Of this particular trait there is no vestige in Shakspeare's Weird Sisters. They, like the Norns, "go hand in hand." But there is another point which claims attention: Shakspeare's Witches are bearded. ("You should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so." Act i, scene 3.)
It need scarcely be brought to recollection that a commingling of the female and male character occurs in the divine and semi- divine figures of various mythological systems—including the Bearded Venus. Of decisive importance is, however, the fact of a bearded Weird Sister having apparently been believed m by our heathen German forefathers.
Near Wessobrunn, m Upper Bavaria, where the semi-heathen fragment of a cosmogonic lay, known as "Wessobrunn Prayer," was discovered, there has also been found, of late, a rudely-sculptured three-headed image. It is looked upon as an ancient effigy of the German Norns. The Cloister of the three Holy Bournes, or Fountains, which stands close by the place of discovery, is supposed to have been set up on ground that had once served for pagan worship. Probably the later monkish establishment of the Three Holy Bournes had taken the place of a similarly named heathen sanctuary where the three Sisters of Fate were once adored. Indeed, the name of all the corresponding fays in yet current German folk-lore is connected with holy wells. This quite fits in with the three Eddie Bournes near the great Tree of Existence, at one of which—apparently at the oldest, which is the very Source of Being — the Norns live, " the maidens that over the Sea of Age travel in deep foreknowledge, ' ' and of whom it is said that:
They laid the lots; they ruled the life
To the sons of men, their fate foretelling.
Now, curiously enough, the central head of the slab found near Wessobrunn, in the neighborhood of the Cloister of the Three Holy Bournes, is bearded. This has puzzled our archæologists. Some of them fancied that what appears to be a beard might after all be the hair of one of the fays or Norns, tied round the chm. By the light of the description of the Weird Sisters in Shakspeare's Macbeth we, however, see at once the true connection.
In every respect, therefore, his "Witches" are an echo from the ancient Germanic creed—an echo, moreover, coming to us in the oldest Teutonic verse-form; that is, in the stafF-rime.
