It is an ablative absolute. Ourselves is much more properly used than ourself, the modern language of royalty.
Scene 4. Page 482.
Macb. If trembling I inhibit thee, protest me
The baby of girl.
Every partaker of the rational Diversions of Purley will here call to mind what has been advanced on the subject of this difficult and much contested passage; but with all the respect and admiration that are due to their profound and ingenious writer, will he feel himself altogether satisfied? It were to be wished that not only the above grammarian but another gentleman not less eminently qualified to illustrate any subject he undertakes, had favoured us with some example of the neutral use of inhabit in the sense of to house or remain at home. Until this be done, or even then, it may be boldly said, and without much difficulty maintained, that inhibit, in point of meaning, was Shakspeare's word. Nor is it a paradox to affirm that inhabit, the original reading, is also right; because this may be only one of the numerous instances during the former unsettled state of orthography, where the same word has been spelled in different ways. Mr. Malone has already supplied instances of inhabit for inhibit in a passage from All's well that ends well, in all the folios except the first, and another from Stowe's Survey of London. In the edition of the Shepherd's calendar, printed without date by Wynkyn de Worde in 4to, there is this sentence in chap. xxi.: "Correccyon is for to inhabyte & defende by the bridle of reason all errowres," &c. Later editions have inhibit. Are we then to suppose that all these examples are typographical mistakes, rather than a varied orthography?
The difficulty remains to extract a sense from inhibit adapted to the occasion. Mr. Steevens has justly said, "to inhibit is to forbid;" but this cannot be the present signification. A man cannot well be said to forbid another who has challenged him. He might indeed keep back or hesitate in such a case, which is the neutral sense now offered, but it must be confessed with nearly the same diffidence in its accuracy which has been expressed as to that of the others.
With respect to the punctuation, it is conceived, that considering the mode in which these plays were published, the authority of Shakspeare is almost out of the question; and therefore a judicious modern editor is entitled to use a great deal of discretion in corrections of this kind. In the present instance there is no great objection to the old pointing, though the comma should seem better after "inhibit," and may render the line more emphatic. "If trembling, I keep back, then protest me," &c. After all, this is one of the many instances in which the real meaning of the author cannot be satisfactorily obtained.
Scene 5. Page 490.
Enter Hecate.
Mr. Tollett has already vindicated Shakspeare from the supposed impropriety of introducing Hecate among modern witches. The fact seems to be, that acquainted, as he has elsewhere shown himself to have been, with the classical connection which this deity had with witchcraft, but knowing also, as Mr. Tollett's quotation from Scot indicates, that Diana was the name by which she was invoked in modern times, he has preferred the former rather than the latter name of the goddess, for reasons that were best known to himself.
That there existed during the middle ages numerous superstitions relating to a connection that witches were imagined to have had with Diana, it will be no difficult task to prove. From an ecclesiastical statute, promulgated during the reign of Louis II., king of France, it appears that certain mischievous women professed their belief in that goddess, obeying her as their mistress; and that accompanied by her and a great multitude of other females, they travelled over immense spaces of the earth at midnight, mounted upon various animals. Many other ecclesiastical regulations, and some of the councils, notice these superstitions, and denounce very severe vengeance against those persons who were thought to practise them. In one we find the following declaration: "Nulla mulier se nocturnis equitare cum Diana dea Paganorum, vel cum Herodiade seu Benzoria et innumera mulierum multitudine profiteatur; hæc enim dæmoniaca est illusio."—Ducange, Gloss. v. Diana. These witches sometimes assembled at the river Jordan, the favourite spot of Diana or Herodias. The Jesuit Delrio very gravely denies the possibility of the above pranks, remarking that there is in reality no Diana, and that Herodias the dancer, whom he here confounds with her daughter, is at present in hell. Disquisit. magic. lib. ii. quæst. 16. Eccard, in his preface to Leibnitz's Collectanea etymologica, relates that in a journey through Misnia in Saxony, he discovered traces of the German Hecate among the peasants in their frauholde or frau faute, i. e. lady fate. John Herold or Herolt, a German friar of the fifteenth century, in one of his Sermons exclaims against those "qui deam, quam quidam Dianam nominant, in vulgari die fraurve unhold dicunt cum suo exercitu ambulare."—Sermones discipuli, serm. xi. He states this practice to have taken place at Christmas time. See likewise Carpentier Suppl. ad Ducangii glossar. v. holda. His majesty King James the First, author of that most sapient work entitled Dæmonologie, informs his readers that the spirits whom the gentiles called Diana and her wandering court, were known among his countrymen by the name of pharie. Other appellations of this personage are likewise to be met with, as Hera, Nicneven, and Dame Habunde; all as the chief or queen of the witches, whom she generally accompanied in their nocturnal dances and excursions through the air.
For the name of Herodias it is not easy to account. It may not be deemed a very extravagant conjecture, that the common people had converted Herod's wife into a witch from their abhorrence of her cruelty towards Saint John the Baptist; for the old mysteries have preserved to us the indignant manner in which they treated Pontius Pilate. The circumstance too of her daughter's dancing, compared with the predilection of witches for that amusement, might contribute to the idea. The learned Schiller thinks that Herodias was the same as Juno. He founds this opinion on the testimony of Gobelinus Persona, a Monk of Paderborn in the fifteenth century, who in his general history of the world had asserted that the Saxons worshipped Juno under the Greek name of Hera, and that the common people still believed in the flight of the lady Hera through the air about the time of Christmas; a superstition which seems to have been derived from an older notion, that Juno presided over that element. Ducange imagined he had found the name in Hera Diana; but he has not brought forward any instance of the use of such an expression. With respect to Benzoria or Bensozia, very little is known. Carpentier, in his Supplement to Ducange's glossary, conjectures that she was designed for the daughter of Herodias, and to assist in the magic dances. It is not improbable that this character is in some way or other connected with the Irish Banshee or Benshi, a kind of fairy. In these subjects we can perceive many corruptions which it is impossible to account for.
Dr. Leyden, in p. [318] of the glossary to his edition of The complaynt of Scotland, mentions the "gyre carling, the queen of fairies, the great hag Hecate, or mother witch of peasants," and cites Polwart's Flyting of Montgomery for "Nicneven and her nymphs." In the fragment of an old Scotish poem in Lord Hyndford's manuscript, in strict conformity with what has been just advanced concerning Juno, she is termed "quene of Jowis." See Ancient Scot. poems, 1768, p. 231.
As Dame Habunde or Abunde has been classed among the names given to the president of the witches, it becomes necessary to take some further notice of her, though a character of an opposite description to those already mentioned. She appears to have been the genuine queen of fairies, and of a most innocuous and benevolent disposition, bestowing happiness and abundance on all her votaries. In the passage before mentioned in Gobelinus Persona, Hera is spoken of as conferring temporal abundance; and although she is represented as flying through the air, it is not by night, nor accompanied by others. Ducange has therefore improperly assimilated her to Diana and her tribe of mischief, and of course his etymology of Herodias is rendered very improbable. In an ancient fabliau by Haisiau, never entirely printed, Dame Abunde is thus introduced:
"Ceste richesce nus abonde
Nos lavon de par Dame Avonde."
She is also mentioned in the works of William Auvergne, bishop of Paris, in the fourteenth century, as a spirit enriching the houses that she visited. Delrio adds, that on her coming with the rest of the good ladies, the superstitious old women used to provide plenty of victuals for them, leaving all the dishes and wine-vessels uncovered to prevent any obstruction to their getting at the food, and expecting on the occasion nothing but plenty and prosperity. See Disquisit. magic. 1. ii. quæst. 27. sect. 2. In the life of Saint Germain, bishop of Auxerre, we find these dames paying their respects to the holy man; and as the story is misrepresented in its most material part by Caxton's translation of the Golden legend, it shall be given from a valuable manuscript of the same work much older than his time. "Narratio. In a tyme he was herboured in a place wher men made redy the borde for to go to dyner aftir he had soupid, and he was gretli merveiled, and asked for whom the borde was sette aᵹen; and thei seide for the good women that walke by nyᵹte; and than Seinte Germayne ordeyned that nyᵹte to be waked. And than at a certeyn hour gret multitude of feendis come to the borde in liknesse of men and of women. And than Germayn comaundid him that thei shold not passe thens, and than he awoke al the meyne, and asked yf thei knewe eny of thoo persones, and they seide that thei wer her neyᵹebores, and than he sente to her housis, and thei wer alle founde in bedde, and than thei alle had gret merveile and thouᵹte wel that thei were feendis that had so longe scorned hem."
The Samogitæ, a people formerly inhabiting the shores of the Baltic, and who remained idolaters so late as the fifteenth century, believed in the existence of a sort of demi-fairies about a palm high, with beards, whom they called Kaukie. To these little beings they made an offering of all kinds of food to avert their displeasure. They likewise invoked a deity called Putscet to send them the Barstuccæ to live with them and make them fortunate. To effect this, they placed every night in the barn a table covered with bread, butter, cheese, and ale; and if these were taken away before morning, they looked for good fortune, but if left, for nothing but ill luck. See Lasicius De diis Samagitarum, 1615, 4to, pp. 51, 55. A similar superstition prevailed in England, and is thus recorded in Browne's Britannia's pastorals, book i. song 2.
"Within one of these rounds was to be seene
A hillocke rise, where oft the Fairie queene
At twy-light sate, and did command her elves
To pinch those maids that had not swept their shelves:
And further, if by maidens oversight,
Within doores water were not brought at night;
Or if they spread no table, set no bread,
They should have nips from toe unto the head:
And for the maid that had perform'd each thing,
She in the water-paile bad leave a ring."
Mr. Bell, in his Description of the condition and manners of the Irish peasantry, relates that the fairies or good people were supposed to enter habitations after the family retired to rest, to indulge in sportive gambols, and particularly to wash themselves in clean water; but if there were no water in the house, to play some mischievous tricks in revenge.
Fairies were also, from their supposed place of residence, denominated waternymphs, in the Teutonic languages, wasserfrauwen, wassernixen, nocka, necker, and nicker, terms, excepting the first, manifestly connected with the Scotish nicneven, and most probably with our old nick. Very great confusion seems to have arisen in the change of sex and appellation among these supernatural beings. This may have been occasioned by the numerous Pagan superstitions to which the common people were still attached long after the promulgation of Christianity, as well as from their excessive ignorance and credulity, which led them to convert the deities of the heathens into phantoms of their own creation. Thus Diana and Minerva were degraded into witches, and Mercury became the prince of fairies. Neptune was metamorphosed into a water-fairy, of whom a most curious account is preserved in the Otia imperii of Gervase of Tilbury, published in Leibnitz's Scriptores rerum Brunsvic. p. 980, and partly copied into Mr. Tyrwhitt's edition of Chaucer's Canterbury tales, vol. iv. 268. It seems probable that the name of Neptune is merely disguised in the Scotish Nicneven. Some of the Teutonic glossaries render the word necker by dæmon aquaticus, Neptunus. A further account of him may be found in Wormii Monumenta Danica, p. 17, and in Keysler Antiquitat. select. septentr. p. 261, where the etymology of necker, viz. from the Latin necare, strengthens the preceding conjecture as to that of Nicneven, and resolves it into the destroying or dæmoniacal Neptune. The reader may likewise consult Wachter's German glossary under the word necker, where it would have been of some use to the learned author to have known that this mischievous fairy was remarkable for drowning people, and was called Nocka, the Danish term, as he states on another occasion, for suffocating. Nor would the contrast of character between this being and the beneficent queen of fairy amount to any solid objection against the proposed etymology. Whoever may attempt an investigation of the fairy system will be sure of finding the greatest disorder and confusion; nor is it possible at this time to offer any reason that will be quite satisfactory why different qualities were ascribed to beings of similar names by different people. We must rest contented with possession of the fact. Thus Dame Abunde has been made to preside over the white nymphs, white ladies, or witte wyven, who all appear to have been of a mischievous disposition, committing nocturnal depredations on men and cattle, but more particularly on pregnant women and infants, whom they shut up in their subterraneous abodes, from which groans and lamentations, and occasionally melodious sounds were often heard to issue. See Kempius De orig. Frisiæ, p. 341. Ben Jonson in his Sad shepherd makes the white faies to reside in stocks of trees.
But let us now return from this digression to the subject of Hecate or Diana. Under the reign of Hadrian, Saint Taurinus is said to have converted the inhabitants of Evreux in Normandy to the Christian faith, but this was not accomplished until the Devil had been fairly expelled from Diana's temple in the above city. For this purpose, he was with great solemnity enjoined to appear in the presence of all the people, who, as heathens, were extremely terrified, especially as the evil spirit came forth under the form of an Ethiopian, dark as soot, with a long beard, and fire issuing from his mouth. An angel then tied his hands behind him and led him away. This dæmon is believed still to remain at Evreux, frequently appearing to the inhabitants, but is said to be perfectly harmless. He is called Goblin by the common people, who believe that he is restrained from mischief by the merits of Saint Taurinus. The reason why he was not at once consigned to the infernal regions, is, that at the command of the holy bishop he assisted in destroying the idols of the city; but he is supposed to have received sufficient punishment in beholding those persons in a state of salvation, whom during his power he had insultingly regarded as his victims. See Ordericus Vitalis, p. 555. In England it appears that the common people not only feared Diana as a witch, but that they had on many occasions paid her reverential honours as a goddess. This is confirmed by the remains of such animals as were used in her sacrifices, and also by her own images found on rebuilding Saint Paul's cathedral. These have been particularly described in Dr. Woodward's letter to Sir Christopher Wren in the eighth volume of Leland's Itinerary; from which circumstance the doctor very plausibly inferred that a Roman temple of Diana had been formerly erected on this spot. There is preserved a most curious sermon by Saint Maximus bishop of Turin in the fifth century, replete with the superstitions that existed in his time relating to the worship of Diana; nor can it be controverted that she was equally reverenced in this country long after the introduction of Christianity, when we find from the testimony of Richard Sporling, a Monk of Westminster in 1450, and a diligent collector of ancient materials, that during the persecution of Diocletian the inhabitants of London sacrificed to Diana, whilst those of Thorney, now Westminster, were offering incense to Apollo. Sir William Dugdale records that a commutation grant was made in the reign of Edward I., by Sir William Le Baud, to the dean and canons of Saint Paul, of a doe in winter on the day of the saint's conversion, and of a fat buck in summer on that of his commemoration, to be offered at the high altar, and distributed among the canons. To this ceremony Erasmus has alluded in his book De ratione concionandi, when he describes the custom which the Londoners had of going in procession to St. Paul's cathedral with a deer's head fixed upon a spear, accompanied with men blowing hunting-horns. Mr. Strype likewise, in his Ecclesiastical memorials, vol. iii. p. 378, has preserved a notice of the custom as practised in Queen Mary's time, with this addition, that the priest of every parish in the city arrayed in his cope, and the bishop of London in his mitre, assisted on the occasion. Camden had likewise seen it when a boy, and had heard that the canons of the cathedral attended in their sacred vestments, wearing garlands of flowers on their heads. As to Mr. Selden's witty conceit on the subject, which bishop Gibson inclines to adopt, it is enough to allude to it, being most certainly unworthy of a serious confutation.
Some of the above remarks have been offered as hints only for a more ample investigation of the fairy superstitions of the middle ages, so far as they are connected with the religion of the ancient Romans; a subject of intrinsic curiosity, and well deserving the attention of those who may feel interest in the history of the human mind.