"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 process 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."