THE MAGIC WIND KNOTTED CORDS OF THE LAPPS AND OTHERS.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Bourke, John Gregory
"The navigators of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have related many wonderful stories about the magic of the Finns or Finno Lappes, who sold wind contained in a cord with three knots. If the first were untied, the wind became favourable, if the second, still more so, but, if the third were loosed, a tempest was the inevitable consequence."[583] The selling of wind knots was ascribed not only to the Lapps and Finns, but to the inhabitants of Greenland also.[584] "The northern shipmasters are such dupes to the delusions of these impostors that they often purchase of them a magic cord which contains a number of knots, by opening of which, according to the magician's directions, they expect to gain any wind they want."[585] "They [Lapland witches] further confessed, that while they fastened three knots on a linen towel in the name of the devil, and had spit on them, &c., they called the name of him they doomed to destruction." They also claimed that, "by some fatal contrivance they could bring on men disorders," ... as "by spitting three times on a knife and anointing the victims with that spittle."[586]
Scheffer describes the Laplanders as having a cord tied with knots for the raising of the wind; Brand says the same of the Finlanders, of Norway, of the priestesses of the island of Sena, on the coast of Gaul, in the time of the Emperor Claudius, the "witches" of the Isle of Man, etc.[587]
Macbeth, speaking to the witches, says:
Though you untie the winds, and let them fight Against the churches; though the yesty waves Confound and swallow navigation up.[588]