s 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