Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/418

 390 The Folkloi^e of Shakespeare.

The qualities of the witch were very varied, and Shake- speare indicates her power and its limitations. Witches afflicted people with melancholy fits and loss of flesh.

" Weary sev'n-nights, nine times nine Shall he dwindle, peak and pine." Macbeth, i. 3.

Or they exhausted the moisture of the body:

" I will drain him dry as hay."

They had power over winds and tempests, but sometimes these powers were circumscribed :

" Though his bark cannot be lost, Yet it shall be tempest-toss'd."

They had power to sell a wind, and sometimes they made a free gift of one. The second witch says :

" I'll give thee a wind."

Perhaps their greatest power was that of controlling the moon. Prospero says of Caliban :

" His mother was a witch That could control the moon." Tejnpest, v, i.

In the first act of this same play Gonzalo said :

"You are gentlemen of brave mettle; you would lift the moon out of her sphere."

Douce refers us to a note in Adlington's translation of Apuleius on this same subject : " Witches in old time were supposed to be of such power that they could put downe the moone by their inchauntment." Douce quotes largely from the Latin poets on this point, and these myths are intimately connected with widespread beliefs relating to eclipses and other natural phenomena. The witch's power of vanishing at will is specially referred to in MacbetJi. When Banquo inquires respecting this disappearance, where the witches have gone, Macbeth answers :

" Into the air ; and what seem'd corporal melted As breath into the wind." i. 3.