detailed the infamous North Berwick witch trials of 1590. Not only had this trial taken place in Scotland, witches involved confessed to attempt the use of witchcraft to raise a tempest and sabotage the very boat King James and Queen Anne were on board during their return trip from Denmark. The three witches discuss the raising of winds at sea in the opening lines of Act 1, scene 3. The news pamphlet states: Moreover she confessed that at the time when his Majesty was in Denmark, she being accompanied with the parties before specially named, took a Cat and christened it, and afterward bound to each part of that Cat, the cheefest parts of a dead man, and several joints of his body, and that in the night following the said Cat was conveyed into the midst of the sea by all these witches sailing in their riddles or Cues as aforesaid, and so left the said Cat right before the town of Leith in Scotland: This done, there did arise such a tempest in the Sea, as a greater has not been seen, which tempest was the cause of the perishing of a Boat or vessel coming over from the town of Brunt Island to the town of Leith, of which was many Jewels and rich gifts, which should have been presented to the current Queen of Scotland, at her Majesty's coming to Leith. Again it is confessed, that the said christened Cat was the cause that the King Majesty's Ship at his coming forth of Denmark, had a contrary wind to the rest of his Ships, then being in his company, which thing was most strange and true, as the King's Majesty acknowledges – Daemonologie, Newes from Scotland The concept of the Three Witches themselves may have been influenced by an Old Norse skaldic poem, in which twelve valkyries weave and choose who is to be slain at the Battle of Clontarf (fought outside Dublin in 1014). Shakespeare's creation of the Three Witches may have also been influenced by an anti-witchcraft law passed by King James nine years previously, a law that was to stay untouched for over 130 years. His characters' "chappy fingers", "skinny lips", and "beards", for example, are not found in Holinshed. Macbeth's Hillock near Brodie, between Forres and Nairn in Scotland, has long been identified as the mythical meeting place of Macbeth and the