"Rx. Sium, Acarum Vulgare, Pentaphyllon, the bloud of a Flittermouse,
Solanum Somniferum, & oleum."
It would seem that fern seed had the same virtue.--I Hen. IV. II. i.]
[Footnote 4: Scot, book iii. ch. vi. p. 46.]
98. The only vestige of a difficulty, therefore, that remains is the use
of the term "weird sisters" in describing the witches. It is perfectly
clear that Holinshed used these words as a sort of synonym for the
"goddesses of Destinie;" but with such a mass of evidence as has been
produced to show that Shakspere elected to introduce witches in the
place of the Norns, it surely would not be unwarrantable to suppose that
he might retain this term as a poetical and not unsuitable description
of the characters to whom it was applied. And this is the less
improbable as it can be shown that both words were at times applied to
witches. As the quotation given subsequently[1] proves, the Scotch
witches were in the habit of speaking of the frequenters of a particular
sabbath as "the sisters;" and in Heywood's "Witches of Lancashire," one
of the characters says about a certain act of supposed witchcraft, "I
remember that some three months since I crossed a wayward woman; one
that I now suspect."[2]
[Footnote 1: sec. 107, p. 114.]
[Footnote 2: Act V. sc. iii.]
99. Here, then, in the very stronghold of the supposed proof of the
Norn-theory, it is possible to extract convincing evidence that the
sisters are intended to be merely witches.
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