nees
meeting for age, walking like a bow, leaning on a staff, hollow-eyed,
untoothed, furrowed, having her lips trembling with palsy, going
mumbling in the streets; one that hath forgotten her Pater-noster, yet
hath a shrewd tongue to call a drab a drab."[2] It must be remembered
that these accounts are by two sceptics, who saw nothing in the witches
but poor, degraded old women. In a description which assumes their
supernatural power such minute details would not be possible; yet there
is quite enough in Banquo's description to suggest neglect, squalor, and
misery. But if this were not so, there is one feature in the
description of the sisters that would settle the question once and for
ever. The beard was in Elizabethan times the recognized characteristic
of the witch. In one old play it is said, "The women that come to us for
disguises must wear beards, and that's to say a token of a witch;"[3]
and in another, "Some women have beards; marry, they are half
witches;"[4] and Sir Hugh Evans gives decisive testimony to the fact
when he 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."[5]

[Footnote 1: Discoverie, book i. ch. 3, p. 7.]

[Footnote 2: Harsnet, Declaration, p. 136.]

[Footnote 3: Honest Man's Fortune, II. i. Furness, Variorum, p. 30.]

[Footnote 4: Dekker's Honest Whore, sc. x. l. 126.]

[Footnote 5: Merry Wives of Windsor, Act IV. sc. ii.]

94. Every item of Banquo's description indicates that he is speaking of
witches; nothing in it is incompatible with that supposition. Will it
apply with equal force to Norns? It can hardly be that these mysterious
mythical beings, who exercise an incomprehensible yet powerful influence
over human destiny, could be described with any propriety in terms so
revolting. A veil of wild, weird grandeur might be thrown around them;
but can it be supposed that Shakspere would degrade them by representing
them with chappy fingers, skinny lips, and beards? It is particularly to
be noticed, too, that although in this passage he is making an almost
verbal transcript from Holinshed, these details are interpolated without
the authority of the chronicle. Let it be supposed, for an instant,
that the text ran thus--

_Banquo._ ... What are these
So withered and so wild in their attire,[1]
That look not like the inhabitants o' th' earth,
And yet are