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the legend, of which he made so glorious a use, that "a certain witch whom he had in great trust had told Macbeth that he should never be slain with man born of any woman, nor vanquished till the wood of Birnane came to the castle of Dunsinane." From Holinshed, also, he acquired a general notion of the situation of this castle : "He builded a strong castle on the top of an high hill called Dunsinane, situate in Gowrie, ten miles from Perth, on such a proud height that standing there aloft a man might behold well near all the countries of Angus, Fife, Stirmond, and Erndale, as it were lying underneath him." The propinquity of Birnam Wood to Dunsinane is indicated only in the chronicler by the circumstance that Malcolm rested there the night before the battle, and on the morrow marched to Dunsinane, every man "bearing a bough of some tree or other of that wood in his hand." The commanding position of Dunsinane, as described by the chronicler, is strictly adhered to by the poet :

"As I did stand my watch upon the hill

I looked toward Birnam, and anon, methought
The wood began to move."

But the poet has a particularity which the historian has not :

"Within this three mile may you see it coming;

I say, a moving grove."

This minuteness sounds like individual local knowledge. The Dunsinane Hills form a long range extending in a north-easterly direction from Perth to Glamis. The castle of the "thane of Glamis" has been made a traditionary scene of the murder of Duncan. Birnam Hill is to the north-west of Perth; and between the two elevations there is a distance of some twelve miles, formed by the valley

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of the Tay. But Birnam Hill and Birnam Wood might have been essentially different spots two centuries and a half ago. The plain is now under tillage; but even in the time of Shakspere it might have been for the most part woodland, extending from Birnam Hill within four or five miles of Dunsinane; distinguished from Birnam Hill as Birnam Wood. At the distance of three miles it was moving grove." It was still nigher to Dunsinane when Malcolm exclaimed,

"Now, near enough, your leafy screens throw down."

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These passages in the play might have been written without any local knowledge, but they certainly do not exhibit any local ignorance. It has been said, "The probability of Shakspeare's ever having been in Scotland is very remote. It should seem, by his uniformly accenting the name of this spot Dunsinane, that he could not possibly have taken it from the mouths of the country-people, who as uniformly accent it Dunsínnan."* This is not quite accurate, as Dr. Drake has pointed out. Shakspere has this passage:

"Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be, until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him."

* Stoddart's Remarks on the Local Scenery and Manners in Scotland,' 1801.

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Wintoun, in his Chronicle,' has both Dunsináne and Dunsinane. But we are informed by a gentleman who is devoted to the study of Scotch antiquities that there is every reason to believe that Dunsinane was the ancient pronunciation, and that Shakspere was consequently right in making Dunsínane the exception to his ordinary method of accenting the word. So much for the topographical knowledge displayed in Macbeth.' Alone, it is scarcely enough to found an argument upon.

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But there is a point of specific knowledge in this tragedy which opens out a wider field of inquiry. Coleridge has said "The Weird Sisters are as true a creation of Shakspeare's, as his Ariel and Caliban,—fates, furies, and materializing witches being the elements. They are wholly different from any representation of witches in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient external resemblance to the creatures of vulgar prejudice to act immediately on the audience." Fully acknowledging that the weird sisters are a creation-for all the creations of poetry to be effective must still be akin to something which has been acted or believed by man, and therefore true in the highest sense of the word—we have still to inquire whether there were in existence any common materials for this poetical creation. We have no doubt that the witches of "Macbeth" are wholly different from any representation of witches in the contemporary writers." Charles Lamb says of the Witch of Edmonton,' a tragicomedy by Rowley, Dekker, and Ford, that Mother Sawyer "is the plain traditional old woman witch of our ancestors; poor, deformed, and ignorant; the terror of villages, herself amenable to a justice." She has "a familiar which serves her in the likeness of a black dog.' It is he who strikes the horse lame, and nips the sucking child, and forbids the butter to come that has been churning nine hours. It is scarcely necessary to inquire whether the Witch' of Middleton preceded the Macbeth' of Shakspere. Davenant engrafted Middleton's Lyrics upon the stage Macbeth;' but those who sing Locke's music are not the witches of Shakspere. Middleton's witches are essentially unpoetical, except in a passage or two of these Lyrics. Hecate, their queen, has all the low revenges and prosaic occupations of the meanest of the tribe. Take an example :

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"Hec. Is the heart of wax Stuck full of magic needles?

Stadlin. 'T is done, Hecate.

Hec. And is the farmer's picture, and his wife's,

Laid down to th' fire yet?

Stad. They are a roasting both, too.

Hec. Good;

Then their marrows are a melting subtlely,

And three months' sickness sucks up life in 'em.

They deny'd me often flour, barm, and milk,
Goose-grease and tar, when I ne'er hurt their churnings,
Their brew-locks, nor their batches, nor fore-spoke

Any of their breedings. Now I'll be meet with 'em.

Seven of their young pigs I have bewitch'd already

Of the last litter; nine ducklings, thirteen goslings, and a hog
Fell lame last Sunday after even-song too.

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,
'Mongst graves and grots, near an old charnel-house."

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,
The housewives' tun not work, nor the milk churn;
Writhe children's wrists, and suck their breath in sleep,
Get vials of their blood; and where the sea
Casts up his slimy ooze, search for a weed
To open locks with, and to rivet charms,
Planted about her in the wicked feat

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
Along her back, when she doth start before us.
But you must give her law: and you shall see her
Make twenty leaps and doubles; cross the paths,
And then squat down beside us."

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

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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 " 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 and lawfully convicted and attainted, shall suffer pains of death as a felon or felons,

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