Robert Hunt, in his "Superstitions of Old Cornwall," describes the modus operandi of a celebrated witch at Fraddam, when engaged in brewing a liquor of "wondrous potency," which clearly exhibits the "elemental strife" that lies at the base of these superstitions. She "collected with the utmost care all the deadly things she could obtain, with which to brew her famous drink. In the darkest night, in the midst of the wildest storms, amidst the flashings of lightnings and the bellowings of the thunder, the witch was seen riding on her black ram-cat over the moors and mountains in search of her poisons. At length all was complete—the horse-drink was boiled, the hell-broth was brewed. It was in March, about the time of the equinox; the night was dark, and the King of Storms was abroad."
Olaus Magnus speaks of the storm-raising powers and propensities of the Scandinavian witches as amongst their most remarkable attributes.
The sieve, amongst all nations of the Aryan stock, and even of some others, has been regarded as a mythical implement of this class. Witches used them as boats, notwithstanding their inability to float on water. The supernatural, of course, easily overcame so trifling a physical difficulty. The premier weird woman in Shakspere's group, referring to the scoff she had received from a sailor's wife, says:—
Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master of the Tiger;
But in a sieve I'll thither sail,
And, like a rat without a tail,
I'll do, I'll do, I'll do.
It is not improbable that witch-sailing would be originally through the air rather than on the water. The sieve, amongst the Aryans, was a cloud emblem; the implement by means of which water was filtered into rain-drops. The upper regions were more affected by witches than the oceanic "waste of waters." In the opening scene in Macbeth, the well-known trio, at the conclusion of their séance, "hover through the fog and filthy air." They appear to have intimate relationship to the clouds and the weather:—
1st Witch—When shall we three meet again,
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
2nd Witch—When the hurly-burly's done;
When the battle's lost and won.
Though unable to totally wreck the seaman's bark, the first witch assures her companions that "it shall be tempest toss'd." When Banquo asks Macbeth, "Whither are they vanished?" the latter answers:—
Into the air; and what seemed 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, after giving instructions to the weird host, says:—