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.  It is not surprising that other portions of the play in which the sisters are mentioned should confirm this view.  Banquo, upon hearing the fulfilment of the prophecy of the second witch, clearly expresses his opinion of the origin of the “foreknowledge” he has received, in the exclamation, “What, can the devil speak true?” For the devil most emphatically spoke through the witches; but how could he in any sense be said to speak through Norns?  Again, Macbeth informs his wife that on his arrival at Forres, he made inquiry into the amount of reliance that could be placed in the utterances of the witches, “and learned by the perfectest report that they had more in them than mortal knowledge."[1] This would be possible enough if witches were the subjects of the investigation, for their chief title to authority would rest upon the general opinion current in the neighbourhood in which they dwelt; but how could such an inquiry be carried out successfully in the case of Norns?  It is noticeable, too, that Macbeth knows exactly where to find the sisters when he wants them; and when he says—­

    “More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,
    By the worst means, the worst,"[2]

he makes another clear allusion to the traffic of the witches with the devil.  After the events recorded in Act IV. sc. i., Macbeth speaks of the prophecies upon which he relies as “the equivocation of the fiend,"[3] and the prophets as “these juggling fiends;"[4] and with reason—­for he has seen and heard the very devils themselves, the masters of the witches and sources of all their evil power.  Every point in the play that bears upon the subject at all tends to show that Shakspere intentionally replaced the “goddesses of Destinie” by witches; and that the supposed Norn origin of these characters is the result of a somewhat too great eagerness to unfold a novel and startling theory.