fate-goddesses

Updated: May 2, 2025

Is it conceivable that Shakspere, who, as most people admit, was a man of some poetic feeling, being in possession of the beautiful Norn-legend the silent Fate-goddesses sitting at the foot of Igdrasil, the mysterious tree of human existence, and watering its roots with water from the sacred spring could, ruthlessly and without cause, mar the charm of the legend by the gratuitous introduction of the gross and primarily unpoetical details incident to the practice of witchcraft?

Thomas Alfred Spalding - Elizabethan Demonology