Folk-lore of Shakespeare
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Title: Folk-lore of Shakespeare
Author: T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
Release date: April 29, 2010 [eBook #32183]
Most recently updated: January 6, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE ***
Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE
BY THE
REV. T. F. THISELTON DYER, M.A. OXON.
AUTHOR OF "BRITISH POPULAR CUSTOMS, PAST AND PRESENT," ETC.
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1884
PREFACE.
It would be difficult to overestimate the value which must be attached
to the plays of Shakespeare in connection with the social life of the
Elizabethan age. Possessed of a rich treasury of knowledge of a most
varied kind, much of which he may be said to have picked up almost
intuitively, he embellished his writings with a choice store of
illustrations descriptive of the period in which he lived. Apart, too,
from his copious references to the manners and customs of the time, he
seems to have had not only a wide knowledge of many technical subjects,
but also an intimate acquaintance with the folk-lore of bygone days. How
far this was the case may be gathered from the following pages, in which
are collected and grouped together, as far as arrangement would permit,
the various subjects relating to this interesting and popular branch of
our domestic history. It only remains for me to add that the edition of
the poet's plays made use of is the "Globe," published by Messrs.
Macmillan.
T. F. THISELTON DYER.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE.
I. FAIRIES 1
II. WITCHES 25
III. GHOSTS 43
IV. DEMONOLOGY AND DEVIL-LORE 52
V. NATURAL PHENOMENA 62
VI. BIRDS 97
VII. ANIMALS 161
VIII. PLANTS 201
IX. INSECTS AND REPTILES 250
X. FOLK-MEDICINE 264
XI. CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR 296
XII. BIRTH AND BAPTISM 332
XIII. MARRIAGE 342
XIV. DEATH AND BURIAL 362
XV. RINGS AND PRECIOUS STONES 386
XVI. SPORTS AND PASTIMES 394
XVII. DANCES 424
XVIII. PUNISHMENTS 433
XIX. PROVERBS 444
XX. HUMAN BODY 475
XXI. FISHES 497
XXII. SUNDRY SUPERSTITIONS 505
XXIII. MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS, ETC. 521
INDEX 549
FOLK-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE.
CHAPTER I.
FAIRIES.
The wealth of Shakespeare's luxuriant imagination and glowing language
seems to have been poured forth in the graphic accounts which he has
given us of the fairy tribe. Indeed, the profusion of poetic imagery
with which he has so richly clad his fairy characters is unrivalled, and
the "Midsummer-Night's Dream" holds a unique position in so far as it
contains the finest modern artistic realization of the fairy kingdom.
Mr. Dowden, in his "Shakspere Primer" (1877, pp. 71, 72) justly remarks:
"As the two extremes of exquisite delicacy, of dainty elegance, and, on
the other hand, of thick-witted grossness and clumsiness, stand the
fairy tribe and the group of Athenian handicraftsmen. The world of the
poet's dream includes the two--a Titania, and a Bottom the weaver--and can
bring them into grotesque conjunction. No such fairy poetry existed
anywhere in English literature before Shakspere. The tiny elves, to whom
a cowslip is tall, for whom the third part of a minute is an important
division of time, have a miniature perfection which is charming. They
delight in all beautiful and dainty things, and war with things that
creep and things that fly, if they be uncomely; their lives are gay with
fine frolic and delicate revelry." Puck, the jester of fairyland, stands
apart from the rest, the recognizable "lob of spirits," a rough,
"fawn-faced, shock-pated little fellow, dainty-limbed shapes around
him." Judging, then, from the elaborate account which the poet has
bequeathed us of the fairies, it is evident that the subject was one in
which he took a special interest. Indeed, the graphic pictures he has
handed down to us of
"Elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves;
And ye, that on the sands with printless foot,
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back; you demy-puppets that
By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make
Whereof the ewe not bites," etc.,
show how intimately he was acquainted with the history of these little
people, and what a complete knowledge he possessed of the superstitious
fancies which had clustered round them. In Shakespeare's day, too, it
must be remembered, fairies were much in fashion; and, as Johnson
remarks, common tradition had made them familiar. It has also been
observed that, well acquainted, from the rural habits of his early life,
with the notions of the peasantry respecting these beings, he saw that
they were capable of being applied to a production of a species of the
wonderful. Hence, as Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps[1] has so aptly written,
"he founded his elfin world on the prettiest of the people's traditions,
and has clothed it in the ever-living flowers of his own exuberant
fancy." Referring to the fairy mythology in the "Midsummer-Night's
Dream," it is described by Mr. Keightley[2] as an attempt to blend "the
elves of the village with the fays of romance." His fairies agree with
the former in their diminutive stature--diminished, indeed, to dimensions
inappreciable by village gossips--in their fondness for dancing, their
love of cleanliness, and their child-abstracting propensities. Like the
fays, they form a community, ruled over by the princely Oberon and the
fair Titania. There is a court and chivalry; Oberon would have the
queen's sweet changeling to be a "knight of his train, to trace the
forests wild." Like earthly monarchs, he has his jester, "that shrewd
and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow."
[1] "Illustrations of the Fairy Mythology of 'A
Midsummer-Night's Dream,'" 1845, p. xiii.
[2] "Fairy Mythology," p. 325.
Of the fairy characters treated by Shakespeare may be mentioned Oberon,
king of fairyland, and Titania, his queen. They are represented as
keeping rival courts in consequence of a quarrel, the cause of which is
thus told by Puck ("Midsummer-Night's Dream," ii. 1):
"The king doth keep his revels here to-night:
Take heed the queen come not within his sight;
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,
Because that she as her attendant hath
A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling;
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;
But she perforce withholds the loved boy,
Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy;
And now they never meet in grove or green,
By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen," etc.
Oberon first appears in the old French romance of "Huon de Bourdeaux,"
and is identical with Elberich, the dwarf king of the German story of
Otuit in the "Heldenbuch." The name Elberich, or, as it appears in the
"Nibelungenlied," Albrich, was changed, in passing into French, first
into Auberich, then into Auberon, and finally became our Oberon. He is
introduced by Spenser in the "Fairy Queen" (book ii. cant. i. st. 6),
where he describes Sir Guyon:
"Well could he tournay, and in lists debate,
And knighthood tooke of good Sir Huon's hand,
When with King Oberon he came to faery land."
And in the tenth canto of the same book (stanza 75) he is the
allegorical representative of Henry VIII. The wise Elficleos left two
sons,
"of which faire Elferon,
The eldest brother, did untimely dy;
Whose emptie place the mightie Oberon
Doubly supplide, in spousall and dominion."
"Oboram, King of Fayeries," is one of the characters in Greene's "James
the Fourth."[3]
[3] Aldis Wright's "Midsummer-Night's Dream," 1877, Preface,
pp. xv., xvi.; Ritson's "Fairy Mythology," 1875, pp. 22, 23.
The name Titania for the queen of the fairies appears to have been the
invention of Shakespeare, for, as Mr. Ritson[4] remarks, she is not "so
called by any other writer." Why, however, the poet designated her by
this title, presents, according to Mr. Keightley,[5] no difficulty. "It
was," he says, "the belief of those days that the fairies were the same
as the classic nymphs, the attendants of Diana. The fairy queen was
therefore the same as Diana, whom Ovid (Met. iii. 173) styles Titania."
In Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale" Pluto is the king of faerie, and his
queen, Proserpina, "who danced and sang about the well under the laurel
in January's garden."[6]
[4] Essay on Fairies in "Fairy Mythology of Shakspeare," p. 23.
[5] "Fairy Mythology," 1878, p. 325.
[6] Notes to "A Midsummer-Night's Dream," by Aldis Wright,
1877, Preface, p. xvi.
In "Romeo and Juliet" (i. 4) she is known by the more familiar
appellation, Queen Mab. "I dream'd a dream to-night," says Romeo,
whereupon Mercutio replies, in that well-known famous passage--
"O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you,"
this being the earliest instance in which Mab is used to designate the
fairy queen. Mr. Thoms[7] thinks that the origin of this name is to be
found in the Celtic, and that it contains a distinct allusion to the
diminutive form of the elfin sovereign. _Mab_, both in Welsh and in the
kindred dialects of Brittany, signifies a child or infant, and hence it
is a befitting epithet to one who
"comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman."
Mr. Keightley suggests that Mab may be a contraction of Habundia, who,
Heywood says, ruled over the fairies; and another derivation is from
Mabel, of which Mab is an abbreviation.
[7] "Three Notelets on Shakespeare," pp. 100-107.
Among the references to Queen Mab we may mention Drayton's "Nymphidia:"
"Hence Oberon, him sport to make
(Their rest when weary mortals take,
And none but only fairies wake),
Descendeth for his pleasure:
And Mab, his merry queen, by night
Bestrides young folks that lie upright," etc.
Ben Jonson, in his "Entertainment of the Queen and Prince at Althrope,"
in 1603, describes as "tripping up the lawn a bevy of fairies, attending
on Mab, their queen, who, falling into an artificial ring that there was
cut in the path, began to dance around." In the same masque the queen is
thus characterized by a satyr.
"This is Mab, the mistress fairy,
That doth nightly rob the dairy,
And can help or hurt the cherning
As she please, without discerning," etc.
Like Puck, Shakespeare has invested Queen Mab with mischievous
properties, which "identify her with the night hag of popular
superstition," and she is represented as
"Platting the manes of horses in the night."
The merry Puck, who is so prominent an actor in "A Midsummer-Night's
Dream," is the mischief-loving sprite, the jester of the fairy court,
whose characteristics are roguery and sportiveness. In his description
of him, Shakespeare, as Mr. Thoms points out, "has embodied almost every
attribute with which the imagination of the people has invested the
fairy race; and has neither omitted one trait necessary to give
brilliancy and distinctness to the likeness, nor sought to heighten its
effect by the slightest exaggeration. For, carefully and elaborately as
he has finished the picture, he has not in it invested the 'lob of
spirits' with one gift or quality which the popular voice of the age was
not unanimous in bestowing upon him." Thus (ii. 1) the fairy says:
"Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite,
Call'd Robin Goodfellow: are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:
Are not you he?"
The name "Puck" was formerly applied to the whole race of fairies, and
not to any individual sprite--_puck_, or _pouke_, being an old word for
devil, in which sense it is used in the "Vision of Piers Plowman:"
"Out of the poukes pondfold
No maynprise may us fecche."
The Icelandic _puki_ is the same word, and in Friesland and Jutland the
domestic spirit is called Puk by the peasantry. In Devonshire, Piskey is
the name for a fairy, with which we may compare the Cornish Pixey. In
Worcestershire, too, we read how the peasantry are occasionally
"poake-ledden," that is, misled by a mischievous spirit called _poake_.
And, according to Grose's "Provincial Glossary," in Hampshire they give
the name of Colt-pixey to a supposed spirit or fairy, which, in the
shape of a horse, neighs, and misleads horses into bogs. The Irish,
again, have their Pooka,[8] and the Welsh their Pwcca--both words derived
from Pouke or Puck. Mr. Keightley[9] thinks, also, that the Scottish
_pawkey_, sly, knowing, may belong to the same list of words. It is
evident, then, that the term Puck was in bygone years extensively
applied to the fairy race, an appellation still found in the west of
England. Referring to its use in Wales, "there is a Welsh tradition to
the effect that Shakespeare received his knowledge of the Cambrian
fairies from his friend Richard Price, son of Sir John Price, of the
Priory of Brecon." It is even claimed that Cwm Pwcca, or Puck Valley, a
part of the romantic glen of the Clydach, in Breconshire, is the
original scene of the "Midsummer-Night's Dream."[10]
[8] See Croker's "Fairy Legends of South of Ireland," 1862, p. 135.
[9] "Fairy Mythology," 1878, p. 316.
[10] Wirt Sikes's "British Goblins," 1880, p. 20.
Another of Puck's names was Robin Goodfellow, and one of the most
valuable illustrations we have of the "Midsummer-Night's Dream" is a
black-letter tract published in London, 1628, under the title of "Robin
Goodfellow: His Mad Pranks, and Merry Jests, full of honest mirth, and
is a fit medicine for melancholy."[11] Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps,[12]
speaking of Robin Goodfellow, says, "there can be no doubt that in the
time of Shakespeare the fairies held a more prominent position in our
popular literature than can be now concluded from the pieces on the
subject that have descended to us." The author of "Tarlton's News out of
Purgatory," printed in 1590, assures us that Robin Goodfellow was
"famosed in every old wives chronicle for his mad merry pranks;" and we
learn from "Henslowe's Diary" that Chettle was the writer of a drama on
the adventures of that "merry wanderer of the night." These have
disappeared; and time has dealt so harshly with the memory of poor Robin
that we might almost imagine his spirit was still leading us astray over
massive volumes of antiquity, in a delusive search after documents
forever lost; or, rather, perhaps, it is his punishment for the useless
journeys he has given our ancestors, misleading night-wanderers, "and
laughing at their harm."[13] He is mentioned by Drayton in his
"Nymphidia:"
"He meeteth Puck, which most men call
Hob-goblin, and on him doth fall," etc.,
"hob being the familiar or diminutive form of Robert and Robin, so that
Hobgoblin is equivalent to Robin the Goblin. _i. e._, Robin
Goodfellow."[14] Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," alludes to him
thus: "A bigger kinde there is of them, called with us hobgoblins and
Robin Goodfellows, that would, in superstitious times, grinde corne for
a mess of milk, cut wood, or do any manner of drudgery work." Under his
name of Robin Goodfellow, Puck is well characterized in Jonson's masque
of "Love Restored."[15]
[11] This is reprinted in Hazlitt's "Fairy Tales, Legends, and
Romances, illustrating Shakespeare and other English Writers,"
1875, p. 173.
[12] "Illustrations of the Fairy Mythology of the
Midsummer-Night's Dream," printed for the Shakespeare Society,
p. viii.
[13] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 508-512.
[14] Thoms's "Three Notelets on Shakespeare," p. 88.
[15] See Nares's Glossary, vol. ii. p. 695.
Another epithet applied to Puck is "Lob," as in the "Midsummer-Night's
Dream" (ii. 1), where he is addressed by the fairy as
"Thou lob of spirits."[16]
With this we may compare the "lubber-fiend" of Milton, and the following
in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Knight of the Burning Pestle" (iii. 4):
"There is a pretty tale of a witch that had the devil's mark about her,
that had a giant to be her son, that was called Lob-lye-by-the-Fire."
Grimm[17] mentions a spirit, named the "Good Lubber," to whom the bones
of animals used to be offered at Manseld, in Germany. Once more, the
phrase of "being in," or "getting into Lob's pound," is easy of
explanation, presuming Lob to be a fairy epithet--the term being
equivalent to Poake-ledden or Pixy-led.[18] In "Hudibras" this term is
employed as a name for the stocks in which the knight puts Crowdero:
"Crowdero, whom in irons bound,
Thou basely threw'st into _Lob's pound_."
[16] Mr. Dyce considers that Lob is descriptive of the contrast
between Puck's square figure and the airy shapes of the other
fairies.
[17] "Deutsche Mythologie," p. 492.
[18] See Keightley's "Fairy Mythology," pp. 318, 319.
It occurs, also, in Massinger's "Duke of Milan" (iii. 2), where it means
"behind the arras:"
"Who forc'd the gentleman, to save her credit,
To marry her, and say he was the party
Found in Lob's pound."
The allusion by Shakespeare to the "Will-o'-the-Wisp," where he speaks
of Puck as "sometime a fire," is noticed elsewhere, this being one of
the forms under which this fairy was supposed to play his midnight
pranks.
Referring, in the next place, to the several names of Shakespeare's
fairies, we may quote from "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (iv. 3), where
Mrs. Page speaks of "urchins, ouphes, and fairies"--urchin having been
an appellation for one class of fairies. In the "Maydes' Metamorphosis"
of Lyly (1600), we find fairies, elves, and urchins separately
accommodated with dances for their use. The following is the _urchin's_
dance:
"By the moone we sport and play,
With the night begins our day;
As we frisk the dew doth fall,
Trip it, little urchins all,
Lightly as the little bee,
Two by two, and three by three,
And about goe wee, goe wee."
In "The Tempest" (i. 2) their actions are also limited to the night:
"Urchins
Shall, for that vast of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee."
The children employed to torment Falstaff, in "The Merry Wives of
Windsor" (iv. 4), were to be dressed in these fairy shapes.
Mr. Douce regards the word _urchin_, when used to designate a fairy, as
of Celtic origin, with which view Mr. Thoms[19] compares the _urisks_ of
Highland fairies.
[19] "Three Notelets on Shakespeare," pp. 79-82.
The term _ouphe_, according to Grimm, is only another form of the
cognate _elf_, which corresponds with the Middle High-German _ulf_, in
the plural _ulve_. He further proves the identity of this _ulf_ with
_alp_, and with our English _elf_, from a Swedish song published by
Asdwiddson, in his "Collection of Swedish Ballads," in one version of
which the elfin king is called Herr _Elfver_, and in the second Herr
_Ulfver_.
The name _elf_, which is frequently used by Shakespeare, is the same as
the Anglo-Saxon _alf_, the Old High-German and the Middle High-German
_ulf_. "Fairies and elvs," says Tollet, "are frequently mentioned
together in the poets without any distinction of character that I can
recollect."
The other fairies, Peas-blossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard-seed probably
owe their appellations to the poet himself.
How fully Shakespeare has described the characteristics of the fairy
tribe, besides giving a detailed account of their habits and doings, may
be gathered from the following pages, in which we have briefly
enumerated the various items of fairy lore as scattered through the
poet's writings.
Beauty, then, united with power, was one of the popular characteristics
of the fairy tribe. Such was that of the "Fairy Queen" of Spenser, and
of Titania in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream." In "Antony and Cleopatra"
(iv. 8), Antony, on seeing Cleopatra enter, says to Scarus:
"To this great fairy I'll commend thy acts,
Make her thanks bless thee."
In "Cymbeline" (iii. 6), when the two brothers find Imogen in their
cave, Belarius exclaims:
"But that it eats our victuals, I should think
Here were a fairy."[20]
And he then adds:
"By Jupiter, an angel! or, if not,
An earthly paragon! behold divineness
No elder than a boy."
[20] Showing, as Mr. Ritson says, that they never ate.
The fairies, as represented in many of our old legends and folk-tales,
are generally noticeable for their beauty, the same being the case with
all their surroundings. As Sir Walter Scott,[21] too, says, "Their
pageants and court entertainments comprehended all that the imagination
could conceive of what were accounted gallant and splendid. At their
processions they paraded more beautiful steeds than those of mere
earthly parentage. The hawks and hounds which they employed in their
chase were of the first race. At their daily banquets, the board was set
forth with a splendor which the proudest kings of the earth dared not
aspire to, and the hall of their dancers echoed to the most exquisite
music."
[21] "Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft," 1831, p. 121.
Mr. Douce[22] quotes from the romance of "Lancelot of the Lake," where
the author, speaking of the days of King Arthur, says, "En celui temps
estoient appellees faees toutes selles qui sentre-mettoient
denchantemens et de charmes, et moult en estoit pour lors principalement
en la Grande Bretaigne, et savoient la force et la vertu des paroles,
des pierres, et des herbes, parquoy elles estoient tenues et jeunesse et
en beaulte, et en grandes richesses comme elles devisoient."
[22] "Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 115.
"This perpetual youth and beauty," he adds, "cannot well be separated
from a state of immortality;" another characteristic ascribed to the
fairy race. It is probably alluded to by Titania in "A Midsummer-Night's
Dream" (ii. 1):
"The human mortals want their winter here."
And further on (ii. 1), when speaking of the changeling's mother, she
says:
"But she, being mortal, of that boy did die."
Again, a fairy addresses Bottom the weaver (iii. 1)--
"Hail, mortal!"
--an indication that she was not so herself. The very fact, indeed, that
fairies "call themselves _spirits_, ghosts, or shadows, seems to be a
proof of their immortality." Thus Puck styles Oberon "king of shadows,"
and this monarch asserts of himself and his subjects--
"But we are spirits of another sort."
Fletcher, in the "Faithful Shepherdess," describes (i. 2)--
"A virtuous well, about whose flow'ry banks
The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds,
By the pale moonshine, dipping oftentimes
Their stolen children, so to make them free
From dying flesh, and dull mortality."
Ariosto, in his "Orlando Furioso" (book xliii. stanza 98) says:
"I am a fayrie, and to make you know,
To be a fayrie what it doth import,
We cannot dye, how old so e'er we grow.
Of paines and harmes of ev'rie other sort
We taste, onelie no death we nature ow."
An important feature of the fairy race was their power of vanishing at
will, and of assuming various forms. In "A Midsummer-Night's Dream"
Oberon says:
"I am invisible,
And I will overhear their conference."
Puck relates how he was in the habit of taking all kinds of outlandish
forms; and in the "Tempest," Shakespeare has bequeathed to us a graphic
account of Ariel's eccentricities. "Besides," says Mr. Spalding,[23]
"appearing in his natural shape, and dividing into flames, and behaving
in such a manner as to cause young Ferdinand to leap into the sea,
crying, 'Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!' he assumes the
forms of a water nymph (i. 2), a harpy (iii. 3), and also the Goddess
Ceres (iv. 1), while the strange shapes, masquers, and even the hounds
that hunt and worry the would-be king and viceroys of the island, are
Ariel's 'meaner fellows.'" Poor Caliban complains of Prospero's spirits
(ii. 2):
"For every trifle are they set upon me;
Sometimes like apes, that mow and chatter at me,
And after bite me: then like hedgehogs which
Lie tumbling in my bare-foot way, and mount
Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I
All wound with adders, who, with cloven tongues
Do hiss me into madness."
[23] "Elizabethan Demonology," p. 50.
That fairies are sometimes exceedingly diminutive is fully shown by
Shakespeare, who gives several instances of this peculiarity. Thus Queen
Mab, in "Romeo and Juliet," to which passage we have already had
occasion to allude (i. 4), is said to come
"In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman."[24]
[24] Agate was used metaphorically for a very diminutive
person, in allusion to the small figures cut in agate for
rings. In "2 Henry IV." (i. 2), Falstaff says: "I was never
manned with an agate till now; but I will inset you neither in
gold nor silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again
to your master, for a jewel." In "Much Ado About Nothing" (iii.
1) Hero speaks of a man as being "low, an agate very vilely
cut."
And Puck tells us, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. 1), that when
Oberon and Titania meet,
"they do square, that all their elves, for fear,
Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there."
Further on (ii. 3) the duties imposed by Titania upon her train point to
their tiny character:
"Come, now a roundel and a fairy song;
Then, for the third part of a minute, hence;
Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds,
Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings,
To make my small elves coats."
And when enamoured of Bottom, she directs her elves that they should--
"Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes;
Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,
With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries;
The honey bags steal from the humble-bees,
And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs
And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes,
To have my love to bed, and to arise;
And pluck the wings from painted butterflies
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes."
We may compare, too, Ariel's well-known song in "The Tempest" (v. 1):
"Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry,
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily,
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."
Again, from the following passage in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (iv.
4) where Mrs. Page, after conferring with her husband, suggests that--
"Nan Page my daughter, and my little son,
And three or four more of their growth, we'll dress
Like urchins, ouphes, and fairies, green and white,
With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads,
And rattles in their hands"
it is evident that in Shakespeare's day fairies were supposed to be of
the size of children. The notion of their diminutiveness, too, it
appears was not confined to this country,[25] but existed in
Denmark,[26] for in the ballad of "Eline of Villenskov" we read:
"Out then spake the smallest Trold;
No bigger than an ant;--
Oh! here is come a Christian man,
His schemes I'll sure prevent."
[25] See Grimm's "Deutsche Mythologie."
[26] Thoms's "Three Notelets on Shakespeare," 1865, pp. 38, 39.
Again, various stories are current in Germany descriptive of the fairy
dwarfs; one of the most noted being that relating to Elberich, who aided
the Emperor Otnit to gain the daughter of the Paynim Soldan of
Syria.[27]
[27] See Keightley's "Fairy Mythology," 1878, p. 208.
The haunt of the fairies on earth are generally supposed to be the most
romantic and rural that can be selected; such a spot being the place of
Titania's repose described by Oberon in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii.
1):[28]
"a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania some time of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in."
[28] See also Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," 1852, vol. iii. p.
32, etc.
Titania also tells how the fairy race meet
"on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea."
In "The Tempest" (v. 1), we have the following beautiful invocation by
Prospero:
"Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves;
And ye, that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back--"
Their haunts, however, varied in different localities, but their
favorite abode was in the interior of conical green hills, on the slopes
of which they danced by moonlight. Milton, in the "Paradise Lost" (book
i.), speaks of
"fairy elves,
Whose midnight revels, by a forest side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course, they, on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear;
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds."
The Irish fairies occasionally inhabited the ancient burial-places known
as tumuli or barrows, while some of the Scottish fairies took up their
abode under the "door-stane" or threshold of some particular house, to
the inmates of which they administered good offices.[29]
[29] Gunyon's "Illustrations of Scottish History, Life, and
Superstitions," p. 299.
The so-called fairy-rings in old pastures[30]--little circles of a
brighter green, within which it was supposed the fairies dance by
night--are now known to result from the out-spreading propagation of a
particular mushroom, the fairy-ringed fungus, by which the ground is
manured for a richer following vegetation. An immense deal of legendary
lore, however, has clustered round this curious phenomenon, popular
superstition attributing it to the merry roundelays of the moonlight
fairies.[31] In "The Tempest" (v. 1) Prospero invokes the fairies as the
"demy-puppets" that
"By moonshine do the green-sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime
Is to make midnight-mushrooms."
[30] Chambers's "Book of Days," vol. i. p. 671.
[31] Among the various conjectures as to the cause of these
verdant circles, some have ascribed them to lightning; others
maintained that they are occasioned by ants. See Miss Baker's
"Northamptonshire Glossary," vol. i. p. 218; Brand's "Pop.
Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 480-483; and also the
"Phytologist," 1862, pp. 236-238.
In "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. 1), the fairy says:
"I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green."
Again, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 5), Anne Page says:
"And nightly, meadow-fairies, look, you sing
Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring;
The expressure that it bears, green let it be,
More fertile-fresh than all the field to see."
And once in "Macbeth" (v. 1), Hecate says:
"Like elves and fairies in a ring."
Drayton, in his "Nymphidia" (l. 69-72), mentions this superstition:
"And in their courses make that round,
In meadows and in marshes found,
Of them so called the fayrie ground,
Of which they have the keeping."
Cowley, too, in his "Complaint," says:
"Where once such fairies dance, no grass does ever grow."
And again, in his ode upon Dr. Harvey:
"And dance, like fairies, a fantastic round."
Pluquet, in his "Contes Populaires de Bayeux," tells us that the fairy
rings, called by the peasants of Normandy "Cercles des fées," are said
to be the work of fairies.
Among the numerous superstitions which have clustered round the fairy
rings, we are told that when damsels of old gathered the May dew on the
grass, which they made use of to improve their complexions, they left
undisturbed such of it as they perceived on the fairy-rings,
apprehensive that the fairies should in revenge destroy their beauty.
Nor was it considered safe to put the foot within the rings, lest they
should be liable to the fairies' power.[32] The "Athenian Oracle" (i.
397) mentions a popular belief that "if a house be built upon the ground
where fairy rings are, whoever shall inhabit therein does wonderfully
prosper."
[32] Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 112.
Speaking of their dress, we are told that they constantly wore green
vests, unless they had some reason for changing their attire. In the
"Merry Wives of Windsor" (iv. 4) they are spoken of as--
"Urchins, ouphes, and fairies, green and white."
And further on (v. 4):
"Fairies, black, grey, green, and white."
The fairies of the moors were often clad in heath-brown or lichen-dyed
garments, whence the epithet of "Elfin-grey."[33]
[33] Ritson's "Fairy Mythology," 1878, pp. 26, 27.
The legends of most countries are unanimous in ascribing to the fairies
an inordinate love of music; such harmonious sounds as those which
Caliban depicts in "The Tempest" (iii. 2) being generally ascribed to
them:
"The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again."
In the "Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. 3), when Titania is desirous of
taking a nap, she says to her attendants:
"Come, now a roundel, and a fairy song."
And further on (iii. 1) she tells Bottom:
"I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,
And sing, while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep."
The author of "Round About our Coal Fire"[34] tells us that "they had
fine musick always among themselves, and danced in a moonshiny night,
around, or in, a ring."
[34] Quoted by Brand, "Pop. Antiq.," vol. ii. p. 481.
They were equally fond of dancing, and we are told how they meet--
"To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind;"
and in the "Maydes' Metamorphosis" of Lyly, the fairies, as they dance,
sing:
"Round about, round about, in a fine ring a,
Thus we dance, thus we dance, and thus we sing a,
Trip and go, to and fro, over this green a,
All about, in and out, for our brave queen a," etc.
As Mr. Thoms says, in his "Three Notelets on Shakespeare" (1865, pp. 40,
41), "the writings of Shakespeare abound in graphic notices of these
fairy revels, couched in the highest strains of poetry; and a comparison
of these with some of the popular legends which the industry of
Continental antiquaries has preserved will show us clearly that these
delightful sketches of elfin enjoyment have been drawn by a hand as
faithful as it is masterly."
It would seem that the fairies disliked irreligious people: and so, in
"Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 5), the mock fairies are said to chastise
unchaste persons, and those who do not say their prayers. This coincides
with what Lilly, in his "Life and Times," says: "Fairies love a strict
diet and upright life; fervent prayers unto God conduce much to the
assistance of those who are curious hereways," _i. e._, who wish to
cultivate an acquaintance with them.
Again, fairies are generally represented as great lovers and patrons of
cleanliness and propriety, for the observance of which they were
frequently said to reward good servants, by dropping money into their
shoes in the night; and, on the other hand, they were reported to punish
most severely the sluts and slovenly, by pinching them black and
blue.[35] Thus, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (v. 1), Puck says:
"I am sent, with broom, before,
To sweep the dust behind the door."
[35] Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. p. 483.
In "Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 5), Pistol, speaking of the mock fairy
queen, says:
"Our radiant queen hates sluts and sluttery;"
and the fairies who haunt the towers of Windsor are enjoined:
"About, about,
Search Windsor Castle, elves, within and out:
Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room:
* * * * *
The several chairs of order look you scour
With juice of balm and every precious flower."
In Ben Jonson's ballad of "Robin Goodfellow"[36] we have a further
illustration of this notion:
"When house or hearth cloth sluttish lie,
I pinch the maidens black and blue,
The bed clothes from the bed pull I,
And lay them naked all to view.
'Twixt sleep and wake
I do them take,
And on the key-cold floor them throw;
If out they cry,
Then forth I fly,
And loudly laugh I, ho, ho, ho!"
[36] Halliwell-Phillipps's "Illustrations of Fairy Mythology,"
p. 167; see Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," pp. 122, 123.
In "Round About our Coal Fire," we find the following passage bearing on
the subject: "When the master and mistress were laid on the pillows, the
men and maids, if they had a game at romps, and blundered up stairs, or
jumbled a chair, the next morning every one would swear 'twas the
fairies, and that they heard them stamping up and down stairs all night,
crying, 'Waters lock'd, waters lock'd!' when there was no water in every
pail in the kitchen." Herrick, too, in his "Hesperides," speaks of this
superstition:
"If ye will with Mab find grace,
Set each platter in his place;
Rake the fire up, and set
Water in, ere sun be set,
Wash your pales and cleanse your dairies,
Sluts are loathesome to the fairies:
Sweep your house; who doth not so,
Mab will pinch her by the toe."
While the belief in the power of fairies existed, they were supposed to
perform much good service to mankind. Thus, in "A Midsummer-Night's
Dream" (v. 1), Oberon says:
"With this field-dew consecrate,
Every fairy take his gait;
And each several chamber bless,
Through this palace, with sweet peace;
And the owner of it blest,
Ever shall in safety rest"--
the object of their blessing being to bring peace upon the house of
Theseus. Mr. Douce[37] remarks that the great influence which the belief
in fairies had on the popular mind "gave so much offence to the holy
monks and friars, that they determined to exert all their power to expel
these imaginary beings from the minds of the people, by taking the
office of the fairies' benedictions entirely into their own hands;" a
proof of which we have in Chaucer's "Wife of Bath:"
"I speke of many hundred yeres ago;
But now can no man see non elves mo,
For now the grete charitee and prayeres
Of limitoures and other holy freres
That serchen every land and every streme,
As thikke as motes in the sonne beme,
Blissing halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures,
Citees and burghes, castles highe and toures,
Thropes and bernes, shepenes and dairies,
This maketh that ther ben no faeries:
For ther as wont to walken was an elf
Ther walketh now the limitour himself."
[37] "Illustrations of Shakespeare," pp. 126, 127.
Macbeth, too (v. 8), in his encounter with Macduff, says:
"I bear a charmed life, which must not yield
To one of woman born."
In the days of chivalry, the champion's arms were ceremoniously blessed,
each taking an oath that he used no charmed weapon. In Spenser's "Fairy
Queen" (book i. canto 4) we read:
"he bears a charmed shield,
And eke enchanted arms, that none can pierce."
Fairies were amazingly expeditious in their journeys. Thus, Puck goes
"swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow," and in "A Midsummer-Night's
Dream" he answers Oberon, who was about to send him on a secret
expedition:
"I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes."
Again, the same fairy addresses him:
"Fairy king, attend, and mark:
I do hear the morning lark.
_Oberon._ Then, my queen, in silence sad,
Trip we after the night's shade:
We the globe can compass soon,
Swifter than the wand'ring moon."
Once more, Puck says:
"My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,
For night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,
And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger," etc.
It was fatal, if we may believe Falstaff in "Merry Wives of Windsor" (v.
5) to speak to a fairy: "They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall
die."
Fairies are accustomed to enrich their favorites; and in "A Winter's
Tale" (iii. 3) the shepherd says: "It was told me I should be rich by
the fairies;"[38] and in "Cymbeline" (v. 4), Posthumus, on waking and
finding the mysterious paper, exclaims:
"What fairies haunt this ground? A book? O rare one!
Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment
Nobler than that it covers," etc.
[38] See Croker's "Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of
Ireland," p. 316.
At the same time, however, it was unlucky to reveal their acts of
generosity, as the shepherd further tells us: "This is fairy gold, boy;
and 'twill prove so; up with't, keep it close, home, home, the next way.
We are lucky, boy; and to be so still requires nothing but secrecy."
The necessity of secrecy in fairy transactions of this kind is
illustrated in Massinger and Field's play of "The Fatal Dowry," 1632
(iv. 1),[39] where Romont says:
"But not a word o' it; 'tis fairies' treasure,
Which, but reveal'd, brings on the blabber's ruin."
[39] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," vol. ii. p. 493.
Among the many other good qualities belonging to the fairy tribe, we are
told that they were humanely attentive to the youthful dead.[40] Thus
Guiderius, in "Cymbeline," thinking that Imogen is dead (iv. 2), says:
"With female fairies will his tomb be haunted,
And worms will not come to thee;"[41]
there having been a popular notion that where fairies resorted no
noxious creature could be found.
[40] Ritson's "Fairy Mythology of Shakespeare," 1875, p. 29.
[41] Some copies read _them_.
In the pathetic dirge of Collins a similar allusion is made:
"No wither'd witch shall here be seen,
No goblin lead their nightly crew;
The female fays shall haunt the green,
And dress thy grave with pearly dew."
It seems, however, that they were also supposed to be malignant; but
this, "it may be," says Mr. Ritson, "was merely calumny, as being
utterly inconsistent with their general character, which was singularly
innocent and amiable." Thus, when Imogen, in "Cymbeline" (ii. 2), prays
on going to sleep,
"From fairies and the tempters of the night,
Guard me, beseech ye,"[42]
it must have been, says Mr. Ritson,[43] the _incubus_ she was so afraid
of.
[42] We may compare Banquo's words in "Macbeth" (ii. 1):
"Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose."
[43] "Fairy Mythology," pp. 27, 28.
Hamlet, too, notices this imputed malignity of the fairies (i. 1):
"Then no planet strikes,
Nor fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm."[44]
[44] "Comedy of Errors" (iv. 2) some critics read:
"A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough."
That the fairies, however, were fond of indulging in mischievous sport
at the expense of mortals is beyond all doubt, the merry pranks of Puck
or Robin Goodfellow fully illustrating this item of our fairy-lore.
Thus, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. 1) this playful fairy says:
"I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile,
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab;
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough."
A fairy, in another passage, asks Robin:
"Are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
* * * * *
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?"
We have already mentioned how Queen Mab had the same mischievous humor
in her composition, which is described by Mercutio in "Romeo and Juliet"
(i. 4):
"This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes."
Another reprehensible practice attributed to the fairies was that of
carrying off and exchanging children, such being designated
changelings.[45] The special agent in transactions of the sort was also
Queen Mab, and hence Mercutio says:
"She is the fairies' midwife."
And "she is so called," says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, "because it was
her supposed custom to steal new-born babes in the night and leave
others in their place." Mr. Steevens gives a different interpretation to
this line, and says, "It does not mean that she was the midwife to the
fairies, but that she was the person among the fairies whose department
it was to deliver the fancies of sleeping men in their dreams, those
children of an idle brain."
[45] This superstition is fully described in chapter on _Birth_.
CHAPTER II.
WITCHES.
In years gone by witchcraft was one of the grossest forms of
superstition, and it would be difficult to estimate the extent of its
influence in this and other countries. It is not surprising that
Shakespeare should have made frequent allusions to this popular belief,
considering how extensively it prevailed in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries; the religious and dramatic literature of the
period being full of it. Indeed, as Mr. Williams[46] points out, "what
the vulgar superstition must have been may be easily conceived, when men
of the greatest genius or learning credited the possibility, and not
only a theoretical but possible occurrence, of these infernal
phenomena." Thus, Francis Bacon was "not able to get rid of the
principles upon which the creed was based. Sir Edward Coke, his
contemporary, the most acute lawyer of the age, ventured even to define
the devil's agents in witchcraft. Sir Thomas Browne and Sir Matthew
Hale, in 1664, proved their faith--the one by his solemn testimony in
open court, the other by his still more solemn sentence." Hence, it was
only to be expected that Shakespeare should introduce into his writings
descriptions of a creed which held such a prominent place in the history
of his day, and which has made itself famous for all time by the
thousands of victims it caused to be sent to the torture-chamber, to the
stake, and to the scaffold. Thus he has given a graphic account of the
celebrated Jeanne D'Arc, the Maid of Orleans, in "1 Henry VI.," although
Mr. Dowden[47] is of opinion that this play was written by one or more
authors, Greene having had, perhaps, a chief hand in it, assisted by
Peele and Marlowe. He says, "It is a happiness not to have to ascribe to
our greatest poet the crude and hateful handling of the character of
Joan of Arc, excused though to some extent it may be by the occurrence
of view in our old English chronicles."
[46] "Superstitions of Witchcraft," 1865, p. 220.
[47] "Shakspere Primer," 1877, p. 63.
Mr. Lecky,[48] too, regards the conception of Joan of Arc given in "1
Henry VI." as "the darkest blot upon the poet's genius," but it must be
remembered that we have only expressed the current belief of his day--the
English vulgar having regarded her as a sorceress, the French as an
inspired heroine. Talbot is represented as accusing her of being a
witch, serving the Evil One, and entering Rouen by means of her
sorceries (iii. 2):
"France, thou shalt rue this treason with thy tears,
If Talbot but survive thy treachery.
Pucelle, that witch, that damned sorceress,
Hath wrought this hellish mischief unawares,
That hardly we escaped the pride of France."
[48] "Rationalism in Europe," 1870, vol. i. p. 106.
Further on (v. 3) she is made to summon fiends before her, but she
wishes them in vain, for they speak not, hanging their heads in sign of
approaching disaster.
"Now help, ye charming spells and periapts;
And ye choice spirits that admonish me
And give me signs of future accidents.
You speedy helpers, that are substitutes
Under the lordly monarch of the north,
Appear and aid me in this enterprise."
But she adds:
"See, they forsake me! Now the time is come
That France must vail her lofty-plumed crest,
And let her head fall into England's lap.
My ancient incantations are too weak,
And hell too strong for me to buckle with:
Now, France, thy glory droopeth to the dust."
Finally, convicted of practising sorcery, and filling "the world with
vicious qualities," she was condemned to be burned. Her death, however,
Sir Walter Scott[49] says, "was not, we are sorry to say, a sacrifice to
superstitious fear of witchcraft, but a cruel instance of wicked policy,
mingled with national jealousy and hatred. The Duke of Bedford, when the
ill-starred Jeanne fell into his hands, took away her life in order to
stigmatize her memory with sorcery, and to destroy the reputation she
had acquired among the French."
[49] "Demonology and Witchcraft," 1881, pp. 192, 193.
The cases of the Duchess of Gloucester and of Jane Shore, also
immortalized by Shakespeare, are both referred to in the succeeding
pages.
The Witch of Brentford, mentioned by Mrs. Page in "The Merry Wives of
Windsor" (iv. 2), was an actual personage, the fame, says Staunton,[50]
of whose vaticinations must have been traditionally well known to an
audience of the time, although the records we possess of her are scant
enough. The chief of them is a black-letter tract, printed by William
Copland in the middle of the sixteenth century, entitled "Jyl of
Braintford's Testament," from which it appears she was hostess of a
tavern at Brentford.[51] One of the characters in Dekker and Webster's
"Westward Ho"[52] says, "I doubt that old hag, Gillian of Brainford, has
bewitched me."
[50] "Shakespeare," 1864, vol ii. p. 161.
[51] See Dyce's "Glossary," p. 51.
[52] Webster's Works, edited by Dyce, 1857, p. 238.
The witches in "Macbeth" are probably Scottish hags. As Mr. Gunnyon
remarks,[53] "They are hellish monsters, brewing hell-broth, having cats
and toads for familiars, loving midnight, riding on the passing storm,
and devising evil against such as offend them. They crouch beneath the
gibbet of the murderer, meet in gloomy caverns, amid earthquake
convulsions, or in thunder, lightning, and rain." Coleridge, speaking of
them, observes that "the weird sisters are as true a creation of
Shakespeare's as his Ariel and Caliban--fates, fairies, 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. Their character consists
in the imaginative disconnected from the good, they are the shadowy
obscure and fearfully anomalous of physical nature, elemental avengers
without sex or kin."
[53] "Illustrations of Scottish History, Life, and
Superstition," 1879, p. 322.
It has been urged, however, by certain modern critics, that these three
sisters, "who play such an important part in 'Macbeth,' are not witches
at all, but are, or are intimately allied to, the Norns or Fates of
Scandinavian paganism."[54] Thus, a writer in the _Academy_ (Feb. 8,
1879) thinks that Shakespeare drew upon Scandinavian mythology for a
portion of the material he used in constructing these characters, and
that he derived the rest from the traditions of contemporary witchcraft;
in fact, that the "sisters" are hybrids between Norns and witches. The
supposed proof of this is that each sister exercises the special
function of one of the Norns. "The third," it is said, "is the special
prophetess, while the first takes cognizance of the past, and the second
of the present, in affairs connected with humanity. These are the tasks
of Urda, Verdandi, and Skulda. The first begins by asking, 'When shall
we three meet again?' The second decides the time: 'When the battle's
lost and won.' The third the future prophesies: 'That will be ere the
set of sun.' The first again asks, 'Where?' The second decides: 'Upon
the heath.' The third the future prophesies: 'There to meet with
Macbeth.'"
[54] Spalding's "Elizabethan Demonology," 1880, p. 86.
It is further added that the description of the sisters given by Banquo
(i. 3) applies to Norns rather than witches:
"What are these
So wither'd and so wild in their attire,
That look not like the inhabitants o' the 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."
But, as Mr. Spalding truly adds, "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, in his
"Discovery of Witchcraft" (book i. chap. iii. 7), 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." Harsnet, too, in his "Declaration of Popish Impostures" (1603,
p. 136), speaks of a witch as "an old weather-beaten crone, having her
chin and knees meeting for age, walking like a bow, leaning on a staff,
hollow-eyed, un-toothed, furrowed, having her limbs trembling with
palsy, going mumbling in the streets; one that hath forgotten her
paternoster, yet hath a shrewd tongue to call a drab a drab."
The beard, also, to which Shakespeare refers in the passage above, was
the recognized characteristic of the witch. Thus, in the "Honest Man's
Fortune" (ii. 1), it is said, "The women that come to us for disguises
must wear beards, and that's to say a token of a witch." In the "Merry
Wives of Windsor" (iv. 2), Sir Hugh Evans says of the disguised
Falstaff: "By yea and no, I think the 'oman is a witch indeed: I like
not when a 'oman has a great peard; I spy a great peard under her
muffler."
It seems probable, then, that witches are alluded to by Shakespeare in
"Macbeth," the contemporary literature on the subject fully supporting
this theory. Again, by his introduction of Hecate among the witches in
"Macbeth" (iii. 5), Shakespeare has been censured for confounding
ancient with modern superstitions. But the incongruity is found in all
the poets of the Renaissance. Hecate, of course, is only another name
for Diana. "Witchcraft, in truth, is no modern invention. Witches were
believed in by the vulgar in the time of Horace as implicitly as in the
time of Shakespeare. And the belief that the pagan gods were really
existent as evil demons is one which has come down from the very
earliest ages of Christianity."[55] As far back as the fourth century,
the Council of Ancyra is said to have condemned the pretensions of
witches; that in the night-time they rode abroad or feasted with their
mistress, who was one of the pagan goddesses, Minerva, Sibylla, or
Diana, or else Herodias.[56] In Middleton's "Witch," Hecate is the name
of one of his witches, and she has a son a low buffoon. In Jonson's "Sad
Shepherd" (ii. 1) Maudlin the witch calls Hecate, the mistress of
witches, "Our dame Hecate." While speaking of the witches in "Macbeth,"
it may be pointed out that[57] "the full meaning of the first scene is
the fag-end of a witch's Sabbath, which, if fully represented, would
bear a strong resemblance to the scene at the commencement of the fourth
act. But a long scene on such a subject would be tedious and
uninteresting at the commencement of the play. The audience is therefore
left to assume that the witches have met, performed their conjurations,
obtained from the evil spirits the information concerning Macbeth's
career that they desired to obtain, and perhaps have been commanded by
the fiends to perform the mission they subsequently carry through."
Brand[58] describes this "Sabbath of the witches as a meeting to which
the sisterhood, after having been anointed with certain magical
ointments, provided by their infernal leader, are supposed to be carried
through the air on brooms," etc. It was supposed to be held on a
Saturday, and in past centuries this piece of superstition was most
extensively credited, and was one of the leading doctrines associated
with the system of witchcraft.
[55] "Notes to Macbeth" (Clark and Wright), 1877, p. 137.
[56] Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584, book iii. chap.
16. See Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 235.
[57] "Elizabethan Demonology," pp. 102, 103. See Conway's
"Demonology and Devil-lore," vol. ii. p. 253.
[58] "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 8.
Referring, in the next place, to the numerous scattered notices of
witches given by Shakespeare throughout his plays, it is evident that he
had made himself thoroughly acquainted with the superstitions connected
with the subject, many of which he has described with the most minute
accuracy. It appears, then, that although they were supposed to possess
extraordinary powers, which they exerted in various ways, yet these were
limited, as in the case of Christmas night, when, we are told in
"Hamlet" (i. 1), "they have no power to charm." In spite, too, of their
being able to assume the form of any animal at pleasure, the tail was
always wanting. In "Macbeth" (i. 3), the first witch says:
"And, like a rat without a tail,
I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do."
One distinctive mark, also, of a were-wolf, or human being changed into
a wolf, was the absence of a tail. The cat was said to be the form most
commonly assumed by the familiar spirits of witches; as, for instance,
where the first witch says, "I come, Graymalkin!"[59] (i. 1), and
further on (iv. 1), "Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd." In German
legends and traditions we find frequent notice of witches assuming the
form of a cat, and displaying their fiendish character in certain
diabolical acts. It was, however, the absence of the tail that only too
often was the cause of the witch being detected in her disguised form.
There were various other modes of detecting witches: one being "the
trial by the stool," to which an allusion is made in "Troilus and
Cressida" (ii. 1), where Ajax says to Thersites,
"Thou stool for a witch!"
--a practice which is thus explained in Grey's "Notes" (ii. 236): "In one
way of trying a witch, they used to place her upon a chair or a stool,
with her legs tied cross, that all the weight of her body might rest
upon her seat, and by that means, after some time, the circulation of
the blood would be much stopped, and her sitting would be as painful as
the wooden horse; and she must continue in this pain twenty-four hours,
without either sleep or meat; and it was no wonder that, when they were
tired out with such an ungodly trial, they would confess themselves many
times guilty to free themselves from such torture."
[59] Graymalkin--a gray cat.
Again, it was a part of the system of witchcraft that drawing blood
from a witch rendered her enchantments ineffectual. Thus, in "1 Henry
VI." (i. 5), Talbot says to the Maid of Orleans:
"I'll have a bout with thee;
Devil or devil's dam, I'll conjure thee:
Blood will I draw on thee, thou art a witch."
An instance of this superstition occurred some years ago in a Cornish
village, when a man was summoned before the bench of magistrates and
fined, for having assaulted the plaintiff and scratched her with a pin.
Indeed, this notion has by no means died out. As recently as the year
1870, a man eighty years of age was fined at Barnstaple, in Devonshire,
for scratching with a needle the arm of a young girl. He pleaded that he
had "suffered affliction" through her for five years, had had four
complaints on him at once, had lost fourteen canaries, and about fifty
goldfinches, and that his neighbors told him this was the only way to
break the spell and get out of her power.[60]
[60] Henderson's "Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," p. 181.
It was, also, a popular belief that a great share of faith was a
protection from witchcraft. Hence, in the "Comedy of Errors" (iii. 2),
Dromio of Syracuse says of Nell:
"if my breast had not been made of faith and my heart of steel,
She had transform'd me to a curtail-dog, and made me turn i' the
wheel."
In order, moreover, to check the power of witches, it was supposed to be
necessary to propitiate them, a ceremony which was often performed. It
is alluded to further on in the same play (iv. 3), where Dromio of
Syracuse says--
"Some devils ask but the parings of one's nail,
A rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin,
A nut, a cherry-stone;"
and in "Macbeth" we read of their being propitiated by gifts of blood.
Witches were supposed to have the power of creating storms and other
atmospheric disturbances--a notion to which much prominence is given in
"Macbeth." Thus, the witches elect to meet in thunder, lightning, or
rain. They are represented as being able to loose and bind the winds (v.
3), to cause vessels to be tempest-tossed at sea. Hence Macbeth
addresses them (iv. 1):
"Though you untie the winds, and let them fight
Against the churches; though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up;
Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down;
Though castles topple on their warders' heads;
Though palaces and pyramids do slope
Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure
Of nature's germins tumble all together,
Even till destruction sicken."
Thus, by way of illustration, we may quote a curious confession made in
Scotland, about the year 1591, by Agnes Sampson, a reputed witch. She
vowed that "at the time his majesty [James VI.] was in Denmark, she took
a cat and christened it, and afterwards bound to each part of that cat
the chiefest parts of a dead man, and several joints of his body; and
that in the night following, the said cat was conveyed into the midst of
the sea, by herself and other witches, sailing in their riddles, or
crieves, and so left the said cat right before the town of Leith, in
Scotland. This done, there arose such a tempest in the sea, as a greater
hath not been seen, which tempest was the cause of the perishing of a
boat or vessel coming from the town of Brunt Island to the town of
Leith, wherein were sundry jewels and rich gifts, which should have been
presented to the new Queen of Scotland at his majesty's coming to Leith.
Again, it is confessed that the said christened cat was the cause of the
king's majesty's ship, at his coming forth of Denmark, having a contrary
wind to the rest of the ships then being in his company, which thing was
most strange and true, as the king's majesty acknowledged." It is to
this circumstance that Shakespeare probably alludes in "Macbeth" (i. 3),
where he makes the witch say:
"Though his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-toss'd."
Witches were also believed to be able to sell or give winds, a notion
thus described in Drayton's "Moon-Calf" (865):
"She could sell winds to any one that would
Buy them for money, forcing them to hold
What time she listed, tie them in a thread,
Which ever as the seafarer undid
They rose or scantled, as his sails would drive
To the same port whereas he would arrive."
So, in "Macbeth" (i. 3):
"_2 Witch._ I'll give thee a wind.
_1 Witch._ Thou'rt kind.
_3 Witch._ And I another."
Singer quotes from Sumner's "Last Will and Testament:"
"In Ireland, and in Denmark both,
Witches for gold will sell a man a wind,
Which, in the corner of a napkin wrapp'd,
Shall blow him safe unto what coast he will."
At one time the Finlanders and Laplanders drove a profitable trade by
the sale of winds. After being paid they knitted three magical knots,
and told the buyer that when he untied the first he would have a good
gale; when the second, a strong wind; and when the third, a severe
tempest.[61]
[61] Olaus Magnus's "History of the Goths," 1638, p. 47. See
note to "The Pirate."
The sieve, as a symbol of the clouds, has been regarded among all
nations of the Aryan stock as the mythical vehicle used by witches,
nightmares, and other elfish beings in their excursions over land and
sea.[62] Thus, the first witch in "Macbeth" (i. 3), referring to the
scoff which she had received from a sailor's wife, says:
"Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger:
But in a sieve I'll thither sail."[63]
[62] See Hardwick's "Traditions and Folk-Lore," pp. 108, 109;
Kelly's "Indo-European Folk-Lore," pp. 214, 215.
[63] In Greek, [Greek: hepi rhipous plein], "to go to sea in a
sieve," was a proverbial expression for an enterprise of
extreme hazard or impossible of achievement.--Clark and
Wright's "Notes to Macbeth," 1877, p. 82.
Stories of voyages performed in this way are common enough in Germany.
A man, for instance, going through a corn-field, finds a sieve on the
path, which he takes with him. He does not go far before a young lady
hurries after him, and hunts up and down as if looking for something,
ejaculating all the time, "How my children are crying in England!"
Thereupon the man lays down the sieve, and has hardly done so ere sieve
and lady vanish. In the case of another damsel of the same species,
mentioned by Mr. Kelly, the usual exclamation is thus varied: "My sieve
rim! my sieve rim! how my mother is calling me in England!" At the sound
of her mother's voice the daughter immediately thinks of her sieve.
Steevens quotes from the "Life of Doctor Fian," "a notable sorcerer,"
burned at Edinburgh, January, 1591, how that he and a number of witches
went to sea, "each one in a _riddle or cive_." In the "Discovery of
Witchcraft," Reginald Scot says it was believed that "witches could sail
in an egg-shell, a cockle or muscle-shell, through and under the
tempestuous seas." Thus, in "Pericles" (iv. 4), Gower says:
"Thus time we waste, and longest leagues make short;
Sail seas in cockles, have, and wish but for't."
Their dance is thus noticed in "Macbeth" (iv. 1):
"I'll charm the air to give a sound
While you perform your antic round."
Witches also were supposed to have the power of vanishing at will, a
notion referred to in "Macbeth" (i. 3), where, in reply to Banquo's
inquiry as to whither the witches are vanished, Macbeth replies:
"Into the air; and what seem'd corporal melted
As breath into the wind."
In his letter to his wife he likewise observes: "They made themselves
air, into which they vanished." Hecate, in the third act, fifth scene,
after giving instructions to the weird host, says:
"I am for the air; this night I'll spend
Unto a dismal and a fatal end."
To this purpose they prepared various ointments, concerning which
Reginald Scot[64] says: "The devil teacheth them to make ointment of the
bowels and members of children, whereby they ride in the air and
accomplish all their desires. After burial they steal them out of their
graves and seethe them in a caldron till the flesh be made potable, of
which they make an ointment by which they ride in the air." Lord Bacon
also informs us that the "ointment the witches use is reported to be
made of the fat of children digged out of their graves, of the juices of
smallage, wolf bane, and cinquefoil, mingled with the meal of fine
wheat; but I suppose the soporiferous medicines are likest to do it,
which are henbane, hemlock, mandrake, moonshade--or rather
nightshade--tobacco, opium, saffron,"[65] etc. These witch recipes, which
are very numerous, are well illustrated in Shakespeare's grim caldron
scene, in "Macbeth" (iv. 1), where the first witch speaks of
"grease that's sweaten
From the murderer's gibbet."
We may compare a similar notion given by Apuleius, who, in describing
the process used by the witch, Milo's wife, for transforming herself
into a bird, says: "That she cut the lumps of flesh of such as were
hanged."[66]
[64] "Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584, book iii. chap. i. p. 40;
see Spalding's "Elizabethan Demonology," p. 103.
[65] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," vol. iii. pp. 8-10.
[66] Douce, "Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 245, says: "See
Adlington's Translation (1596, p. 49), a book certainly used by
Shakespeare on other occasions."
Another way by which witches exercise their power was by looking into
futurity, as in "Macbeth" (i. 3), where Banquo says to them:
"If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me."
Charles Knight, in his biography of Shakespeare, quotes a witch trial,
which aptly illustrates the passage above; the case being that of
Johnnet Wischert, who was "indicted for passing to the green-growing
corn in May, twenty-two years since, or thereby, sitting thereupon
tymous in the morning before the sun-rising; and being there found and
demanded what she was doing, thus answered, I shall tell thee; I have
been piling the blades of the corn. I find it will be a dear year; the
blade of the corn grows withersones [contrary to the course of the sun],
and when it grows sonegatis about [with the course of the sun], it will
be a good, cheap year."
According to a common notion firmly believed in days gone by, witches
were supposed to make waxen figures of those they intended to harm,
which they stuck through with pins, or melted before a slow fire. Then,
as the figure wasted, so the person it represented was said to waste
away also. Thus, in "Macbeth" (i. 3), the first witch says:
"Weary sev'n-nights, nine times nine,
Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine."
Referring to the histories of the Duchess of Gloucester and of Jane
Shore, who were accused of practising this mode of witchcraft,
Shakespeare, in "2 Henry VI." (i. 2), makes the former address Hume
thus:
"What say'st thou, man? hast them as yet conferr'd
With Margery Jourdain, the cunning witch,
With Roger Bolingbroke, the conjurer?
And will they undertake to do me good?"
She was afterwards, however, accused of consulting witches concerning
the mode of compassing the death of her husband's nephew, Henry VI. It
was asserted that "there was found in the possession of herself and
accomplices a waxen image of the king, which they melted in a magical
manner before a slow fire, with the intention of making Henry's force
and vigor waste away by like insensible degrees."
A similar charge was brought against Jane Shore, the mistress of Edward
IV., by Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Thus, in "King Richard III." (iii.
4), Gloucester asks Hastings:
"I pray you all, tell me what they deserve
That do conspire my death with devilish plots
Of damned witchcraft, and that have prevail'd
Upon my body with their hellish charms?"
And he then further adds:
"Look how I am bewitch'd; behold mine arm
Is, like a blasted sapling, wither'd up:
And this is Edward's wife, that monstrous witch,
Consorted with that harlot, strumpet Shore,
That by their witchcraft thus have marked me."
This superstition is further alluded to in "King John" (v. 4) by Melun,
who, wounded, says:
"Have I not hideous death within my view,
Retaining but a quantity of life,
Which bleeds away, even as a form of wax
Resolveth from his figure 'gainst the fire?"
And, again, in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" (ii. 4), Proteus says:
"for now my love is thaw'd;
Which, like a waxen image 'gainst a fire,
Bears no impression of the thing it was."[67]
[67] See Henderson's "Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties,"
1879, p. 181.
Images were frequently formed of other materials, and maltreated in some
form or other, to produce similar results--a piece of superstition which
still prevails to a great extent in the East. Dubois, in his "People of
India" (1825), speaks of magicians who make small images in mud or clay,
and then write the names of their animosity on the breasts thereof;
these are otherwise pierced with thorns or mutilated, "so as to
communicate a corresponding injury to the person represented." They were
also said to extract moisture from the body, as in "Macbeth" (i. 3):
"I will drain him dry as hay."
Referring to the other mischievous acts of witches, Steevens quotes the
following from "A Detection of Damnable Driftes Practised by Three
Witches, etc., arraigned at Chelmisforde, in Essex, 1579:" "Item--Also
she came on a tyme to the house of one Robert Lathburie, who, dislyking
her dealyng, sent her home emptie; but presently after her departure
his hogges fell sicke and died, to the number of twentie." Hence in
"Macbeth" (i. 3) in reply to the inquiry of the first witch:
"Where hast thou been, sister?"
the second replies:
"Killing swine."
It appears to have been their practice to destroy the cattle of their
neighbors, and the farmers have to this day many ceremonies to secure
their cows and other cattle from witchcraft; but they seem to have been
most suspected of malice against swine. Harsnet observes how, formerly,
"A sow could not be ill of the measles, nor a girl of the sullens, but
some old woman was charged with witchcraft."[68]
[68] See _Pig_, chap. vi.
Mr. Henderson, in his "Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties" (1879, p.
182), relates how a few years ago a witch died in the village of Bovey
Tracey, Devonshire. She was accused of "overlooking" her neighbors'
pigs, so that her son, if ever betrayed into a quarrel with her, used
always to say, before they parted, "Mother, mother, spare my pigs."
Multiples of three and nine were specially employed by witches, ancient
and modern. Thus, in "Macbeth" (i. 3), the witches take hold of hands
and dance round in a ring nine times--three rounds for each witch, as a
charm for the furtherance of her purposes:[69]
"Thrice to thine and thrice to mine,
And thrice again, to make up nine.
Peace! the charm's wound up."
[69] "Notes to Macbeth," by Clark and Wright, 1877, p. 84.
The love of witches for odd numbers is further illustrated (iv. 1),
where one of them tells how
"Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined,"
this being the witches' way of saying four times.
In Fairfax's "Tasso" (book xiii. stanza 6) it is said that
"Witchcraft loveth numbers odd."
This notion is very old, and we may compare the following quotations
from Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (xiv. 58):
"Ter novies carmen magico demurmurat ore."
And, again (vii. 189-191):
"Ter se convertit; ter sumtis flumine crinem
Irroravit aquis; ternis ululatibus ora
Solvit."
Vergil, too, in his "Eclogues" (viii. 75), says:
"Numero deus impare gaudet."
The belief in the luck of odd numbers is noticed by Falstaff in the
"Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 1):
"They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in
nativity, chance, or death!"
In "King Lear" (iv. 2) when the Duke of Albany tells Goneril,
"She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither
And come to deadly use"--
he alludes to the use that witches and enchanters were commonly supposed
to make of withered branches in their charms.[70]
[70] See Jones's "Credulities, Past and Present," 1880, pp.
256-289.
Among other items of witch-lore mentioned by Shakespeare may be noticed
the common belief in the intercourse between demons and witches, to
which Prospero alludes in the "Tempest" (i. 2):
"Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself
Upon thy wicked dam, come forth!"
This notion is seriously refuted by Scot in his "Discovery of
Witchcraft" (book iv.), where he shows it to be "flat knavery."
The offspring of a witch was termed "Hag-seed," and as such is spoken of
by Prospero in the "Tempest" (i. 2).
Witches were also in the habit of saying their prayers backwards: a
practice to which Hero refers in "Much Ado About Nothing" (iii. 1),
where, speaking of Beatrice, she says:
"I never yet saw man,
How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featured,
But she would spell him backward."
Familiar spirits[71] attending on magicians and witches were always
impatient of confinement.[72] So in the "Tempest" (i. 2) we find an
illustration of this notion in the following dialogue:
"_Prospero._ What is't thou canst demand?
_Ariel._ My liberty.
_Prospero._ Before the time be out? No more."
[71] Allusions to this superstition occur in "Love's Labour's
Lost" (i. 2), "love is a familiar;" in "1 Henry VI." (iii. 2),
"I think her old familiar is asleep;" and in "2 Henry VI." (iv.
7), "he has a familiar under his tongue."
[72] See Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584, p. 85.
Lastly, the term "Aroint thee" ("Macbeth," i. 3), used by the first
witch, occurs again in "King Lear" (iii. 4), "Aroint thee, witch, aroint
thee." That _aroint_ is equivalent to "away," "begone," seems to be
agreed, though its etymology is uncertain.[73] "Rynt thee" is used by
milkmaids in Cheshire to a cow, when she has been milked, to bid her get
out of the way. Ray, in his "Collection of North Country Words" (1768,
p. 52), gives "Rynt ye, by your leave, stand handsomely, as rynt you
witch, quoth Bessie Locket to her mother. Proverb, Chesh." Some connect
it with the adverb "aroume," meaning "abroad," found in Chaucer's "House
of Fame" (book ii. stanza 32):
"That I a-roume was in the field."
Other derivations are from the Latin _averrunco_: the Italian _rogna_, a
cutaneous disease, etc.
[73] Sec Dyce's "Glossary," pp. 18, 19.
How thoroughly Shakespeare was acquainted with the system of witchcraft
is evident from the preceding pages, in which we have noticed his
allusions to most of the prominent forms of this species of
superstition. Many other items of witch-lore, however, are referred to
by him, mention of which is made in succeeding chapters.[74]
[74] "Notes to Macbeth" (Clark and Wright), pp. 81, 82.
CHAPTER III.
GHOSTS.
Few subjects have, from time immemorial, possessed a wider interest than
ghosts, and the superstitions associated with them in this and other
countries form an extensive collection in folk-lore literature. In
Shakespeare's day, it would seem that the belief in ghosts was specially
prevalent, and ghost tales were told by the firelight in nearly every
household. The young, as Mr. Goadby, in his "England of Shakespeare,"
says (1881, p. 196), "were thus touched by the prevailing superstitions
in their most impressionable years. They looked for the incorporeal
creatures of whom they had heard, and they were quick to invest any
trick of moonbeam shadow with the attributes of the supernatural." A
description of one of these tale-tellings is given in the "Winter's
Tale" (ii. 1):
"_Her._ What wisdom stirs amongst you? Come, sir, now
I am for you again: pray you, sit by us,
And tell's a tale.
_Mam._ Merry or sad shall't be?
_Her._ As merry as you will.
_Mam._ A sad tale's best for winter:
I have one of sprites and goblins.
_Her._ Let's have that, good sir.
Come on, sit down: Come on, and do your best
To fright me with your sprites: you're powerful at it.
_Mam._ There was a man,--
_Her._ Nay, come, sit down; then on.
_Mam._ Dwelt by a churchyard: I will tell it softly;
Yond crickets shall not hear it.
_Her._ Come on, then,
And give't me in mine ear."
The important part which Shakespeare has assigned to the ghost in
"Hamlet" has a special value, inasmuch as it illustrates many of the
old beliefs current in his day respecting their history and habits.
Thus, according to a popular notion, ghosts are generally supposed to
assume the exact appearance by which they were usually known when in the
material state, even to the smallest detail of their dress. So Horatio
tells Hamlet how, when Marcellus and Bernardo were on their watch (i.
2),
"A figure like your father,
Arm'd at point, exactly, cap-a-pe,
Appears before them, and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately by them."
Further on, when the ghost appears again, Hamlet addresses it thus:
"What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous."
In the graphic description of Banquo's ghost in "Macbeth" (iii. 4), we
have a further allusion to the same belief; one, indeed, which is
retained at the present day with as much faith as in days of old.
Shakespeare has several allusions to the notion which prevailed in days
gone by, of certain persons being able to exorcise or raise spirits.
Thus, in "Cymbeline" (iv. 2), Guiderius says over Fidele's grave:
"No exorciser harm thee."
In "Julius Cæsar" (ii. 1), Ligarius says:
"Soul of Rome!
Brave son, derived from honourable loins!
Thou, like an exorcist, hast conjured up
My mortified spirit. Now bid me run,
And I will strive with things impossible;
Yea, get the better of them."
In "All's Well that Ends Well" (v. 3) the king says:
"Is there no exorcist
Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes?
Is't real that I see?"
This superstition, it may be added, has of late years gained additional
notoriety since the so-called spiritualism has attracted the attention
and support of the credulous. As learning was considered necessary for
an exorcist, the schoolmaster was often employed. Thus, in the "Comedy
of Errors" (iv. 4), the schoolmaster Pinch is introduced in this
capacity.
Within, indeed, the last fifty years the pedagogue was still a reputed
conjurer. In "Hamlet" (i. 1), Marcellus, alluding to the ghost, says:
"Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio."
And in "Much Ado About Nothing" (ii. 1), Benedick says:
"I would to God some scholar would conjure her."
For the same reason exorcisms were usually practised by the clergy in
Latin; and so Toby, in the "Night Walker" of Beaumont and Fletcher (ii.
1), says:
"Let's call the butler up, for he speaks Latin,
And that will daunt the devil."
It was also necessary that spirits, when evoked, should be questioned
quickly, as they were supposed to be impatient of being interrogated.
Hence in "Macbeth" (iv. 1) the apparition says:
"Dismiss me. Enough!"
The spirit, likewise, in "2 Henry VI." (i. 4) utters these words:
"Ask what thou wilt. That I had said and done!"
Spirits were supposed to maintain an obdurate silence till interrogated
by the persons to whom they made their special appearance.[75] Thus
Hamlet, alluding to the appearance of the ghost, asks Horatio (i. 2):
"Did you not speak to it?"
Whereupon he replies:
"My lord, I did;
But answer made it none: yet once, methought
It lifted up its head and did address
Itself to motion, like as it would speak."
[75] We may compare the words "unquestionable spirit" in "As
You Like It" (iii. 2), which means "a spirit averse to
conversation."
The walking of spirits seems also to have been enjoined by way of
penance. The ghost of Hamlet's father (i. 5) says:
"I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confin'd to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg'd away."
And further on (iii. 2) Hamlet exclaims:
"It is a damned ghost that we have seen."
This superstition is referred to by Spenser in his "Fairy Queen" (book
i. canto 2):
"What voice of damned ghost from Limbo lake
Or guileful spright wand'ring in empty ayre,
Sends to my doubtful eares these speeches rare?"
According to a universal belief prevalent from the earliest times, it
was supposed that ghosts had some particular reason for quitting the
mansions of the dead, "such as a desire that their bodies, if unburied,
should receive Christian rites of sepulture, that a murderer might be
brought to due punishment," etc.[76] On this account Horatio ("Hamlet,"
i. 1) invokes the ghost:
"If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me."
And in a later scene (i. 4) Hamlet says:
"Say, why is this? wherefore? What should we do?"
[76] Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," pp. 450, 451.
The Greeks believed that such as had not received funeral rites would be
excluded from Elysium; and thus the wandering shade of Patroclus
appears to Achilles in his sleep, and demands the performance of his
funeral. The younger Pliny tells a story of a haunted house at Athens,
in which a ghost played all kinds of pranks, owing to his funeral rites
having been neglected. A further reference to the superstition occurs in
"Titus Andronicus" (i. 1), where Lucius, speaking of the unburied sons
of Titus, says:
"Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths,
That we may hew his limbs, and, on a pile,
_Ad manes fratrum_ sacrifice his flesh,
Before this earthy prison of their bones;
That so the shadows be not unappeased,
Nor we disturbed with prodigies on earth."
In olden times, spirits were said to have different allotments of time,
suitable to the variety and nature of their agency. Prospero, in the
"Tempest" (i. 2), says to Caliban:
"Be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,
Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins
Shall, for that vast[77] of night that they may work,
All exercise on thee."
[77] Vast, _i. e._, space of night. So in "Hamlet" (i. 2):
"In the dead waste and middle of the night."
According to a popular notion, the presence of unearthly beings was
announced by an alteration in the tint of the lights which happened to
be burning--a superstition alluded to in "Richard III." (v. 3), where the
tyrant exclaims, as he awakens:
"The lights burn blue.--It is now dead midnight,
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh--
* * * * *
Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd
Came to my tent."
So in "Julius Cæsar" (iv. 3), Brutus, on seeing the ghost of Cæsar,
exclaims:
"How ill this taper burns! Ha! who comes here?"
It has been a widespread belief from the most remote period that ghosts
cannot bear the light, and so disappear at the dawn of day; their signal
being the cock-crow.[78] The ghost of Hamlet's father says (i. 5):
"But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
Brief let me be"--
and--
"Fare thee well at once.
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire:
Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me."
[78] See p. 104.
Again, in "King Lear" (iii. 4), Edgar says: "This is the foul fiend
Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock."
The time of night, as the season wherein spirits wander abroad, is
further noticed by Gardiner in "Henry VIII." (v. 1):
"Affairs, that walk,
As they say spirits do, at midnight."
It was a prevalent notion that a person who crossed the spot on which a
spectre was seen became subject to its malignant influence. In "Hamlet"
(i. 1), Horatio says, in reference to the ghost:
"But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!
I'll cross it, though it blast me."
Lodge, in his "Illustrations of British History" (iii. 48), tells us
that among the reasons for supposing the death of Ferdinand, Earl of
Derby (who died young, in 1594), to have been occasioned by witchcraft,
was the following: "On Friday there appeared a tall man, who twice
crossed him swiftly; and when the earl came to the place where he saw
this man, he fell sick."
Reginald Scot, in his "Discovery of Witchcraft" (1584), enumerates the
different kinds of spirits, and particularly notices white, black, gray,
and red spirits. So in "Macbeth" (iv. 1), "black spirits" are
mentioned--the charm song referred to (like the one in act iv.) being
found in Middleton's "Witch" (v. 2):
"Black spirits and white,
Red spirits and gray;
Mingle, mingle, mingle,
You that mingle may."
A well-known superstition which still prevails in this and foreign
countries is that of the "spectre huntsman and his furious host." As
night-time approaches, it is supposed that this invisible personage
rides through the air with his yelping hounds; their weird sound being
thought to forbode misfortune of some kind. This popular piece of
folk-lore exists in the north of England under a variety of forms among
our peasantry, who tenaciously cling to the traditions which have been
handed down to them.[79] It has been suggested that Shakespeare had some
of these superstitions in view when he placed in the mouth of Macbeth
(i. 7), while contemplating the murder of Duncan, the following
metaphors:
"And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind!"
[79] See Hardwick's "Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-lore,"
1872, pp. 153-176.
Again, in "The Tempest" (iv. 1), Prospero and Ariel are represented as
setting on spirits, in the shape of hounds, to hunt Stephano and
Trinculo. This species of diabolical or spectral chase was formerly a
popular article of belief. As Drake aptly remarks,[80] "the hell-hounds
of Shakespeare appear to be sufficiently formidable, for, not merely
commissioned to hunt their victims, they are ordered, likewise, as
goblins," to--
"grind their joints
With dry convulsions; shorten up their sinews
With aged cramps; and more pinch-spotted make them
Than pard or cat o' mountain.
_Ariel._ Hark, they roar!
_Prospero._ Let them be hunted soundly."
[80] "Shakespeare and His Times," vol. i. p. 378.
_TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS._
Shakespeare has several references to the old superstitious belief in
the transmigration of souls, traces of which may still be found in the
reverence paid to the robin, the wren, and other birds. Thus, in "The
Merchant of Venice" (iv. 1), Gratiano says to Shylock:
"Thou almost makest me waver in my faith
To hold opinion with Pythagoras
That souls of animals infuse themselves
Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit
Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter,
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam,
Infused itself in thee; for thy desires
Are wolfish, bloody, starved, and ravenous."
Caliban, when remonstrating with the drunken Stephano and Trinculo, for
delaying at the mouth of the cave of Prospero, instead of taking the
magician's life ("Tempest," iv. 1), says:
"I will have none on't: we shall lose our time,
And all be turn'd to barnacles, or to apes."
In "Hamlet" (iv. 5), in the scene where Ophelia, in her mental
aberration, quotes snatches of old ballads, she says: "They say the owl
was a baker's daughter! Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we
may be."[81]
[81] See _Owl_, chap. vi.
Again, in "Twelfth Night" (iv. 2), there is another reference in the
amusing passage where the clown, under the pretence of his being "Sir
Topas, the curate," questions Malvolio, when confined in a dark room, as
a presumed lunatic:
"_Mal._ I am no more mad than you are: make the trial of it in
any constant question.
_Clo._ What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?
_Mal._ That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a
bird.
_Clo._ What thinkest thou of his opinion?
_Mal._ I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his
opinion.
_Clo._ Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness: thou
shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy
wits, and fear to kill a woodcock lest thou dispossess the
soul of thy grandam."
Although this primitive superstition is almost effete among civilized
nations, yet it still retains an important place in the religious
beliefs of savage and uncivilized communities.
CHAPTER IV.
DEMONOLOGY AND DEVIL-LORE.
The state of popular feeling in past centuries with regard to the active
agency of devils has been well represented by Reginald Scot, who, in his
work on Witchcraft, has shown how the superstitious belief in demonology
was part of the great system of witchcraft. Many of the popular
delusions of this terrible form of superstition have been in a masterly
manner exposed by Shakespeare; and the scattered allusions which he has
given, illustrative of it, are indeed sufficient to prove, if it were
necessary, what a highly elaborate creed it was. Happily, Shakespeare,
like the other dramatists of the period, has generally treated the
subject with ridicule, showing that he had no sympathy with the grosser
opinions shared by various classes in those times, whether held by king
or clown. According to an old belief, still firmly credited in the
poet's day, it was supposed that devils could at any moment assume
whatever form they pleased that would most conduce to the success of any
contemplated enterprise they might have in hand; and hence the charge of
being a devil, so commonly brought against innocent and harmless persons
in former years, can easily be understood. Among the incidental
allusions to this notion, given by Shakespeare, Prince Hal ("1 Henry
IV.," ii. 4) tells Falstaff "there is a devil haunts thee in the
likeness of an old fat man;" "an old white-bearded Satan." In the
"Merchant of Venice" (iii. 1) Salanio, on the approach of Shylock, says:
"Let me say 'amen' betimes, lest the devil cross my prayer, for here he
comes in the likeness of a Jew."
Indeed, "all shapes that man goes up and down in" seem to have been at
the devil's control, a belief referred to in "Timon of Athens" (ii. 2):
"_Var. Serv._ What is a whoremaster, fool?
_Fool._ A fool in good clothes, and something like thee. 'Tis
a spirit: sometime 't appears like a lord; sometime like a
lawyer; sometime like a philosopher, with two stones moe
than's artificial one: he is very often like a knight; and,
generally, in all shapes that man goes up and down in from
fourscore to thirteen, this spirit walks in."
A popular form assumed by evil spirits was that of a negro or Moor, to
which Iago alludes when he incites Brabantio to search for his daughter,
in "Othello" (i. 1):
"Zounds, sir, you are robb'd; for shame, put on your gown;
Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul;
Even now, now, very now, an old black ram
Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise!
Awake the snorting citizens with the bell,
Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you.
Arise, I say."
On the other hand, so diverse were the forms which devils were supposed
to assume that they are said occasionally to appear in the fairest form,
even in that of a girl (ii. 3):
"When devils will the blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows."
So in "The Comedy of Errors" (iv. 3) we have the following dialogue:
"_Ant. S._ Satan, avoid! I charge thee, tempt me not!
_Dro. S._ Master, is this mistress Satan?
_Ant. S._ It is the devil.
_Dro. S._ Nay, she is worse, she is the devil's dam; and here
she comes in the habit of a light wench; and thereof comes
that the wenches say, 'God damn me;' that's as much as to say,
'God make me a light wench.' It is written, they appear to men
like angels of light."
(Cf. also "Love's Labour's Lost," iv. 3.) In "King John" (iii. 1) even
the fair Blanch seemed to Constance none other than the devil tempting
Lewis "in likeness of a new untrimmed bride."
Not only, too, were devils thought to assume any human shape they
fancied, but, as Mr. Spalding remarks,[82] "the forms of the whole of
the animal kingdom appear to have been at their disposal; and, not
content with these, they seem to have sought for unlikely shapes to
appear in"--the same characteristic belonging also to the fairy tribe.
[82] "Elizabethan Demonology," p. 49.
Thus, when Edgar is trying to persuade the blind Gloucester that he has
in reality cast himself over the cliff, he describes the being from whom
he is supposed to have just departed:
"As I stood here below, methought his eyes
Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses,
Horns whelk'd and wav'd like the enridged sea:
It was some fiend."
Again, Edgar says ("King Lear," iii. 6): "The foul fiend haunts poor Tom
in the voice of a nightingale"--the allusion probably being to the
following incident related by Friswood Williams: "There was also another
strange thing happened at Denham about a bird. Mistris Peckham had a
nightingale which she kept in a cage, wherein Maister Dibdale took great
delight, and would often be playing with it. The nightingale was one
night conveyed out of the cage, and being next morning diligently sought
for, could not be heard of, till Maister Mainie's devil, in one of his
fits (as it was pretended), said that the wicked spirit which was in
this examinate's sister had taken the bird out of the cage and killed it
in despite of Maister Dibdale."[83]
[83] Harsnet's "Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures," p. 225.
Even the shape of a fly was a favorite one with evil spirits, so much
so, that the term "fly" was a popular synonym for a familiar. In "Titus
Andronicus" (iii. 2) there is an allusion to this belief, where Marcus,
being rebuked by Titus for having killed a fly, gives as his reason:
"It was a black ill-favour'd fly,
Like to the empress' Moor: therefore I kill'd him."
Mr. Spalding gives the following illustrations of the superstition: "At
the execution of Urban Grandier, the famous magician of Loudun, in 1634,
a large fly was seen buzzing about the stake; and a priest promptly
seizing the opportunity of improving the occasion for the benefit of the
onlookers, declared that Beelzebub had come in his own proper person to
carry off Grandier's soul to hell. In 1664 occurred the celebrated witch
trials which took place before Sir Matthew Hale. The accused were
charged with bewitching two children, and part of the evidence against
them was that flies and bees were seen to carry into their victims'
mouths the nails and pins which they afterwards vomited."
Once more, another form devils assumed was that of a dead friend. Thus
"Hamlet" (i. 4), when he confronts the apparition, exclaims:
"Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked, or charitable,
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee"--
for, as Mr. Spalding remarks, "it cannot be imagined that Hamlet
imagined that a 'goblin damned' could actually be the spirit of his dead
father; and, therefore, the alternative in his mind must be that he saw
a devil assuming his father's likeness--a form which the Evil One knew
would most incite Hamlet to intercourse."
The same idea seems present in Horatio's mind:
"What, if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff,
That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form,
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,
And draw you into madness?"
Once more, in the next act (ii. 2), Hamlet again expresses his doubts:
"The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me."
In the Elizabethan times, too, no superstitious belief exerted a more
pernicious and baneful influence on the credulous and ignorant than the
notion that evil spirits from time to time entered into human beings,
and so completely gained a despotic control over them as to render them
perfectly helpless. Harsnet, in his "Declaration of Egregious Popish
Impostures" (1603), has exposed this gross superstition; and a
comparison of the passages in "King Lear," spoken by Edgar when feigning
madness, with those given by Harsnet, will show that Shakespeare has
accurately given the contemporary belief on the subject. Mr. Spalding
also considers that nearly all the allusions in "King Lear" refer to a
youth known as Richard Mainey, a minute account of whose supposed
possession has been given by Harsnet.
Persons so possessed were often bound and shut up in a dark room,
occasionally being forced to submit to flagellation--a treatment not
unlike that described in "Romeo and Juliet" (i. 2):
"Not mad, but bound more than a madman is;
Shut up in prison, kept without my food,
Whipp'd and tormented."
In the "Comedy of Errors" (iv. 4) we have an amusing scene, further
illustrative, probably, of the kind of treatment adopted in
Shakespeare's day:
"_Courtesan._ How say you now? is not your husband mad?
_Adriana._ His incivility confirms no less--
Good doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer;
Establish him in his true sense again,
And I will please you what you will demand.
_Luciana._ Alas, how fiery and how sharp he looks!
_Courtesan._ Mark how he trembles in his ecstasy!
_Pinch._ Give me your hand, and let me feel your pulse.
_Ant. E._ There is my hand, and let it feel your ear.
_Pinch._ I charge thee, Satan, hous'd within this man,
To yield possession to my holy prayers,
And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight:
I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven."
Pinch further says:
"They must be bound, and laid in some dark room."
As Brand remarks,[84] there is no vulgar story of the devil's having
appeared anywhere without a cloven foot. In graphic representations he
is seldom or never pictured without one. In the following passage, where
Othello is questioning whether Iago is a devil or not, he says (v. 2):
"I look down towards his feet;--but that's a fable.--
If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee."
[84] "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 517-519.
Dr. Johnson gives this explanation: "I look towards his feet to see if,
according to the common opinion, his feet be cloven."
In Massinger's "Virgin Martyr" (iii. 3), Harpax, an evil spirit,
following Theophilus in the shape of a secretary, speaks thus of the
superstitious Christian's description of his infernal enemy:
"I'll tell you what now of the devil:
He's no such horrid creature; cloven-footed,
Black, saucer-ey'd, his nostrils breathing fire,
As these lying Christians make him."
GOOD AND EVIL DEMONS.
It was formerly commonly believed that not only kingdoms had their
tutelary guardians, but that every person had his particular genius or
good angel, to protect and admonish him by dreams, visions, etc.[85]
Hence, in "Antony and Cleopatra" (ii. 3), the soothsayer, speaking of
Cæsar, says:
"O Antony, stay not by his side:
Thy demon,--that's thy spirit which keeps thee,--is
Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,
Where Cæsar's is not; but, near him, thy angel
Becomes a fear, as being o'erpower'd."
[85] Ibid. vol. i. pp. 365-367.
Thus Macbeth (iii. 1) speaks in a similar manner in reference to Banquo:
"There is none but he
Whose being I do fear; and, under him,
My Genius is rebuked; as, it is said,
Mark Antony's was by Cæsar."
So, too, in "2 Henry IV." (i. 2), the Chief-justice says:
"You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel."
We may quote a further reference in "Julius Cæsar" (iii. 2), where
Antony says:
"For Brutus, as you know, was Cæsar's angel."
"In the Roman world," says Mr. Tylor, in his "Primitive Culture" (1873,
vol. ii. p. 202), "each man had his 'genius natalis,' associated with
him from birth to death, influencing his action and his fate, standing
represented by its proper image, as a _lar_ among the household gods and
at weddings and joyous times, and especially on the anniversary of the
birthday when genius and man began their united career, worship was paid
with song and dance to the divine image, adorned with garlands, and
propitiated with incense and libations of wine. The demon or genius was,
as it were, the man's companion soul, a second spiritual Ego. The
Egyptian astrologer warned Antonius to keep far from the young Octavius,
'For thy demon,' said he, 'is in fear of his.'"
The allusion by Lady Macbeth (i. 5), in the following passage, is to the
spirits of Revenge:
"Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty!"
In Nash's "Pierce Pennilesse" we find a description of these spirits and
of their office. "The second kind of devils which he most employeth are
those northern _Martii_, called the _Spirits of Revenge_, and the
authors of massacres and seed-men of mischief; for they have commission
to incense men to rapine, sacrilege, theft, murder, wrath, fury, and all
manner of cruelties; and they command certain of the southern spirits to
wait upon them, as also great Arioch, that is termed the Spirit of
Revenge." In another passage we are further told how "the spirits of the
aire will mixe themselves with thunder and lightning, and so infect the
clime where they raise any tempest, that suddenly great mortalitie shall
ensue of the inhabitants." "Aerial spirits or devils," according to
Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," "are such as keep quarter most part in
the aire, cause many tempests, thunder and lightnings, tear oakes, fire
steeples, houses, strike men and beasts," etc. Thus, in "King John"
(iii. 2), the Bastard remarks:
"Now, by my life, this day grows wondrous hot;
Some airy devil hovers in the sky,
And pours down mischief."
It was anciently supposed that all mines of gold, etc., were guarded by
evil spirits. Thus Falstaff, in "2 Henry IV." (iv. 3), speaks of
learning as "a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil." This superstition
still prevails, and has been made the subject of many a legend. Thus, it
is believed by the peasantry living near Largo-Law, Scotland, that a
rich mine of gold is concealed in the mountain. "A spectre once appeared
there, supposed to be the guardian of the mine, who, being accosted by a
neighboring shepherd, promised to tell him at a certain time and on
certain conditions, where 'the gowd mine is in Largo-Law,' especially
enjoining that the horn sounded for the housing of the cows at the
adjoining farm of Balmain should not blow. Every precaution having been
taken, the ghost was true to his tryst; but, unhappily, when he was
about to divulge the desired secret, Tammie Norrie, the cowherd of
Balmain, blew a blast, whereupon the ghost vanished, with the
denunciation:
'Woe to the man that blew the horn,
For out of the spot he shall ne'er be borne.'
The unlucky horn-blower was struck dead, and, as it was found impossible
to remove the body, a cairn of stones was raised over it."[86]
[86] See Jones's "Credulities, Past and Present," 1880, p. 133.
Steevens considers that when Macbeth (iii. 2) says:
"Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse,"
he refers to those demons who were supposed to remain in their several
places of confinement all day, but at the close of it were released;
such, indeed, as are mentioned in "The Tempest" (v. 1), as rejoicing "to
hear the solemn curfew," because it announced the hour of their freedom.
Among other superstitions we may quote one in the "Merchant of Venice"
(iii. 1), where Salanio says: "Let me say 'amen' betimes, lest the devil
cross my prayer."
Of the devils mentioned by Shakespeare may be noted the following:
_Amaimon_ is one of the chief, whose dominion is on the north side of
the infernal gulf. He might be bound or restrained from doing hurt from
the third hour till noon, and from the ninth hour till evening. In the
"Merry Wives of Windsor" (ii. 2) Ford mentions this devil, and in "1
Henry IV." (ii. 4) Falstaff says: "That same mad fellow of the north,
Percy; and he of Wales, that gave Amaimon the bastinado, and made
Lucifer cuckold."[87]
[87] See Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584, p. 393;
Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 264.
The north was always supposed to be the particular habitation of bad
spirits. Milton, therefore, assembles the rebel angels in the north. In
"1 Henry VI." (v. 3), La Pucelle invokes the aid of the spirits:
"Under the lordly monarch of the north."
_Barbason._ This demon would seem to be the same as "Marbas, alias
Barbas," who, as Scot[88] informs us, "is a great president, and
appeareth in the forme of a mightie lion; but at the commandment of a
conjurer cometh up in the likeness of man, and answereth fullie as
touching anything which is hidden or secret." In the "Merry Wives of
Windsor" (ii. 2) it is mentioned by Ford in connection with Lucifer, and
again in "Henry V." (ii. 1) Nym tells Pistol: "I am not Barbason; you
cannot conjure me."
[88] Ibid. p. 378.
The names of the several fiends in "King Lear," Shakespeare is supposed
to have derived from Harsnet's "Declaration of Egregious Popish
Impostures" (1603).
_Flibbertigibbet_, one of the fiends that possessed poor Tom, is, we are
told (iv. 1), the fiend "of mopping and mowing, who since possesses
chambermaids and waiting-women." And again (iii. 4), "he begins at
curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin."
_Frateretto_ is referred to by Edgar (iii. 6): "Frateretto calls me; and
tells me, Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness. Pray, innocent, and
beware the foul fiend."
_Hobbididance_ is noticed as "prince of dumbness" (iv. 1), and perhaps
is the same as Hopdance (iii. 6), "who cries," says Edgar, "in Tom's
belly for two white herring."
_Mahu_, like _Modo_, would seem to be another name for "the prince of
darkness" (iii. 4), and further on (iv. 1) he is spoken of as the fiend
"of stealing;" whereas the latter is described as the fiend "of murder."
Harsnet thus speaks of them: "Maho was general dictator of hell; and
yet, for good manners' sake, he was contented of his good nature to make
show, that himself was under the check of Modu, the graund devil in
Ma(ister) Maynie."
_Obidicut_, another name of the fiend known as Haberdicut (iv. 1).
_Smulkin_ (iii. 4). This is spelled Smolkin by Harsnet.
Thus, in a masterly manner, Shakespeare has illustrated and embellished
his plays with references to the demonology of the period; having been
careful in every case--while enlivening his audience--to convince them of
the utter absurdity of this degraded form of superstition.
CHAPTER V.
NATURAL PHENOMENA.
Many of the most beautiful and graphic passages in Shakespeare's
writings have pictured the sun in highly glowing language, and often
invested it with that sweet pathos for which the poet was so signally
famous. Expressions, for instance, such as the following, are ever
frequent: "the glorious sun" ("Twelfth Night," iv. 3); "heaven's
glorious sun" ("Love's Labour's Lost," i. 1); "gorgeous as the sun at
midsummer" ("1 Henry IV.," iv. 1); "all the world is cheered by the sun"
("Richard III.," i. 2); "the sacred radiance of the sun" ("King Lear,"
i. 1); "sweet tidings of the sun's uprise" ("Titus Andronicus," iii. 1),
etc. Then, again, how often we come across passages replete with pathos,
such as "thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west" ("Richard II.," ii. 4);
"ere the weary sun set in the west" ("Comedy of Errors," i. 2); "the
weary sun hath made a golden set" ("Richard III.," v. 3); "The sun, for
sorrow, will not show his head" ("Romeo and Juliet," v. 3), etc.
Although, however, Shakespeare has made such constant mention of the
sun, yet his allusions to the folk-lore connected with it are somewhat
scanty.
According to the old philosophy the sun was accounted a planet,[89] and
thought to be whirled round the earth by the motion of a solid sphere,
in which it was fixed. In "Antony and Cleopatra" (iv. 13), Cleopatra
exclaims:
"O sun,
Burn the great sphere thou mov'st in! darkling stand
The varying shore o' the world."
[89] Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. x. p. 292.
Supposing this sphere consumed, the sun must wander in endless space,
and, as a natural consequence, the earth be involved in endless night.
In "1 Henry IV." (i. 2), Falstaff, according to vulgar astronomy, calls
the sun a "wandering knight," and by this expression evidently alludes
to some knight of romance. Mr. Douce[90] considered the allusion was to
"The Voyage of the Wandering Knight," by Jean de Cathenay, of which the
translation, by W. Goodyeare, appeared about the year 1600. The words
may be a portion of some forgotten ballad.
[90] "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, pp. 255, 256.
A pretty fancy is referred to in "Romeo and Juliet" (iii. 5), where
Capulet says:
"When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew;
But for the sunset of my brother's son
It rains downright."
And so, too, in the "Rape of Lucrece:"
"But as the earth doth weep, the sun being set."
"That Shakespeare thought it was the air," says Singer,[91] "and not the
earth, that drizzled dew, is evident from many passages in his works.
Thus, in 'King John' (ii. 1) he says: 'Before the dew of evening fall.'"
Steevens, alluding to the following passage in "A Midsummer-Night's
Dream" (iii. 1), "and when she [_i. e._, the moon] weeps, weeps every
little flower," says that Shakespeare "means that every little flower is
moistened with dew, as if with tears; and not that the flower itself
drizzles dew."
[91] Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. viii. p. 208.
By a popular fancy, the sun was formerly said to dance at its rising on
Easter morning--to which there may be an allusion in "Romeo and Juliet"
(iii. 5), where Romeo, addressing Juliet, says:
"look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east;
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops."
We may also compare the expression in "Coriolanus" (v. 4):
"The trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries, and fifes,
Tabors, and cymbals, and the shouting Romans,
Make the sun dance."
Mr. Knight remarks, there was "something exquisitely beautiful in the
old custom of going forth into the fields before the sun had risen on
Easter Day, to see him mounting over the hills with tremulous motion, as
if it were an animate thing, bounding in sympathy with the redeemed of
mankind."[92]
[92] See Knight's "Life of Shakespeare," 1843, p. 63.
A cloudy rising of the sun has generally been regarded as ominous--a
superstition equally prevalent on the Continent as in this country. In
"Richard III." (v. 3), King Richard asks:
"Who saw the sun to-day?
_Ratcliff._ Not I, my lord.
_K. Richard._ Then he disdains to shine; for, by the book
He should have braved the east an hour ago:
A black day will it be to somebody."
"The learned Moresin, in his 'Papatus,'" says Brand,[93] "reckons among
omens the cloudy rising of the sun." Vergil, too, in his first Georgic
(441-449), considers it a sign of stormy weather:[94]
"Ille ubi nascentem maculis variaverit ortum
Conditus in nubem, medioque refugerit orbe,
Suspecti tibi sint imbres; namque urget ab alto
Arboribusque satisque Notus pecorique sinister,
Aut ubi sub lucem densa inter nubila sese
Diversi rumpent radii, aut ubi pallida surget,
Tithoni croceum linquens Aurora cubile,
Heu, male tum mitis defendet pampinus uvas:
Tam multa in tectis crepitans salit horrida grando."
[93] "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 241.
[94] See Swainson's "Weather-Lore," 1873, p. 176, for popular
adages on the Continent.
A red sunrise is also unpropitious, and, according to a well-known
rhyme:
"If red the sun begins his race,
Be sure the rain will fall apace."
This old piece of weather-wisdom is mentioned by our Lord in St.
Matthew, xvi. 2, 3: "When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair
weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather
to-day, for the sky is red and lowring." Shakespeare, in his "Venus and
Adonis," thus describes it:
"a red morn, that ever yet betoken'd
Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,
Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,
Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds."
Mr. Swainson[95] shows that this notion is common on the Continent.
Thus, at Milan the proverb runs, "If the morn be red, rain is at hand."
[95] "Weather-Lore," pp. 175, 176.
Shakespeare, in "Richard II." (ii. 4), alludes to another indication of
rain:
"Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west,
Witnessing storms to come, woe and unrest."
A "watery sunset" is still considered by many a forerunner of wet. A red
sunset, on the other hand, beautifully described in "Richard III." (v.
3)--
"The weary sun hath made a golden set."--
is universally regarded as a prognostication of fine weather, and we
find countless proverbs illustrative of this notion, one of the most
popular being, "Sky red at night, is the sailor's delight."
From the earliest times an eclipse of the sun was looked upon as an omen
of coming calamity; and was oftentimes the source of extraordinary alarm
as well as the occasion of various superstitious ceremonies. In 1597,
during an eclipse of the sun, it is stated that, at Edinburgh, men and
women thought the day of judgment was come.[96] Many women swooned, much
crying was heard in the streets, and in fear some ran to the kirk to
pray. Mr. Napier says he remembers "an eclipse about 1818, when about
three parts of the sun was covered. The alarm in the village was very
great, indoor work was suspended for the time, and in several families
prayers were offered for protection, believing that it portended some
awful calamity; but when it passed off there was a general feeling of
relief." In "King Lear" (i. 2), Gloucester remarks: "These late eclipses
in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature
can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the
sequent effects; love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in
cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the
bond cracked 'twixt son and father." Othello, too (v. 2), in his agony
and despair, exclaims:
"O heavy hour!
Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe
Should yawn at alteration."
[96] Napier's "Folk-Lore of West of Scotland," 1879, p. 141.
Francis Bernier[97] says that, in France, in 1654, at an eclipse of the
sun, "some bought drugs against the eclipse, others kept themselves
close in the dark in their caves and their well-closed chambers, others
cast themselves in great multitudes into the churches; those
apprehending some malign and dangerous influence, and these believing
that they were come to the last day, and that the eclipse would shake
the foundations of nature."[98]
[97] Quoted in Southey's "Commonplace Book," 1849, 2d series,
p. 462.
[98] See Tylor's "Primitive Culture," 1871, vol. i. pp. 261,
296, 297, 321.
In "3 Henry VI." (ii. 1), Shakespeare refers to a curious circumstance
in which, on a certain occasion, the sun is reported to have appeared
like three suns. Edward says, "do I see three suns?" to which Richard
replies:
"Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun;
Not separated with the racking clouds,
But sever'd in a pale clear-shining sky.
See, see! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss,
As if they vow'd some league inviolable:
Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun,
In this the heaven figures some event."[99]
[99] In "3 Henry VI." (ii. 1), Edward says:
"henceforward will I bear
Upon my target three fair shining suns."
This fact is mentioned both by Hall and Holinshed; the latter says: "At
which tyme the sun (as some write) appeared to the Earl of March like
_three sunnes_, and sodainely joyned altogether in one, upon whiche
sight hee tooke such courage, that he fiercely setting on his enemyes
put them to flight." We may note here that on Trinity Sunday three suns
are supposed to be seen. In the "Mémoires de l'Académie Celtique" (iii.
447), it is stated that "Le jour de la fête de la Trinité, quelques
personne vont de grand matin dans la campagne, pour y voir levre trois
soleils à la fois."
According to an old proverb, to quit a better for a worse situation was
spoken of as to go "out of God's blessing into the warm sun," a
reference to which we find in "King Lear" (ii. 2), where Kent says:
"Good king, that must approve the common saw,
Thou out of heaven's benediction com'st
To the warm sun."
Dr. Johnson thinks that Hamlet alludes to this saying (i. 2), for when
the king says to him,
"How is it that the clouds still hang on you?"
he replies,
"Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the sun,"
_i. e._, out of God's blessing.
This expression, says Mr. Dyce,[100] is found in various authors from
Heywood down to Swift. The former has:
"In your running from him to me, yee runne
Out of God's blessing into the warme sunne;"
and the latter:
"_Lord Sparkish._ They say, marriages are made in heaven; but
I doubt, when she was married, she had no friend there.
_Neverout._ Well, she's got out of God's blessing into the
warm sun."[101]
[100] "Glossary to Shakespeare," p. 283.
[101] Ray gives the Latin equivalent "Ab equis ad asinos."
There seems to have been a prejudice from time immemorial against
sunshine in March; and, according to a German saying, it were "better to
be bitten by a snake than to feel the sun in March." Thus, in "1 Henry
IV." (iv. 1), Hotspur says:
"worse than the sun in March,
This praise doth nourish agues."
Shakespeare employs the word "sunburned" in the sense of uncomely,
ill-favored. In "Much Ado" (ii. 1), Beatrice says, "I am sunburnt;" and
in "Troilus and Cressida" (i. 3), Æneas remarks:
"The Grecian dames are sunburnt, and not worth
The splinter of a lance."
_Moon._ Apart from his sundry allusions to the "pale-faced," "silver
moon," Shakespeare has referred to many of the superstitions associated
with it, several of which still linger on in country nooks. A widespread
legend of great antiquity informs us that the moon is inhabited by a
man,[102] with a bundle of sticks on his back, who has been exiled
thither for many centuries, and who is so far off that he is beyond the
reach of death. This tradition, which has given rise to many
superstitions, is still preserved under various forms in most countries;
but it has not been decided who the culprit originally was, and how he
came to be imprisoned in his lonely abode. Dante calls him Cain; Chaucer
assigns his exile as a punishment for theft, and gives him a thorn-bush
to carry, while Shakespeare also loads him with the thorns, but by way
of compensation gives him a dog for a companion. In "The Tempest" (ii.
2), Caliban asks Stephano whether he has "not dropped from heaven?" to
which he answers, "Out o' the moon, I do assure thee: I was the man i'
the moon when time was." Whereupon Caliban says: "I have seen thee in
her and I do adore thee: my mistress show'd me thee, and thy dog and thy
bush." We may also compare the expression in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream"
(v. 1), where, in the directions for the performance of the play of
"Pyramus and Thisbe," Moonshine is represented "with lanthorn, dog, and
bush of thorn." And further on, in the same scene, describing himself,
Moonshine says: "All that I have to say, is, to tell you that the
lanthorn is the moon; I, the man in the moon;[103] this thorn-bush, my
thorn-bush; and this dog, my dog."
[102] Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," 1877,
p. 190.
[103] Cf. "Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2): "Yet still she is the
moon, and I the man."
Ordinarily,[104] however, his offence is stated to have been
Sabbath-breaking--an idea derived from the Old Testament. Like the man
mentioned in the Book of Numbers (xv. 32), he is caught gathering sticks
on the Sabbath; and, as an example to mankind, he is condemned to stand
forever in the moon, with his bundle on his back. Instead of a dog, one
German version places him with a woman, whose crime was churning butter
on Sunday. The Jews have a legend that Jacob is the moon, and they
believe that his face is visible. Mr. Baring-Gould[105] says that the
"idea of locating animals in the two great luminaries of heaven is very
ancient, and is a relic of a primeval superstition of the Aryan race."
The natives of Ceylon, instead of a man, have placed a hare in the moon;
and the Chinese represent the moon by "a rabbit pounding rice in a
mortar."[106]
[104] Fiske, "Myths and Mythmakers," 1873, p. 27.
[105] "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," 1877, p. 197.
[106] Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 10.
From the very earliest times the moon has not only been an object of
popular superstition, but been honored by various acts of adoration. In
Europe,[107] in the fifteenth century, "it was a matter of complaint
that some still worshipped the new moon with bended knee, or hood or hat
removed. And to this day we may still see a hat raised to her, half in
conservatism and half in jest. It is with deference to silver as the
lunar metal that money is turned when the act of adoration is performed,
while practical peasant wit dwells on the ill-luck of having no piece of
silver when the new moon is first seen." Shakespeare often incidentally
alludes to this form of superstition. To quote one or two out of many
instances, Enobarbus, in "Antony and Cleopatra" (iv. 9), says:
"Be witness to me, O thou blessed moon!"
[107] For further information on this subject, see Tylor's
"Primitive Culture," 1873, vol. i. pp. 288, 354-356; vol. ii.
pp. 70, 202, 203.
In "Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2) the king says:
"Vouchsafe, bright moon, and these thy stars, to shine,
Those clouds, removed, upon our watery eyne."
Indeed, it was formerly a common practice for people to address
invocations to the moon,[108] and even at the present day we find
remnants of this practice both in this country and abroad. Thus, in many
places it is customary for young women to appeal to the moon to tell
them of their future prospects in matrimony,[109] the following or
similar lines being repeated on the occasion:
"New moon, new moon, I hail thee:
New moon, new moon, be kind to me;
If I marry man or man marry me,
Show me how many moons it will be."
[108] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," vol. iii. pp. 142, 143.
[109] See "English Folk-lore," pp. 43, 44.
It was also the practice to swear by the moon, to which we find an
allusion in "Romeo and Juliet" (ii. 2), where Juliet reproves her lover
for testifying his affections by this means:
"O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable."
And again, in "The Merchant of Venice" (v. 1), where Gratiano exclaims:
"By yonder moon I swear you do me wrong."
We may note here that the inconstancy[110] of the moon is the subject
of various myths, of which Mr. Tylor has given the following examples:
Thus, an Australian legend says that Mityan, the moon, was a native cat,
who fell in love with some one else's wife, and was driven away to
wander ever since. A Slavonic legend tells us that the moon, king of
night, and husband of the sun, faithlessly loved the morning star,
wherefore he was cloven through in punishment, as we see him in the sky.
The Khasias of the Himalaya say that the moon falls monthly in love with
his mother-in-law, who throws ashes in his face, whence his spots.[111]
[110] "Primitive Culture," 1873, vol. i. pp. 354, 355.
[111] The words "moonish" ("As You Like It," iii. 2) and
"moonlike" ("Love's Labour's Lost," iv. 3) are used in the
sense of inconstant.
As in the case of the sun, an eclipse of the moon was formerly
considered ominous. The Romans[112] supposed it was owing to the
influence of magical charms, to counteract which they had recourse to
the sound of brazen instruments of all kinds. Juvenal alludes to this
practice in his sixth Satire (441), when he describes his talkative
woman:
"Jam nemo tubas, nemo æra fatiget,
Una laboranti poterit succurrere lunæ."
[112] See Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 18.
Indeed, eclipses, which to us are well-known phenomena witnessing to the
exactness of natural laws, were, in the earlier stages of civilization,
regarded as "the very embodiment of miraculous disaster." Thus, the
Chinese believed that during eclipses of the sun and moon these
celestial bodies were attacked by a great serpent, to drive away which
they struck their gongs or brazen drums. The Peruvians, entertaining a
similar notion, raised a frightful din when the moon was eclipsed,[113]
while some savages would shoot up arrows to defend their luminaries
against the enemies they fancied were attacking them. It was also a
popular belief that the moon was affected by the influence of
witchcraft, a notion referred to by Prospero in "The Tempest" (v. 1),
who says:
"His mother was a witch, and one so strong
That could control the moon."
[113] Tylor's "Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 329.
In a former scene (ii. 1) Gonzalo remarks: "You are gentlemen of brave
mettle; you would lift the moon out of her sphere." Douce[114] quotes a
marginal reference from Adlington's translation of "Apuleius" (1596), a
book well known to Shakespeare: "Witches in old time were supposed to be
of such power that they could put downe the moone by their
inchantment."[115] One of the earliest references to this superstition
among classical authorities is that in the "Clouds" of Aristophanes,
where Strepsiades proposes the hiring of a Thessalian witch, to bring
down the moon and shut her up in a box, that he might thus evade paying
his debts by a month. Ovid, in his "Metamorphoses" (bk. xii. 263), says:
"Mater erat Mycale; quam deduxisse canendo
Sæpe reluctanti constabat cornua lunæ."
[114] "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 16.
[115] See Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584, pp. 174, 226,
227, 250.
Horace, in his fifth Epode (45), tells us:
"Quæ sidera excantata voce Thessala,
Lunamque cælo deripit."[116]
[116] For further examples, see Douce's "Illustrations of
Shakespeare," p. 17.
Reverting again to the moon's eclipse, such a season, being considered
most unlucky for lawful enterprises, was held suitable for evil designs.
Thus, in "Macbeth" (iv. 1), one of the witches, speaking of the
ingredients of the caldron, says:
"Gall of goat, and slips of yew,
Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse."
As a harbinger of misfortune it is referred to in "Antony and
Cleopatra," where (iii. 13), Antony says:
"Alack, our terrene moon
Is now eclipsed; and it portends alone
The fall of Antony!"
Milton, in his "Paradise Lost" (bk. i. 597), speaks much in the same
strain:
"as when the sun new-risen
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations."
And in "Lycidas," he says of the unlucky ship that was wrecked:
"It was that fatal and perfidious bark
Built in the eclipse."
Its sanguine color is also mentioned as an indication of coming
disasters in "Richard II." (ii. 4), where the Welsh captain remarks how:
"The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth."
And its paleness, too, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. 2), is spoken
of as an unpropitious sign.
According to a long-accepted theory, insane persons are said to be
influenced by the moon: and many old writers have supported this notion.
Indeed, Shakespeare himself, in "Othello" (v. 2), tells how the moon
when
"She comes more nearer earth than she was wont,
And makes men mad."
Dr. Forbes Winslow, in his "Light: its Influence on Life and Health,"
says that "it is impossible altogether to ignore the evidence of such
men as Pinel, Daquin, Guislain, and others, yet the experience of modern
psychological physicians is to a great degree opposed to the deductions
of these eminent men." He suggests that the alleged changes observed
among the insane at certain phases of the moon may arise, not from the
direct, but the indirect, influence of the planet. It is well known that
certain important meteorological phenomena result from the various
phases of the moon, such as the rarity of the air, the electric
conditions of the atmosphere, the degree of heat, dryness, moisture, and
amount of wind prevailing. It is urged, then, that those suffering from
diseases of the brain and nervous system, affecting the mind, cannot be
considered as exempt from the operation of agencies that are admitted
to affect patients afflicted with other maladies. Dr. Winslow further
adds, that "an intelligent lady, who occupied for about five years the
position of matron in my establishment for insane ladies, has remarked
that she invariably observed among them a greater agitation when the
moon was at its full." A correspondent of "Notes and Queries" (2d
series, xii. 492) explains the apparent aggravated symptoms of madness
at the full moon by the fact that the insane are naturally more restless
on light than on dark nights, and that in consequence loss of sleep
makes them more excitable. We may note here, that in "Antony and
Cleopatra" (iv. 9) Enobarbus invokes the moon as the "sovereign mistress
of true melancholy."
The moisture of the moon is invariably noticed by Shakespeare. In
"Hamlet" (i. 1) Horatio tells how
"the moist star,
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse."
In "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. 1) Titania says:
"Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound."
And in "The Winter's Tale" (i. 2) Polixenes commences by saying how:
"Nine changes of the watery star hath been
The shepherd's note, since we have left our throne
Without a burthen."
We may compare, too, the words of Enobarbus in "Antony and Cleopatra"
(iv. 9), who, after addressing the moon, says: "The poisonous damp of
night disponge upon me." And once more, in "Romeo and Juliet" (i. 4), we
read of the "moonshine's watery beams."
The same idea is frequently found in old writers. Thus, for instance, in
Newton's "Direction for the Health of Magistrates and Studentes" (1574),
we are told that "the moone is ladye of moisture." Bartholomæus, in "De
Proprietate Rerum," describes the moon as "mother of all humours,
minister and ladye of the sea."[117] In Lydgate's prologue to his "Story
of Thebes" there are two lines not unlike those in "A Midsummer-Night's
Dream," already quoted:
"Of Lucina the moone, moist and pale,
That many shoure fro heaven made availe."
[117] See Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 116.
Of course, the moon is thus spoken of as governing the tides, and from
its supposed influence on the weather.[118] In "1 Henry IV." (i. 2)
Falstaff alludes to the sea being governed "by our noble and chaste
mistress, the moon;" and in "Richard III." (ii. 2) Queen Elizabeth says:
"That I, being govern'd by the watery moon,
May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world."
[118] See Swainson's "Weather-Lore," 1873, pp. 182-192.
We may compare, too, what Timon says ("Timon of Athens," iv. 3):
"The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears."
The expression of Hecate, in "Macbeth" (iii. 5):
"Upon the corner of the moon
There hangs a vaporous drop profound,"
seems to have been meant for the same as the _virus lunare_ of the
ancients, being a foam which the moon was supposed to shed on particular
herbs, when strongly solicited by enchantment. Lucan introduces Erictho
using it ("Pharsalia," book vi. 669): "Et virus large lunare ministrat."
By a popular astrological doctrine the moon was supposed to exercise
great influence over agricultural operations, and also over many "of the
minor concerns of life, such as the gathering of herbs, the killing of
animals for the table, and other matters of a like nature." Thus the
following passage in the "Merchant of Venice" (v. 1), it has been
suggested, has reference to the practices of the old herbalists who
attributed particular virtues to plants gathered during particular
phases of the moon and hours of the night. After Lorenzo has spoken of
the moon shining brightly, Jessica adds:
"In such a night
Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs,
That did renew old Æson."
And in "Hamlet" (iv. 7) the description which Laertes gives of the
weapon-poison refers to the same notion:
"I bought an unction of a mountebank,
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death."
The sympathy of growing and declining nature with the waxing and waning
moon is a superstition widely spread, and is as firmly believed in by
many as when Tusser, in his "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry,"
under "February" gave the following advice:
"Sow peason and beans in the wane of the moon,
Who soweth them sooner, he soweth too soon,
That they with the planet may rest and arise,
And flourish, with bearing most plentifull wise."
Warburton considers that this notion is alluded to by Shakespeare in
"Troilus and Cressida" (iii. 2), where Troilus, speaking of the
sincerity of his love, tells Cressida it is,
"As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,
As sun to day, as turtle to her mate."
There is a little doubt as to the exact meaning of plantage in this
passage. Nares observes that it probably means anything that is planted;
but Mr. Ellacombe, in his "Plant-lore of Shakespeare" (1878, p. 165),
says "it is doubtless the same as plantain."
It appears that, in days gone by, "neither sowing, planting, nor
grafting was ever undertaken without a scrupulous attention to the
increase or waning of the moon."[119] Scot, in his "Discovery of
Witchcraft," notes how "the poore husbandman perceiveth that the
increase of the moone maketh plants fruitful, so as in the full moone
they are in best strength; decaieing in the wane, and in the conjunction
do utterlie wither and vade."
[119] See Tylor's "Primitive Culture," 1873, vol. i. p. 130;
"English Folk-Lore," 1878, pp. 41, 42.
It was a prevailing notion that the moon had an attending star--Lilly
calls it "Lunisequa;" and Sir Richard Hawkins, in his "Observations in a
Voyage to the South Seas in 1593," published in 1622, remarks: "Some I
have heard say, and others write, that there is a starre which never
separateth itself from the moon, but a small distance." Staunton
considers that there is an allusion to this idea in "Love's Labour's
Lost" (iv. 3), where the king says:
"My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon:
She an attending star, scarce seen a light."
The sharp ends of the new moon are popularly termed horns--a term which
occurs in "Coriolanus" (i. 1)--
"they threw their caps
As they would hang them on the horns o' the moon."
It is made use of in Decker's "Match me in London" (i.):
"My lord, doe you see this change i' the moone?
Sharp hornes doe threaten windy weather."
When the horns of the moon appear to point upwards the moon is said to
be like a boat, and various weather prognostications are drawn from this
phenomenon.[120] According to sailors, it is an omen of fine weather,
whereas others affirm it is a sign of rain--resembling a basin full of
water about to fall.
[120] See Swainson's "Weather-Lore," pp. 182, 183.
Among other items of folk-lore connected with the moon we may mention
the moon-calf, a false conception, or foetus imperfectly formed, in
consequence, as was supposed, of the influence of the moon. The best
account of this fabulous substance may be found in Drayton's poem with
that title. Trinculo, in "The Tempest" (ii. 2), supposes Caliban to be a
moon-calf: "I hid me under the dead moon-calf's gaberdine." It has been
suggested that in calling Caliban a moon-calf Shakespeare alluded to a
superstitious belief formerly current, in the intercourse of demons and
other non-human beings with mankind. In the days of witchcraft, it was
supposed that a class of devils called Incubi and Succubi roamed the
earth with the express purpose of tempting people to abandon their
purity of life. Hence, all badly deformed children were suspected of
having had such an undesirable parentage.[121]
[121] See Williams's "Superstitions of Witchcraft," pp.
123-125; Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft," bk. iv. p. 145.
A curious expression, "a sop o' the moonshine," occurs in "King Lear"
(ii. 2), which probably alludes to some dish so called. Kent says to the
steward, "Draw, you rogue; for, though it be night, yet the moon shines;
I'll make a sop o' the moonshine of you."
There was a way of dressing eggs, called "eggs in moonshine," of which
Douce[122] gives the following description: "Eggs were broken and boiled
in salad oil till the yolks became hard. They were eaten with slices of
onion fried in oil, butter, verjuice, nutmeg, and salt." "A sop in the
moonshine" must have been a sippet in this dish.[123]
[122] "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 405.
[123] Nares's "Glossary," 1872, vol. ii. p. 580.
_Planets._ The irregular motion of the planets was supposed to portend
some disaster to mankind. Ulysses, in "Troilus and Cressida" (i. 3),
declares how:
"when the planets
In evil mixture, to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!
Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture."
Indeed, the planets themselves were not thought, in days gone by, to be
confined in any fixed orbit of their own, but ceaselessly to wander
about, as the etymology of their name demonstrates. A popular name for
the planets was "wandering stars," of which Cotgrave says, "they bee
also called wandering starres, because they never keep one certain place
or station in the firmament." Thus Hamlet (v. 1), approaching the grave
of Ophelia, addresses Laertes:
"What is he, whose grief
Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow
Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand
Like wonder-wounded hearers?"
In Tomkis's "Albumazar" (i. 1) they are called "wanderers:"
"Your patron Mercury, in his mysterious character
Holds all the marks of the other wanderers."
According to vulgar astrology, the planets, like the stars, were
supposed to affect, more or less, the affairs of this world, a notion
frequently referred to by old writers. In "Winter's Tale" (ii. 1),
Hermione consoles herself in the thought--
"There's some ill planet reigns:
I must be patient till the heavens look
With an aspect more favourable."
In "1 Henry VI." (i. 1), the Duke of Exeter asks:
"What! shall we curse the planets of mishap
That plotted thus our glory's overthrow?"
Again, King Richard ("Richard III.," iv. 4):
"Be opposite all planets of good luck
To my proceeding."
And once more, in "Hamlet" (i. 1), Marcellus, speaking of the season of
our Saviour's birth, says, "then no planets strike."
That diseases, too, are dependent upon planetary influence is referred
to in "Timon of Athens" (iv. 3):
"Be as a planetary plague, when Jove
Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison
In the sick air: let not thy sword skip one."
"Fiery Trigon" was a term in the old judicial astrology, when the three
upper planets met in a fiery sign--a phenomenon which was supposed to
indicate rage and contention. It is mentioned in "2 Henry IV." (ii. 4):
"_P. Hen._ Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction! what
says the almanac to that?
_Poins._ And, look, whether the fiery Trigon, his man, be not
lisping to his master's old tables."
Dr. Nash, in his notes to Butler's "Hudibras," says: "The twelve signs
in astrology are divided into four _trigons_ or triplicities, each
denominated from the connatural element; so they are three fiery
[signs], three airy, three watery, and three earthy:"
Fiery--Aries, Leo, Sagittarius.
Airy--Gemini, Libra, Aquarius.
Watery--Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces.
Earthly--Taurus, Virgo, Capricornus.
Thus, when the three superior planets met in Aries, Leo, or Sagittarius,
they formed a _fiery trigon_; when in Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces, a
watery one.
_Charles's Wain_ was the old name for the seven bright stars of the
constellation Ursa Major. The constellation was so named in honor of
Charlemagne; or, according to some, it is a corruption of chorles or
churl's, _i. e._, rustic's, wain. Chorl is frequently used for a
countryman, in old books, from the Saxon ceorl. In "1 Henry IV." (ii.
1), the Carrier says, "Charles' wain is over the new chimney."
_Music of the spheres._ Pythagoras was the first who suggested this
notion, so beautifully expressed by Shakespeare in the "Merchant of
Venice" (v. 1):
"There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins."
Plato says that a siren sits on each planet, who carols a most sweet
song, agreeing to the motion of her own particular planet, but
harmonizing with the other seven. Hence Milton, in his "Arcades," speaks
of the "celestial Sirens' harmony, that sit upon the nine enfolded
spheres."
_Stars._ An astrological doctrine, which has kept its place in modern
popular philosophy, asserts that mundane events are more or less
influenced by the stars. That astronomers should have divided the sun's
course into imaginary signs of the Zodiac, was enough, says Mr.
Tylor,[124] to originate astrological rules "that these celestial signs
have an actual effect on real earthly rams, bulls, crabs, lions,
virgins." Hence we are told that a child born under the sign of the Lion
will be courageous; but one born under the Crab will not go forth well
in life; one born under the Waterman is likely to be drowned, and so
forth. Shakespeare frequently alludes to this piece of superstition,
which, it must be remembered, was carried to a ridiculous height in his
day. In "Julius Cæsar" (i. 2), Cassius says:
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
[124] "Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 131.
In the following passage in "Twelfth Night" (i. 3):
"_Sir Tob._ Were we not born under Taurus?
_Sir And._ Taurus! that's sides and heart.
_Sir Tob._ No, sir; it is legs and thighs."
"Both the knights," says Mr. Douce ("Illustrations of Shakespeare," p.
54), "are wrong in their astrology, according to the almanacs of the
time, which make Taurus govern the neck and throat."
Beatrice, in "Much Ado about Nothing" (ii. 1), says: "there was a star
danced, and under that was I born;" Kent, in "King Lear" (iv. 3),
remarks,
"It is the stars,
The stars above us, govern our conditions;"
and once more, in "Pericles" (i. 1), King Antiochus, speaking of the
charming qualities of his daughter, says:
"Bring in our daughter, clothed like a bride,
For the embracements even of Jove himself:
At whose conception, till Lucina reign'd,
Nature this dowry gave, to glad her presence,
The senate-house of planets all did sit,
To knit in her their best perfections."[125]
[125] Cf. "Richard III." (iv. 4); "1 Henry IV." (i. 1, iii. 1);
"Antony and Cleopatra" (iii. 13); "The Tempest" (i. 2);
"Hamlet" (i. 4); "Cymbeline" (v. 4); "Winter's Tale" (iii. 2);
"Richard II." (iv. 1).
Throughout the East, says Mr. Tylor,[126] "astrology even now remains a
science in full esteem. The condition of mediæval Europe may still be
perfectly realized by the traveller in Persia, where the Shah waits for
days outside the walls of his capital till the constellations allow him
to enter; and where, on the days appointed by the stars for letting
blood, it literally flows in streams from the barbers' shops in the
streets. Professor Wuttke declares that there are many districts in
Germany where the child's horoscope is still regularly kept with the
baptismal certificate in the family chest." Astrology is ridiculed in a
masterly manner in "King Lear" (i. 2); and Warburton suggests that if
the date of the first performance of "King Lear" were well considered,
"it would be found that something or other had happened at that time
which gave a more than ordinary run to this deceit, as these words seem
to indicate--'I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other
day, what should follow these eclipses.'" Zouch,[127] speaking of Queen
Mary's reign, tells us that "Judicial astrology was much in use long
after this time. Its predictions were received with reverential awe: and
even men of the most enlightened understandings were inclined to believe
that the conjunctions and oppositions of the planets had no little
influence in the affairs of the world."
[126] "Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 131; see Brand's "Popular
Antiquities," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 341-348.
[127] "Walton's Lives," 1796, p. 113, note.
The pretence, also, of predicting events, such as pestilence, from the
aspect of the heavenly bodies--one form of medical astrology--is noticed
in "Venus and Adonis:"
"Long may they kiss each other, for this cure!
O, never let their crimson liveries wear!
And as they last, their verdure still endure,
To drive infection from the dangerous year!
That the star-gazers, having writ on death,
May say, the plague is banish'd by thy breath!"
Heroes were in ancient times immortalized by being placed among the
stars, a custom to which Bedford refers in "1 Henry VI." (i. 1):
"A far more glorious star thy soul will make
Than Julius Cæsar."
And, again, "Pericles" (v. 3) exclaims:
"Heavens make a star of him."
On a medal of Hadrian, the adopted son of Trajan and Plotina, the
divinity of his parents is expressed by placing a star over their heads;
and in like manner the medals of Faustina the Elder exhibit her on an
eagle, her head surrounded with stars.[128]
[128] Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 397.
In "2 Henry IV." (iv. 3) a ludicrous term for the stars is, "cinders of
the elements;" and in "Merchant of Venice" (v. 1) they are designated
"candles of the night."
_Meteors._ An elegant description of a meteor well known to sailors is
given by Ariel in "The Tempest" (i. 2):
"sometime I'd divide
And burn in many places; on the topmast,
The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,
Then meet and join."
It is called, by the French and Spaniards inhabiting the coasts of the
Mediterranean, St. Helme's or St. Telme's fire; by the Italians, the
fire of St. Peter and St. Nicholas. It is also known as the fire of St.
Helen, St. Herm, and St. Clare. Douce[129] tells us that whenever it
appeared as a single flame it was supposed by the ancients to be Helena,
the sister of Castor and Pollux, and in this state to bring ill luck,
from the calamities which this lady is known to have caused in the
Trojan war. When it came as a double flame it was called Castor and
Pollux, and accounted a good omen. It has been described as a little
blaze of fire, sometimes appearing by night on the tops of soldiers'
lances, or at sea on masts and sailyards, whirling and leaping in a
moment from one place to another. According to some, it never appears
but after a tempest, and is supposed to lead people to suicide by
drowning. Shakespeare in all probability consulted Batman's "Golden
Books of the Leaden Goddes," who, speaking of Castor and Pollux, says:
"They were figured like two lampes or cresset lightes--one on the toppe
of a maste, the other on the stemme or foreshippe." He adds that if the
first light appears in the stem or foreship and ascends upwards, it is a
sign of good luck; if "either lights begin at the topmast, bowsprit," or
foreship, and descends towards the sea, it is a sign of a tempest. In
taking, therefore, the latter position, Ariel had fulfilled the commands
of Prospero, and raised a storm.[130] Mr. Swainson, in his
"Weather-Lore" (1873, p. 193), quotes the following, which is to the
same purport:
"Last night I saw Saint Elmo's stars,
With their glittering lanterns all at play,
On the tops of the masts and the tips of the spars,
And I knew we should have foul weather that day."
[129] Ibid. p. 3.
[130] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 400.
Capell, in his "School of Shakespeare" (1779, iii. 7), has pointed out a
passage in Hakluyt's "Voyages" (1598, iii. 450), which strikingly
illustrates the speech of Ariel quoted above: "I do remember that in the
great and boysterous storme of this foule weather, in the night, there
came vpon the toppe of our maine yarde and maine maste, a certaine
little light, much like unto the light of a little candle, which the
Spaniards called the Cuerpo-Santo, and said it was St. Elmo, whom they
take to bee the aduocate of sailers.... This light continued aboord our
ship about three houres, flying from maste to maste, and from top to
top; and sometimes it would be in two or three places at once." This
meteor was by some supposed to be a spirit; and by others "an exhalation
of moyst vapours, that are ingendered by foul and tempestuous
weather."[131] Mr. Thoms, in his "Notelets on Shakespeare" (1865, p. 59),
says that, no doubt, Shakespeare had in mind the will-o'-the-wisp.[132]
[131] Purchas, "His Pilgrimes" (1625, pt. i. lib. iii. p. 133),
quoted by Mr. Aldis Wright in his "Notes to The Tempest," 1875,
p. 86.
[132] See Puck as Will-o'-the-Wisp; chapter on "Fairy-Lore."
_Fire-Drake_, which is jocularly used in "Henry VIII." (v. 4) for a
man with a red face, was one of the popular terms for the
will-o'-the-wisp,[133] and Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," says:
"Fiery spirits or devils are such as commonly work by fire-drakes, or
ignes fatui, which lead men often in flumina et præcipitia." In
Bullokar's "English Expositor" (1616), we have a quaint account of this
phenomenon: "Fire-drake; a fire sometimes seen flying in the night like
a dragon. Common people think it a spirit that keepeth some treasure
hid, but philosophers affirme it to be a great unequal exhalation
inflamed betweene two clouds, the one hot, the other cold, which is the
reason that it also smoketh, the middle part whereof, according to the
proportion of the hot cloud being greater than the rest, maketh it seem
like a bellie, and both ends like unto a head and taill."[134] White,
however, in his "Peripateticall Institutions" (p. 156), calls the
fiery-dragon or fire-drake, "a weaker kind of lightning. Its livid
colors, and its falling without noise and slowly, demonstrate a great
mixture of watery exhalation in it.... 'Tis sufficient for its shape,
that it has some resemblance of a dragon, not the expresse figure."
[133] See "Notes and Queries," 5th series, vol. x. p. 499;
Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 410; Nares's
"Glossary," vol. i. p. 309.
[134] A "fire-drake" appears to have been also an artificial
firework, perhaps what is now called a serpent. Thus, in
Middleton's "Your Five Gallants" (1607):
"But, like fire-drakes,
Mounted a little, gave a crack and fell."
Among other allusions to the will-o'-the-wisp by Shakespeare, Mr.
Hunter[135] notices one in "King Lear" (iii. 4), where Gloster's torch
being seen in the distance, the fool says, "Look, here comes a walking
fire." Whereupon Edgar replies, "This is the foul fiend,
Flibbertigibbet; he begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock."
"From which," observes Mr. Hunter, "Flibbertigibbet seems to be a name
for the will-o'-the-wisp. Hence the propriety of 'He _begins at curfew_,
and walks till the crowing of the cock,' that is, is seen in all the
dark of the night." It appears that when Shakespeare wrote, "a walking
fire" was a common name for the _ignis fatuus_, as we learn from the
story of "How Robin Goodfellow lead a company of fellows out of their
way:" "A company of young men, having been making merry with their
sweethearts, were, at their coming home, to come over a heath; Robin
Goodfellow, knowing of it, met them, and to make some pastime hee led
them up and downe the heathe a whole night, so that they could not get
out of it, for hee went before them in the shape of a _walking fire_,
which they all saw and followed till the day did appeare; then Robin
left them, and at his departure spake these words:
"'Get you home, you merry lads,
Tell your mammies and your dads,
And all those that newes desire
How you saw a walking fire,
Wenches, that doe smile and lispe,
Use to call me willy-wispe.'"
[135] "New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of
Shakespeare," vol. ii. p. 272.
Another allusion to this subject occurs in "The Tempest" (iv. 1), where
Stephano, after Ariel has led him and his drunken companions through
"tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns," and at last
"left them i' the filthy mantled pool," reproaches Caliban in these
words: "Monster, your fairy, which you say is a harmless fairy, has done
little better than played the Jack with us"--that is, to quote Dr.
Johnson's explanation of this passage, "he has played Jack-with-a-lanthorn,
has led us about like an _ignis fatuus_, by which travellers are decoyed
into the mire."[136] Once more, when Puck, in "A Midsummer-Night's
Dream" (iii. 1), speaks of the various forms he assumes in order to
"mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm," he says:
"Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire."
[136] See Thoms's "Notelets on Shakespeare," p. 59.
Shakespeare, no doubt, here alludes to the will-o'-the wisp, an opinion
shared by Mr. Joseph Ritson,[137] who says: "This Puck, or Robin
Goodfellow, seems likewise to be the illusory candle-holder, so fatal to
travellers, and who is more usually called 'Jack-a-lantern,'[138] or
'Will-with-a-wisp,' and 'Kit-with-the-candlestick.'" Milton, in
"Paradise Lost" (book ix.), alludes to this deceptive gleam in the
following lines:
"A wandering fire
Compact of unctuous vapour, which the night
Condenses, and the cold environs round,
Kindled through agitation to a flame,
Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends,
Hovering and blazing with delusive light,
Misleads th' amaz'd night-wanderer from his way
To bogs and mires, and oft through pond and pool."[139]
[137] "Fairy Mythology," edited by Hazlitt, 1875, p. 40.
[138] Among the many other names given to this appearance may
be mentioned the following: "Will-a-wisp," "Joan-in-the-wad,"
"Jacket-a-wad," "Peg-a-lantern," "Elf-fire," etc. A
correspondent of "Notes and Queries" (5th series, vol. x. p.
499) says: "The wandering meteor of the moss or fell appears to
have been personified as Jack, Gill, Joan, Will, or Robin,
indifferently, according as the supposed spirit of the lamp
seemed to the particular rustic mind to be a male or female
apparition." In Worcestershire it is called
"Hob-and-his-lanthorn," and "Hobany's" or "Hobnedy's Lanthorn."
[139] Mr. Ritson says that Milton "is frequently content to
pilfer a happy expression from Shakespeare--on this occasion,
'night-wanderer.'" He elsewhere calls it "the friar's lantern."
This appearance has given rise to a most extensive folk-lore, and is
embodied in many of the fairy legends and superstitions of this and
other countries. Thus, in Germany, Jack-o'-lanterns are said to be the
souls of unbaptized children, that have no rest in the grave, and must
hover between heaven and earth. In many places they are called
land-measurers, and are seen like figures of fire, running to and fro
with a red-hot measuring rod. These are said to be persons who have
falsely sworn away land, or fraudulently measured it, or removed
landmarks.[140] In the neighborhood of Magdeburg, they are known as
"Lüchtemannekens;" and to cause them to appear, it is sufficient to
call out "Ninove, Ninove." In the South Altmark they are termed
"Dickepôten;" and if a person only prays as soon as he sees one, he
draws it to him; if he curses, it retires. In some parts, too, a popular
name is "Huckepôten," and "Tuckbolde." The Jack-o'-lanterns of
Denmark[141] are the spirits of unrighteous men, who, by a false
glimmer, seek to mislead the traveller, and to decoy him into bogs and
moors. The best safeguard against them, when they appear, is to turn
one's cap inside out. A similar notion occurs in Devonshire with regard
to the Pixies, who delight in leading astray such persons as they find
abroad after nightfall; the only remedy to escape them being to turn
some part of the dress. In Normandy these fires are called "Feux
Follets," and they are believed to be cruel spirits, whom it is
dangerous to encounter. Among the superstitions which prevail in
connection with them, two, says Mr. Thoms,[142] are deserving of notice:
"One is, that the _ignis fatuus_ is the spirit of some unhappy woman,
who is destined to run _en furolle_, to expiate her intrigues with a
minister of the church, and it is designated from that circumstance La
Fourlore, or La Fourolle." Another opinion is, that Le Feu Follet is the
soul of a priest, who has been condemned thus to expiate his broken vows
of perpetual chastity; and it is very probable that it is to some
similar belief existing in this country, at the time when he wrote, that
Milton alludes in "L'Allegro," when he says:
"She was pinched and pulled, she said,
And he by Friar's Lanthorn led."
[140] Thorpe, "Northern Mythology," 1852, vol. iii. pp. 85,
158, 220.
[141] "Notelets on Shakespeare," pp. 64, 65.
[142] Ibid.
In Brittany the "Porte-brandon" appears in the form of a child bearing a
torch, which he turns like a burning wheel; and with this, we are told,
he sets fire to the villages, which are suddenly, sometimes in the
middle of the night, wrapped in flames.
The appearance of meteors Shakespeare ranks among omens, as in "1 Henry
IV." (ii. 4), where Bardolph says: "My lord, do you see these meteors?
do you behold these exhalations? What think you they portend?" And in
"King John" (iii. 4), Pandulph speaks of meteors as "prodigies and
signs." The Welsh captain, in "Richard II." (ii. 4), says:
"'Tis thought the king is dead; we will not stay.
The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd,
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven."
_Comet._ From the earliest times comets have been superstitiously
regarded, and ranked among omens. Thus Thucydides tells us that the
Peloponnesian war was heralded by an abundance of earthquakes and
comets; and Vergil, in speaking of the death of Cæsar, declares that at
no other time did comets and other supernatural prodigies appear in
greater numbers. It is probably to this latter event that Shakespeare
alludes in "Julius Cæsar" (ii. 2), where he represents Calpurnia as
saying:
"When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."
Again, in "1 Henry VI." (i. 1), the play opens with the following words,
uttered by the Duke of Bedford:
"Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!
Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,
And with them scourge the bad revolting stars
That have consented unto Henry's death!"
In "Taming of the Shrew" (iii. 2), too, Petruchio, when he makes his
appearance on his wedding-day, says:
"Gentles, methinks you frown:
And wherefore gaze this goodly company,
As if they saw some wondrous monument,
Some comet, or unusual prodigy?"
In "1 Henry IV." (iii. 2), the king, when telling his son how he had
always avoided making himself "common-hackney'd in the eyes of men,"
adds:
"By being seldom seen, I could not stir
But, like a comet, I was wonder'd at."
Arcite, in the "Two Noble Kinsmen" (v. 1), when addressing the altar of
Mars, says:
"Whose approach
Comets forewarn."[143]
[143] See Proctor's "Myths of Astronomy;" Chambers's "Domestic
Annals of Scotland," 1858, vol. ii. pp. 410-412; Douce's
"Illustrations of Shakespeare," pp. 364, 365.
_Dew._ Among the many virtues ascribed to dew was its supposed power
over the complexion, a source of superstition which still finds many
believers, especially on May morning. All dew, however, does not appear
to have possessed this quality, some being of a deadly or malignant
quality. Thus Ariel, in "The Tempest" (i. 2), speaks of the "deep brook"
in the harbor:
"where once
Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still vex'd Bermoothes."
And Caliban (i. 2), when venting his rage on Prospero and Miranda, can
find no stronger curse than the following:
"As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd,
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen
Drop on you both!"
It has been suggested that in "Antony and Cleopatra" (iii. 12)
Shakespeare may refer to an old notion whereby the sea was considered
the source of dews as well as rain. Euphronius is represented as saying:
"Such as I am, I come from Antony:
I was of late as petty to his ends
As is the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf
To his grand sea."
According to an erroneous notion formerly current, it was supposed that
the air, and not the earth, drizzled dew--a notion referred to in "Romeo
and Juliet" (iii. 5):
"When the sun sets, the air doth drizzle dew."
And in "King John" (ii. 1):
"Before the dew of evening fall."
Then there is the celebrated honey-dew, a substance which has furnished
the poet with a touching simile, which he has put into the mouth of
"Titus Andronicus" (iii. 1):
"When I did name her brothers, then fresh tears
Stood on her cheeks; as doth the honey-dew
Upon a gather'd lily almost wither'd."
According to Pliny, "honey-dew" is the saliva of the stars, or a liquid
produced by the purgation of the air. It is, however, a secretion
deposited by a small insect, which is distinguished by the generic name
of aphis.[144]
[144] See Patterson's "Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare," 1841,
p. 145.
_Rainbow._ Secondary rainbows, the watery appearance in the sky
accompanying the rainbow, are in many places termed "water-galls"--a term
we find in the "Rape of Lucrece" (1586-89):
"And round about her tear-distained eye
Blue circles stream'd, like rainbows in the sky:
These water-galls in her dim element
Foretell new storms to those already spent."
Horace Walpole several times makes use of the word: "False good news are
always produced by true good, like the water-gall by the rainbow;" and
again, "Thank heaven it is complete, and did not remain imperfect, like
a water-gall."[145] In "The Dialect of Craven" we find "Water-gall, a
secondary or broken rainbow. _Germ._ Wasser-galle."
[145] "Letters," vol. i. p. 310; vol. vi. pp. 1, 187.--Ed.
Cunningham.
_Thunder._ According to an erroneous fancy the destruction occasioned by
lightning was effected by some solid body known as the thunder-stone or
thunder-bolt. Thus, in the beautiful dirge in "Cymbeline" (iv. 2):
"_Guid._ Fear no more the lightning flash,
_Arv._ Or the all-dreaded thunder-stone."
Othello asks (v. 2):
"Are there no stones in heaven
But what serve for the thunder?"
And in "Julius Cæsar" (i. 3), Cassius says:
"And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,
Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone."
The thunder-stone is the imaginary product of the thunder, which the
ancients called _Brontia_, mentioned by Pliny ("Nat. Hist." xxxvii. 10)
as a species of gem, and as that which, falling with the lightning, does
the mischief. It is the fossil commonly called the Belemnite, or
finger-stone, and now known to be a shell.
A superstitious notion prevailed among the ancients that those who were
stricken with lightning were honored by Jupiter, and therefore to be
accounted holy. It is probably to this idea that Shakespeare alludes in
"Antony and Cleopatra" (ii. 5):
"Some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt."[146]
[146] Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," 1839, p. 369.
The bodies of such were supposed not to putrefy; and, after having been
exhibited for a certain time to the people, were not buried in the usual
manner, but interred on the spot where the lightning fell, and a
monument erected over them. Some, however, held a contrary opinion. Thus
Persius (sat. ii. l. 27) says:
"Triste jaces lucis evitandumque bidental."
The ground, too, that had been smitten by a thunder-bolt was accounted
sacred, and afterwards enclosed; nor did any one even presume to walk on
it. Such spots were, therefore, consecrated to the gods, and could not
in future become the property of any one.
Among the many other items of folk-lore associated with thunder is a
curious one referred to in "Pericles" (iv. 3): "Thunder shall not so
awake the bed of eels." The notion formerly being that thunder had the
effect of rousing eels from their mud, and so rendered them more easy to
be taken in stormy weather. Marston alludes to this superstition in his
satires ("Scourge of Villainie," sat. vii.):
"They are nought but eeles, that never will appeare
Till that tempestuous winds or thunder teare
Their slimy beds."
The silence that often precedes a thunder-storm is thus graphically
described in "Hamlet" (ii. 2):
"'we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region.'"
_Earthquakes_, around which so many curious myths and superstitions have
clustered,[147] are scarcely noticed by Shakespeare. They are mentioned
among the ominous signs of that terrible night on which Duncan is so
treacherously slain ("Macbeth," ii. 3):
"the obscure bird
Clamour'd the livelong night: some say, the earth
Was feverous and did shake."
[147] See Tylor's "Primitive Culture," vol. i. pp. 364-367.
And in "1 Henry IV." (iii. 1) Hotspur assigns as a reason for the
earthquakes the following theory:
"Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions; oft the teeming earth
Is with a kind of colic pinch'd and vex'd
By the imprisoning of unruly wind
Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving,
Shakes the old beldam earth, and topples down
Steeples, and moss-grown towers."
_Equinox._ The storms that prevail in spring at the vernal equinox are
aptly alluded to in "Macbeth" (i. 2):
"As whence the sun 'gins his reflection
Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break,
So from that spring, whence comfort seem'd to come,
Discomfort swells."
--the meaning being: the beginning of the reflection of the sun is the
epoch of his passing from the severe to the milder season, opening,
however, with storms.
_Wind._ An immense deal of curious weather-lore[148] has been associated
with the wind from the earliest period; and in our own and foreign
countries innumerable proverbs are found describing the future state of
the weather from the position of the wind, for, according to an old
saying, "every wind has its weather." Shakespeare has introduced some of
these, showing how keen an observer he was of those every-day sayings
which have always been much in use, especially among the lower classes.
Thus the proverbial wet which accompanies the wind when in the south is
mentioned in "As You Like It" (iii. 5):
"Like foggy south, puffing with wind and rain."
[148] See Swainson's "Weather-Lore."
And again, in "1 Henry IV." (v. 1):
"The southern wind
Doth play the trumpet to his [_i. e._, the sun's] purposes;
And by his hollow whistling in the leaves
Foretells a tempest, and a blustering day."
A popular saying to the same effect, still in use, tells us that:
"When the wind is in the south,
It is in the rain's mouth."
Again, in days gone by, the southerly winds were generally supposed to
be bearers of noxious fogs and vapors, frequent allusions to which are
given by Shakespeare. Thus, in "The Tempest" (i. 2), Caliban says:
"a south-west blow on ye
And blister you all o'er."
A book,[149] too, with which, as already noticed, Shakespeare appears to
have been familiar, tells us, "This southern wind is hot and moist.
Southern winds corrupt and destroy; they heat, and make men fall into
the sickness." Hence, in "Troilus and Cressida" (v. 1), Thersites
speaks of "the rotten diseases of the south;" and in "Coriolanus" (i.
4), Marcius exclaims:
"All the contagion of the south light on you."
[149] Batman upon Bartholomæus--"De Proprietatibus Rerum," lib.
xi. c. 3.
Once more, in "Cymbeline" (ii. 3), Cloten speaks in the same strain:
"The south fog rot him."
_Flaws._ These are sudden gusts of wind. It was the opinion, says
Warburton, "of some philosophers that the vapors being congealed in the
air by cold (which is the most intense in the morning), and being
afterwards rarefied and let loose by the warmth of the sun, occasion
those sudden and impetuous gusts of wind which were called 'flaws.'"
Thus he comments on the following passage in "2 Henry IV." (iv. 4):
"As humorous as winter, and as sudden
As flaws congealed in the spring of day."
In "2 Henry VI." (iii. 1) these outbursts of wind are further alluded
to:
"And this fell tempest shall not cease to rage
Until the golden circuit on my head,
Like to the glorious sun's transparent beams,
Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw."
Again, in "Venus and Adonis" (425), there is an additional reference:
"Like a red morn, that ever yet betoken'd
Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,
Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,
Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds."
In the Cornish dialect a _flaw_ signifies primitively a cut.[150] But it
is also there used in a secondary sense for those sudden or cutting
gusts of wind.[151]
[150] Polwhele's "Cornish Vocabulary."
[151] Cf. "Macbeth," iii. 4, "O, these flaws and starts."
_Squalls._ There is a common notion that "the sudden storm lasts not
three hours," an idea referred to by John of Gaunt in "Richard II." (ii.
1):
"Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short."
Thus, in Norfolk, the peasantry say that "the faster the rain, the
quicker the hold up," which is only a difference in words from the
popular adage, "after a storm comes a calm."
_Clouds._ In days gone by, clouds floating before the wind, like a reek
or vapor, were termed racking clouds. Hence in "3 Henry VI." (ii. 1),
Richard speaks of:
"Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun;
Not separated with the racking clouds."
This verb, though now obsolete, was formerly in common use; and in "King
Edward III.," 1596, we read:
"Like inconstant clouds,
That, rack'd upon the carriage of the winds,
Increase," etc.
At the present day one may often hear the phrase, the rack of the
weather, in our agricultural districts; many, too, of the items of
weather-lore noticed by Shakespeare being still firmly credited by our
peasantry.
CHAPTER VI.
BIRDS.
In the present chapter we have not only a striking proof of
Shakespeare's minute acquaintance with natural history, but of his
remarkable versatility as a writer. While displaying a most extensive
knowledge of ornithology, he has further illustrated his subject by
alluding to those numerous legends, popular sayings, and superstitions
which have, in this and other countries, clustered round the feathered
race. Indeed, the following pages are alone sufficient to show, if it
were necessary, how fully he appreciated every branch of antiquarian
lore; and what a diligent student he must have been in the pursuit of
that wide range of information, the possession of which has made him one
of the most many-sided writers that the world has ever seen. The
numerous incidental allusions, too, by Shakespeare, to the folk-lore of
bygone days, while showing how deeply he must have read and gathered
knowledge from every available source, serve as an additional proof of
his retentive memory, and marvellous power of embellishing his ideas by
the most apposite illustrations. Unfortunately, however, these have,
hitherto, been frequently lost sight of through the reader's
unacquaintance with that extensive field of folk-lore which was so well
known to the poet. For the sake of easy reference, the birds with which
the present chapter deals are arranged alphabetically.
_Barnacle-Goose._ There was a curious notion, very prevalent in former
times, that this bird (_Anser bernicla_) was generated from the barnacle
(_Lepas anatifera_), a shell-fish, growing on a flexible stem, and
adhering to loose timber, bottoms of ships, etc., a metamorphosis to
which Shakespeare alludes in "The Tempest" (iv. 1), where he makes
Caliban say:
"we shall lose our time,
And all be turn'd to barnacles."
This vulgar error, no doubt, originated in mistaking the fleshy peduncle
of the shell-fish for the neck of a goose, the shell for its head, and
the tentacula for a tuft of feathers. These shell-fish, therefore,
bearing, as seen out of the water, a resemblance to the goose's neck,
were ignorantly, and without investigation, confounded with geese
themselves. In France, the barnacle-goose may be eaten on fast days, by
virtue of this old belief in its fishy origin.[152] Like other fictions
this one had its variations,[153] for sometime the barnacles were
supposed to grow on trees, and thence to drop into the sea, and become
geese, as in Drayton's account of Furness ("Polyolb." 1622, song 27, l.
1190). As early as the 12th century this idea[154] was promulgated by
Giraldus Cambrensis in his "Topographia Hiberniæ." Gerarde, who in the
year 1597 published his "Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes,"
narrates the following: "There are found in the north parts of Scotland,
and the isles adjacent called Orcades, certain trees, whereon do grow
certain shell-fishes, of a white color, tending to russet, wherein are
contained little living creatures; which shells in time of maturity do
open, and out of them grow those little living things which, falling
into the water, do become fowls, whom we call barnacles, in the north of
England brant geese, and in Lancashire tree geese; but the others that
do fall upon the land perish, and do come to nothing. Thus much of the
writings of others, and also from the mouths of people of those parts,
which may very well accord with truth. But what our eyes have seen and
hands have touched, we shall declare. There is a small island in
Lancashire called the Pile of Foulders, wherein are found the broken
pieces of old ships, some whereof have been cast thither by shipwreck,
and also the trunks or bodies, with the branches, of old rotten trees,
cast up there likewise, whereon is found a certain spume or froth, that
in time breedeth into certain shells, in shape like those of the mussel,
but sharper pointed, and of a whitish color: wherein is contained a
thing in form like a lace of silk, one end whereof is fastened unto the
inside of the shell, even as the fish of oysters and mussels are. The
other end is made fast unto the belly of a rude mass or lump, which in
time cometh to the shape and form of a bird; when it is perfectly formed
the shell gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the
foresaid lace or string; next come the legs of the bird hanging out, and
as it groweth greater it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length it
is all come forth and hangeth only by the bill. In short space after it
cometh to full maturity, and falleth into the sea, where it gathereth
feathers and groweth to a fowl, bigger than a mallard, and lesser than a
goose; having black legs and bill, or beak, and feathers black and
white, spotted in such a manner as is our magpie, which the people of
Lancashire call by no other name than a tree goose." An interesting cut
of these birds so growing is given by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps from a
manuscript of the 14th century, who is of opinion that the barnacle
mentioned by Caliban was the tree-goose. It is not to be supposed,
however, that there were none who doubted this marvellous story, or who
took steps to refute it. Belon, so long ago as 1551, says Mr.
Harting,[155] and others after him, treated it with ridicule, and a
refutation may be found in Willughby's "Ornithology," which was edited
by Ray in 1678.[156] This vulgar error is mentioned by many of the old
writers. Thus Bishop Hall, in his "Virgidemiarum" (lib. iv. sat. 2),
says:
"The Scottish barnacle, if I might choose,
That of a worme doth waxe a winged goose."
[152] See Harland and Wilkinson's "Lancashire Folk-Lore," 1867,
pp. 116-121; "Notes and Queries," 1st series, vol. viii. p.
224; "Penny Cyclopædia," vol. vii. p. 206, article "Cirripeda."
[153] Nares's "Glossary," 1872, vol. i. p. 56.
[154] See Harting's "Ornithology of Shakespeare," 1871, pp.
246-257.
[155] "Ornithology of Shakespeare," 1871, p. 252.
[156] See "Philosophical Transactions" for 1835; Darwin's
"Monograph of the Cirrhipedia," published by the Ray Society; a
paper by Sir J. Emerson Tennent in "Notes and Queries," 1st
series, vol. viii. p. 223; Brand's "Popular Antiquities," 1849,
vol. iii. pp. 361, 362; Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare,"
1839, p. 14.
Butler, too, in his "Hudibras" (III. ii. l. 655), speaks of it; and
Marston, in his "Malecontent" (1604), has the following: "Like your
Scotch barnacle, now a block, instantly a worm, and presently a great
goose."
_Blackbird._ This favorite is called, in the "Midsummer-Night's Dream"
(iii. 1) an ousel (old French, _oisel_), a term still used in the
neighborhood of Leeds:
"The ousel cock, so black of hue,
With orange-tawny bill."
In "2 Henry IV." (iii. 2) when Justice Shallow inquires of Justice
Silence, "And how doth my cousin?" he is answered: "Alas, a black
ousel,[157] cousin Shallow," a phrase which, no doubt, corresponded to
our modern one, "a black sheep." In Spenser's "Epithalamium" (l. 82),
the word occurs:
"The ousel shrills, the ruddock warbles soft."
[157] See Yarrell's "History of British Birds," 2d edition,
vol. i. p. 218; "Dialect of Leeds," 1862, p. 329. In "Hamlet"
(iii. 2), some modern editions read "ouzle;" the old editions
all have _weasel_, which is now adopted.
_Buzzard._ Mr. Staunton suggests that in the following passage of the
"Taming of the Shrew" (ii. 1) a play is intended upon the words, and
that in the second line "buzzard" means a beetle, from its peculiar
buzzing noise:
"_Pet._ O slow-wing'd turtle! shall a buzzard take thee?
_Kath._ Ay, for a turtle, as he takes a buzzard."
The beetle was formerly called a buzzard; and in Staffordshire, a
cockchafer is termed a hum-buz. In Northamptonshire we find a proverb,
"I'm between a hawk and a buzzard," which means, "I don't know what to
do, or how to act."[158]
[158] Miss Baker's "Northamptonshire Glossary," 1854, vol. i.
p. 94. See Nares's "Glossary," 1872, vol. i. p. 124; and
"Richard III.," i. 1.
_Chaffinch._ Some think that this bird is alluded to in the song in the
"Midsummer-Night's Dream" (iii. 1), where the expression "finch" is
used; the chaffinch having always been a favorite cage-bird with the
lower classes.[159] In "Troilus and Cressida" (v. 1) Thersites calls
Patroclus a "finch-egg," which was evidently meant as a term of
reproach. Others, again, consider the phrase as equivalent to coxcomb.
[159] Harting's "Ornithology of Shakespeare," p. 144;
Halliwell-Phillipps's "Handbook Index to Shakespeare," 1866, p.
187. The term finch, also, according to some, may mean either
the bullfinch or goldfinch.
_Chough._ In using this word Shakespeare probably, in most cases, meant
the jackdaw;[160] for in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (iii. 2) he says:
"russet-pated choughs, many in sort,
Rising and cawing at the gun's report;"
the term russet-pated being applicable to the jackdaw, but not to the
real chough. In "1 Henry IV." (v. 1). Prince Henry calls Falstaff
_chewet_--"Peace, chewet, peace"--in allusion, no doubt, to the chough or
jackdaw, for common birds have always had a variety of names.[161] Such
an appellation would be a proper reproach to Falstaff, for his meddling
and impertinent talk. Steevens and Malone, however, finding that
_chewets_ were little round pies made of minced meat, thought that the
Prince compared Falstaff, for his unseasonable chattering, to a minced
pie. Cotgrave[162] describes the French _chouette_ as an owlet; also, a
"chough," which many consider to be the simple and satisfactory
explanation of _chewet_. Belon, in his "History of Birds" (Paris, 1855),
speaks of the _chouette_ as the smallest kind of chough or crow. Again,
in "1 Henry IV." (ii. 2), in the amusing scene where Falstaff, with the
Prince and Poins, meet to rob the travellers at Gadshill, Falstaff
calls the victims "fat chuffs," probably, says Mr. Harting, who connects
the word with chough, from their strutting about with much noise.
Nares,[163] too, in his explanation of _chuff_, says, that some suppose
it to be from chough, which is similarly pronounced, and means a kind of
sea-bird, generally esteemed a stupid one. Various other meanings are
given. Thus, Mr. Gifford[164] affirms that _chuff_ is always used in a
bad sense, and means "a coarse, unmannered clown, at once sordid and
wealthy;" and Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps explains it as spoken in contempt
for a fat person.[165] In Northamptonshire,[166] we find the word chuff
used to denote a person in good condition, as in Clare's "Village
Minstrel:"
"His chuff cheeks dimpling in a fondling smile."
[160] See Yarrell's "History of British Birds," 2d edition,
vol. ii. p. 58.
[161] Nares's "Glossary," vol. i. p. 156; Singer's
"Shakespeare," 1875, vol. v. p. 115; Dyce's "Glossary," 1876,
p. 77.
[162] Mr. Dyce says that if Dr. Latham had been acquainted with
the article "Chouette," in Cotgrave, he would not probably have
suggested that Shakespeare meant here the lapwing or pewit.
Some consider the magpie is meant. See Halliwell-Phillipps's
"Handbook Index to Shakespeare," 1866, p. 83. Professor Newton
would read "russet-patted," or "red-legged," thinking that
Shakespeare meant the chough.
[163] "Glossary," vol. i. p. 162; Singer's "Notes to
Shakespeare," 1875, vol. v. p. 42.
[164] Massinger's Works, 1813, vol. i. p. 281.
[165] "Handbook Index to Shakespeare," 1866, p. 86.
[166] Miss Baker's "Northamptonshire Glossary," 1854, vol. i.
p. 116.
Shakespeare alludes to the practice of teaching choughs to talk,
although from the following passages he does not appear to have esteemed
their talking powers as of much value; for in "All's Well That Ends
Well" (iv. 1), he says: "Choughs' language, gabble enough, and good
enough." And in "The Tempest" (ii. 1), he represents Antonio as saying:
"There be that can rule Naples
As well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate
As amply and unnecessarily
As this Gonzalo; I myself could make
A chough of as deep chat."
Shakespeare always refers to the jackdaw as the "daw."[167] The chough
or jackdaw was one of the birds considered ominous by our forefathers,
an allusion to which occurs in "Macbeth" (iii. 4):
"Augurs and understood relations have,
By magot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret'st man of blood."
[167] "Coriolanus," iv. 5; "Troilus and Cressida," i. 2; "Much
Ado About Nothing," ii. 3; "Twelfth Night," iii. 4; "Love's
Labour's Lost," v. 2, song; "1 Henry VI." ii. 4.
At the present day this bird is not without its folk-lore, and there is
a Norwich rhyme to the following effect:[168]
"When three daws are seen on St. Peter's vane together,
Then we're sure to have bad weather."
In the north of England,[169] too, the flight of jackdaws down the
chimney is held to presage death.
[168] Swainson's "Weather-Lore," 1873, p. 240.
[169] Henderson's "Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 1879, p. 48.
_Cock._ The beautiful notion which represents the cock as crowing all
night long on Christmas Eve, and by its vigilance dispelling every kind
of malignant spirit[170] and evil influence is graphically mentioned in
"Hamlet" (i. 1), where Marcellus, speaking of the ghost, says:
"It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long.
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time."
[170] See Douce's "Illustrations of Shakespeare," p. 438.
In short, there is a complete prostration of the powers of darkness; and
thus, for the time being, mankind is said to be released from the
influence of all those evil forces which otherwise exert such sway. The
notion that spirits fly at cock-crow is very ancient, and is mentioned
by the Christian poet Prudentius, who flourished in the beginning of the
fourth century. There is also a hymn, said to have been composed by St.
Ambrose, and formerly used in the Salisbury Service, which so much
resembles the following speech of Horatio (i. 1), that one might almost
suppose Shakespeare had seen it:[171]
"The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day; and, at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine."
[171] See Ibid.
This disappearance of spirits at cock-crow is further alluded to (i.
2):[172]
"the morning cock crew loud,
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
And vanished from our sight."
[172] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 51-57;
Hampson's "Medii OEvi Kalendarium," vol. i. p. 84.
Blair, too, in his "Grave," has these graphic words:
"the tale
Of horrid apparition, tall and ghastly,
That walks at dead of night, or takes his stand
O'er some new-open'd grave, and, strange to tell,
Evanishes at crowing of the cock."
This superstition has not entirely died out in England, and a
correspondent of "Notes and Queries"[173] relates an amusing legend
current in Devonshire: "Mr. N. was a squire who had been so unfortunate
as to sell his soul to the devil, with the condition that after his
funeral the fiend should take possession of his skin. He had also
persuaded a neighbor to be present on the occasion of the flaying. On
the death of Mr. N. this man went, in a state of great alarm, to the
parson of the parish, and asked his advice. By him he was told to fulfil
his engagement, but he must be sure and carry a cock into the church
with him. On the night after the funeral the man proceeded to the
church, armed with the cock, and, as an additional security, took up his
position in the parson's pew. At twelve o'clock the devil arrived,
opened the grave, took the corpse from the coffin, and flayed it. When
the operation was concluded, he held the skin up before him and
remarked, 'Well, 'twas not worth coming for after all, for it is all
full of holes!' As he said this the cock crew, whereupon the fiend,
turning round to the man, exclaimed, 'If it had not been for the bird
you have got there under your arm, I would have your skin too!' But,
thanks to the cock, the man got home safe again." Various origins have
been assigned to this superstition, which Hampson[174] regards as a
misunderstood tradition of some Sabæan fable. The cock, he adds, which
seems by its early voice to call forth the sun, was esteemed a sacred
solar bird; hence it was also sacred to Mercury, one of the
personifications of the sun.
[173] 1st series, vol. iii. p. 404.
[174] "Medii OEvi Kalendarium," vol. i. p. 85.
A very general amusement, up to the end of the last century, was
cock-fighting, a diversion of which mention is occasionally made by
Shakespeare, as in "Antony and Cleopatra" (ii. 3):
"His cocks do win the battle still of mine,
When it is all to nought."
And again Hamlet says (v. 2):
"O, I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit"--
meaning, the poison triumphs over him, as a cock over his beaten
antagonist. Formerly, cock-fighting entered into the occupations of the
old and young.[175] Schools had their cock-fights. Travellers agreed
with coachmen that they were to wait a night if there was a cock-fight
in any town through which they passed. When country gentlemen had sat
long at table, and the conversation had turned upon the relative merits
of their several birds, a cock-fight often resulted, as the birds in
question were brought for the purpose into the dining-room.
Cock-fighting was practised on Shrove Tuesday to a great extent, and in
the time of Henry VII. seems to have been practised within the precincts
of court. The earliest mention of this pastime in England is by
Fitzstephens, in 1191. Happily, nowadays, cock-fighting is, by law, a
misdemeanor, and punishable by penalty. One of the popular terms for a
cock beaten in a fight was "a craven," to which we find a reference in
the "Taming of the Shrew" (ii. 1):
"No cock of mine; you crow too like a craven."
[175] Roberts's "Social History of Southern Counties of
England," 1856, p. 421; see "British Popular Customs," 1876, p. 65.
We may also compare the expression in "Henry V." (iv. 7): "He is a
craven and a villain else." In the old appeal or wager of battle,[176]
in our common law, we are told, on the authority of Lord Coke, that the
party who confessed himself wrong, or refused to fight, was to pronounce
the word _cravent_, and judgment was at once given against him.
Singer[177] says the term may be satisfactorily traced from _crant_,
_creant_, the old French word for an act of submission. It is so written
in the old metrical romance
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