part of
the third scene of the first act are not those formerly attributed to
witches, and that Shakspere, having once decided to represent Norns,
would never have degraded them "to three old women, who are called by
Paddock and Graymalkin, sail in sieves, kill swine, serve Hecate, and
deal in all the common charms, illusions, and incantations of vulgar
witches. The three who 'look not like the inhabitants o' th' earth, and
yet are on't;' they who can 'look into the seeds of time, and say which
grain will grow;' they who seem corporal, but melt into the air, like
bubbles of the earth; the weyward sisters, who make themselves air, and
have in them more than mortal knowledge, are not beings of this
stamp."[1]

[Footnote 1: New Shakspere Society Transactions, vol. i. p.342; Fleay's
Shakspere Manual, p. 248.]

90. Now, there is a great mass of contemporary evidence to show that
these supposed characteristics of the Norns are, in fact, some of the
chief attributes of the witches of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. If this be so--if it can be proved that the supposed
"goddesses of Destinie" of the play in reality possess no higher powers
than could be acquired by ordinary communication with evil spirits, then
no weight must be attached to the vague stage direction in the folio,
occurring as it does in a volume notorious for the extreme carelessness
with which it was produced; and it must be admitted that the "goddesses
of Destinie" of Holinshed were sacrificed for the sake of the witches.
If, in addition to this, it can be shown that there was a very
satisfactory reason why the witches should have been chosen as the
representatives of the evil influence instead of the Norns, the argument
will be as complete as it is possible to make it.

91. But before proceeding to examine the contemporary evidence, it is
necessary, in order to obtain a complete conception of the mythological
view of the weird sisters, to notice a piece of criticism that is at
once an expansion of, and a variation upon, the theory just stated.[1]
It is suggested that the sisters of "Macbeth" are but three in number,
but that Shakspere 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