his be
witchcraft indeed?"

[Footnote 1: Shakspere Manual, p. 249.]

93. In comparing the evidence to be deduced from the contemporary
records of witchcraft with the sayings and doings of the sisters in
"Macbeth," those parts of the play will first be dealt with upon which
no doubt as to their genuineness has ever been cast, and which are
asserted to be solely applicable to Norns. If it can be shown that these
describe witches rather than Norns, the position that Shakspere
intentionally substituted witches for the "goddesses of Destinie"
mentioned in his authority is practically unassailable. First, then, it
is asserted that the description of the appearance of the sisters given
by Banquo applies to Norns rather than witches--

"They look not like the inhabitants o' th' earth,
And yet are on't."

This question of applicability, however, must not be decided by the
consideration of a single sentence, but of the whole passage from which
it is extracted; and, whilst considering it, it should be carefully
borne in mind that it occurs immediately before those lines which are
chiefly relied upon as proving the identity of the sisters with Urda,
Verdandi, and Skulda.

Banquo, on seeing the sisters, says--

"What are these,
So withered and so wild in their attire,
That look not like the inhabitants o' th' earth,
And yet are on't? Live you, or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me,
By each at once her chappy finger laying
Upon her skinny lips: you should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so."

It is in the first moment of surprise that the sisters, appearing so
suddenly, seem to Banquo unlike the inhabitants of this earth. When he
recovers from the shock and is capable of deliberate criticism, he sees
chappy fingers, skinny lips--in fact, nothing to distinguish them from
poverty-stricken, ugly old women but their beards. A more accurate
poetical counterpart to the prose descriptions given by contemporary
writers of the appearance of the poor creatures who were charged with
the crime of witchcraft could hardly have been penned. Scot, for
instance, says, "They are women which commonly be old, lame,
bleare-eied, pale, fowle, and full of wrinkles.... They are leane and
deformed, showing melancholie in their faces;"[1] and Harsnet describes
a witch as "an old weather-beaten crone, having her chin and k