[Footnote 1: See Dr. Carpenter in Frazer for November, 1877.]
[Footnote 2: See Jenkins v. Cooke, Law Reports, Admiralty and
Ecclesiastical Cases, vol. iv. p. 463, et seq.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid. p. 499, Sir R. Phillimore.]
[Footnote 4: Law Reports, I Probate Division, p. 102.]
81. It is perfectly impossible for us, therefore, to comprehend, although by an effort we may perhaps bring ourselves to imagine, the horror and loathing with which good men, entirely believing in the existence and omnipresence of countless legions of evil spirits, able and anxious to perpetrate the mischiefs that it has been the object of these pages in some part to describe, would regard those who, for their own selfish gratification, deliberately surrendered their hopes of eternal happiness in exchange for an alliance with the devils, which would render these ten times more capable than before of working their wicked wills. To men believing this, no punishment could seem too sudden or too terrible for such offenders against religion and society, and no means of possible detection too slight or far-fetched to be neglected; indeed, it might reasonably appear to them better that many innocent persons should perish, with the assurance of future reward for their undeserved sufferings, than that a single guilty one should escape undetected, and become the medium by which the devil might destroy more souls.
82. But the persecuted, far more than the persecutors, deserve our sympathy, although they rarely obtain it. It is frequently asserted that the absolute truth of a doctrine is the only support that will enable its adherents successfully to weather the storms of persecution. Those who assent to this proposition must be prepared to find a large amount of truth in the beliefs known to us under the name of witchcraft, if the position is to be successfully maintained; for never was any sect persecuted more systematically, or with more relentlessness, than these little-offending heretics. Protestants and Catholics, Anglicans and Calvinists, so ready at all times to commit one another to the flames and to the headsman, found in this matter common ground, upon which all could heartily unite for the grand purpose of extirpating error. When, out of the quiet of our own times, we look back upon the terrors of the Tower, and the smoke and glare of Smithfield, we think with mingled pity and admiration of those brave men and women who, in the sixteenth century, enriched with their blood and ashes the soil from whence was to spring our political and religious freedom. But no whit of admiration, hardly a glimmer of pity, is even casually evinced for those poor creatures who, neglected, despised, and abhorred, were, at the same time, dying the same agonizing death, and passing through the torment of the flames to that "something after death—the undiscovered country," without the sweet assurance which sustained their better-remembered fellow-sufferers, that beyond the martyr's cross was waiting the martyr's crown. No such hope supported those who were condemned to die for the crime of witchcraft: their anticipations of the future were as dreary as their memories of the past, and no friendly voice was raised, or hand stretched out, to encourage or console them during that last sad journey. Their hope of mercy from man was small—strangulation before the application of the fire, instead of the more lingering and painful death at most;—their hope of mercy from Heaven, nothing; yet, under these circumstances, the most auspicious perhaps that could be imagined for the extirpation of a heretical belief, persecution failed to effect its object. The more the Government burnt the witches, the more the crime of witchcraft spread; and it was not until an attitude of contemptuous toleration was adopted towards the culprits that the belief died down, gradually but surely, not on account of the conclusiveness of the arguments directed against it, but from its own inherent lack of vitality.[1]
[Footnote 1: See Mr. Lecky's elaborate and interesting description of the demise of the belief in the first chapter of his History of the Rise of Rationalism in Europe.]
83. The history and phenomena of witchcraft have been so admirably treated by more than one modern investigator, as to render it unnecessary to deal exhaustively with a subject which presents such a vast amount of material for arrangement and comment. The scope of the following remarks will therefore be limited to a consideration of such features of the subject as appear to throw light upon the supernaturalism in "Macbeth." This consideration will be carried out with some minuteness, as certain modern critics, importing mythological learning that is the outcome of comparatively recent investigation into the interpretation of the text, have declared that the three sisters who play such an important part in that drama are not witches at all, but are, or are intimately allied to, the Norns or Fates of Scandinavian paganism. It will be the object of the following pages to illustrate the contemporary belief concerning witches and their powers, by showing that nearly every characteristic point attributed to the sisters has its counterpart in contemporary witch-lore; that some of the allusions, indeed, bear so strong a resemblance to certain events that had transpired not many years before "Macbeth" was written, that it is not improbable that Shakspere was alluding to them in much the same off-hand, cursory manner as he did to the Mainy incident when writing "King Lear."
84. The first critic whose comments upon this subject call for notice is the eminent Gervinus. In evident ignorance of the history of witchcraft, he says, "In the witches Shakspere has made use of the popular belief in evil geniuses and in adverse persecutors of mankind, and has produced a similar but darker race of beings, just as he made use of the belief in fairies in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' This creation is less attractive and complete, but not less masterly. The poet, in the text of the play itself, calls these beings witches only derogatorily; they call themselves weird sisters; the Fates bore this denomination, and the sisters remind us indeed of the Northern Fates or Valkyries. They appear wild and weather-beaten in exterior and attire, common in speech, ignoble, half-human creatures, ugly as the Evil One, and in like manner old, and of neither sex. They are guided by more powerful masters, their work entirely springs from delight in evil, and they are wholly devoid of human sympathies…. They are simply the embodiment of inward temptation; they come in storm and vanish in air, like corporeal impulses, which, originating in the blood, cast up bubbles of sin and ambition in the soul; they are weird sisters only in the sense in which men carry their own fates within their bosoms."[1] This criticism is so entirely subjective and unsupported by evidence that it is difficult to deal satisfactorily with it. It will be shown hereafter that this description does not apply in the least to the Scandinavian Norns, while, so far as it is true to Shakspere's text, it does not clash with contemporary records of the appearance and actions of witches.
[Footnote 1: Shakspere Commentaries, translated by F.E. Bunnert, p. 591.]