[61] Olaus Magnus's "History of the Goths," 1638, p. 47. See note to "The Pirate."
The sieve, as a symbol of the clouds, has been regarded among all nations of the Aryan stock as the mythical vehicle used by witches, nightmares, and other elfish beings in their excursions over land and sea.[62] Thus, the first witch in "Macbeth" (i. 3), referring to the scoff which she had received from a sailor's wife, says:
"Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger: But in a sieve I'll thither sail."[63]
[62] See Hardwick's "Traditions and Folk-Lore," pp. 108, 109; Kelly's "Indo-European Folk-Lore," pp. 214, 215.
[63] In Greek, [Greek: hepi rhipous plein], "to go to sea in a sieve," was a proverbial expression for an enterprise of extreme hazard or impossible of achievement.--Clark and Wright's "Notes to Macbeth," 1877, p. 82.
Stories of voyages performed in this way are common enough in Germany. A man, for instance, going through a corn-field, finds a sieve on the path, which he takes with him. He does not go far before a young lady hurries after him, and hunts up and down as if looking for something, ejaculating all the time, "How my children are crying in England!" Thereupon the man lays down the sieve, and has hardly done so ere sieve and lady vanish. In the case of another damsel of the same species, mentioned by Mr. Kelly, the usual exclamation is thus varied: "My sieve rim! my sieve 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: