As to the sequel, it was ports once, instead of points; Mr. Pope, I think, first altered it, and Mr. Theobald followed him, but upon what authority I know not; but if this emendation be not warranted by any old edition, I should be for retaining ports, it being very good English to say, the wind blows such or such a port. Besides, as quarters follows, the word points seems to me to make a mere tautology, for I know no difference in respect of winds between quarters and points; I am sure we make none in common discourse, it being the same thing for us to say, the wind's in such a quarter, or in such a point. But one can make no very good sense of this passage, as it now stands, with either of these readings; wherefore I suspect the rhymes have been transposed in copying, and that the whole ought to be restored thus:

All the quarters that they blow

I'th' shipman's card.

She has the other winds, she says; and what is more, knows the several ports they blow to, and all the quarters they blow from.

But to return now to what we were upon, viz. the dealings of magicians and enchanters with winds:

An attempt has been made to change very into various, but there is no occasion for it. The sense is, my knowledge is so perfect and exact în this matter, that I know the very ports which the several winds blow. This is both very good sense, and very good English.

"The Laplanders," says Scheffer, "have a cord tied with knots for the raising of wind; they, as Ziegler relates it, tie their magical knots in this cord; when they untie the first, there blows a favourable gale of wind; when the second, a brisker; when the third, the sea and wind grow mighty stormy and tempestuous. This that we have report ed concerning the Laplanders, is by Olaus Magnus, and justly related of the Finlanders, who border on the sea, and sell winds to those merchants that traffic with them, when they are at any time detained by a contrary one."

Scheffer thinks, that what Ziegler relates of the Laplanders, does not, in fact, belong to them, but to the Finlanders of Norway, because no other writers mention it, and because the Laplanders live in an inland country. However, the method of selling winds is this: "They deliver a small rope with three knots upon it, with this caution, that when they loose the first, they shall have a good wind; if the second, a stronger; if the third, such a storm will arise that they can neither see how to direct the ship and avoid rocks, or so much as stand upon the decks, or handle the tackling." He notes also another particular, not less extraordinary than their selling of winds. "Those," says he, "that are skilled in this art, have command chiefly over the winds that blow at their birth, so that this wind obeys principally one man, that another, as if they obtained this power when they first received their

S

birth." Something of this, of one person's having power over one wind, and another over another, is evidently alluded to in the conversation of the witches in Macbeth, quoted above. These northern wizards pretended also to a power of stopping the course of ships; this, it seems, was attributed both to the Finlanders of Norway and the Laplanders, who, according to the different affection they have for merchants, make the sea either calmer or more tempestuous.* al: 6. tador se hum

I shall now show that these notions and practices were not confined to these northern parts only, but likewise extended to the more southern ones. Thus Pomponius Mela, who wrote in the reign of the Emperor Claudius, delivers, concerning a set of priestesses in the island of Sena, or the Isle des Saints, on the coast of Gaul, "Sena in Britannico mari Osismicis adversa littoribus, Gallici numinis oraculo insignis est: cujus antistites, perpetua virginitate sanctæ, numero novem esse traduntur : Barrigenas vocant, putantque ingeniis singularibus præditas, maria ac ventos concitare carminibus, seque in quæ velint animalia vertere, sanare quæ apud alios insanabilia sunt, scire ventura et prædicare; sed non nisi deditas navigantibus, et in id tantum ut se consulerent profectis;" which may be translated thus: "The island of Sena, which lies

* Scheffer's Hist. of Lapland, p. 58, l', tooin

in the British sea, opposite to the coast of the Osis mici, is famous for an oracle of a Gaulish deity. The priestesses, who profess perpetual virginity, are said to be in number nine: they call them Barrigenæ, and esteem them to be endowed with very extraordinary qualities: such as troubling the sea, and raising the winds, by their enchantments; transforming themselves into whatever animals they please; curing disorders incurable by every body else, and knowing and foretelling things future. However, they are subservient only to seafaring people, and only to such of them as come on purpose to consult them."

It is remarkable, that they were thought not only able to disturb the sea, and raise the wind, as the Laplanders, or rather Finlanders, above, are supposed to be; but moreover, to be employed, as they were, chiefly in the service of navigators, which makes the resemblance more striking. A learned man thinks, and another great scholar assents to it, that the French word baragouin comes from the mumblings and gibberish of these sorcerers who were called Barrigene.i

But there is an instance still more apposite than this: Ranulph Higden tells us in the Polychronicon, p. 195, that the witches in the Isle of Man anciently sold winds to mariners, and delivered them in knots tied upon a thread, exactly as the Laplanders did. “In illa insula vigent sortilegia, superstitiones, atque præstigia, nam mulieres ibidem na

vigaturis ventum vendunt, quasi sub tribus fili nodis inclusum, ita ut sicut plus de vento habere voluerint plures nodos evolvant."

This notion of confining and bestowing winds is as ancient as it was extensive, for thus it is said of Eolus in the Odyssey,

The king with mighty gifts my suit approv'd,
The adverse winds in leathern bags he brac'd,
Compress'd their force, and lock'd each struggling blast ;
These in my hollow ships the monarch hung

Securely fetter'd by a silver thong.*

**Eustatius says, they who practised the art of incantation, or charms, made use of the skin of a dol phin, and pretended, by certain ceremonies, to bind or loose the winds as they pleased. However, Ulysses's companions were so foolish afterwards as to set these adverse winds at liberty. But there is some difference between this case and those abovementioned; Æolus, being king of the winds, was a proper power to dispose of them; and moreover, they were the adverse, or unfriendly winds that were imprisoned, whilst the favourable ones were at liberty. Calypso, in other places of the Odyssey, is supposed to be able to confer favourable winds.‡ This approaches nearer to the cases of Lapland, and the Isle of Man, only it is not said that her

* Pope's Odyss. lib. x. 18, seq. + See the notes on Pope's Odyss. See lib. v. 216, 341, and lib. vii. 352.