01: 'By yea and no, I think the 'oman is a witch indeed: I
like not when a 'oman has a great peard' (_Merry Wives_, IV. ii. 202).]

[Footnote 202: Even the metaphor in the lines (II. iii. 127),

What should be spoken here, where our fate,
Hid in an auger-hole, may rush and seize us?

was probably suggested by the words in Scot's first chapter, 'They can
go in and out at awger-holes.']

[Footnote 203: Once, 'weird women.' Whether Shakespeare knew that
'weird' signified 'fate' we cannot tell, but it is probable that he did.
The word occurs six times in _Macbeth_ (it does not occur elsewhere in
Shakespeare). The first three times it is spelt in the Folio _weyward_,
the last three _weyard_. This may suggest a miswriting or misprinting of
_wayward_; but, as that word is always spelt in the Folio either rightly
or _waiward_, it is more likely that the _weyward_ and _weyard_ of
_Macbeth_ are the copyist's or printer's misreading of Shakespeare's
_weird_ or _weyrd_.]

[Footnote 204: The doubt as to these passages (see Note Z) does not
arise from the mere appearance of this figure. The idea of Hecate's
connection with witches appears also at II. i. 52, and she is mentioned
again at III. ii. 41 (cf. _Mid. Night's Dream_, V. i. 391, for her
connection with fairies). It is part of the common traditional notion of
the heathen gods being now devils. Scot refers to it several times. See
the notes in the Clarendon Press edition on III. v. 1, or those in
Furness's Variorum.

Of course in the popular notion the witch's spirits are devils or
servants of Satan. If Shakespeare openly introduces this idea only in
such phrases as 'the instruments of darkness' and 'what! can the devil
speak true?' the reason is probably his unwillingness to give too much
prominence to distinctively religious ideas.]

[Footnote 205: If this paragraph is true, some of the statements even of
Lamb and of Coleridge about the Witches are, taken literally, incorrect.
What these critics, and notably the former, describe so well is the
poetic aspect abstracted from the remainder; and in describing this they
attribute to the Witches themselves what belongs really to the complex
of Witches, Spirits, and Hecate. For the purposes of imagination, no
doubt, this inaccuracy is of small consequence; and it is these purposes
that matter. [I have not attempted to fulfil them.]]

[Footnote 206: See Note CC.]

[Footnote 207: The proclamation of Malcolm as Dunca