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 proces