hey vanish "as
breath into the wind."[5] Macbeth conjures them to answer his questions
thus:--

"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 germens tumble all together,
Even till destruction sicken."[6]

[Footnote 1: I. iii. 11, 12.]

[Footnote 2: Act I. sc. iii. l. 28.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid. l. 32.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid. l. 77.]

[Footnote 5: Ibid. ll. 81, 82.]

[Footnote 6: Act IV. sc. i. ll. 52-60.]

101. Now, this command over the elements does not form at all a
prominent feature in the English records of witchcraft. A few isolated
charges of the kind may be found. In 1565, for instance, a witch was
burnt who confessed that she had caused all the tempests that had taken
place in that year. Scot, too, has a few short sentences upon this
subject, but does not give it the slightest prominence.[1] Nor in the
earlier Scotch trials recorded by Pitcairn does this charge appear
amongst the accusations against the witches. It is exceedingly curious
to notice the utter harmless nature of the charges brought against the
earlier culprits; and how, as time went on and the panic increased, they
gradually deepened in colour, until no act was too gross, too repulsive,
or too ridiculously impossible to be excluded from the indictment. The
following quotations from one of the earliest reported trials are given
because they illustrate most forcibly the condition of the poor women
who were supposed to be witches, and the real basis of fact upon which
the belief in the crime subsequently built itself.

[Footnote 1: Book iii. ch. 13, p. 60.]

102. Bessie Dunlop was tried for witchcraft in 1576. One of the
principal accusations against her was that she held intercourse with a
devil who appeared to her in the shape of a neighbour of hers, one Thom
Reed, who had recently died. Being asked how and where she met Thom
Reed, she said, "As she was gangand betwixt her own house and the yard
of Monkcastell, dryvand her ky to the pasture, and makand heavy sair
dule with herself, gretand[1] very fast for her cow that was dead, her
husband and child that wer lyand sick in the land ill, and she new
risen out of gissane,[2]