Chapter 3

_Thunder. Enter the three Witches_.

_1 Witch_. Where hast thou been, sister?

_2 Witch_. Killing swine.

_3 Witch_. Sister, where thou?

_1 Witch_. A sailor's wife had chesnuts in her lap, And mouncht, and mouncht, and mouncht. Give me, quoth I. (a) Aroint thee, witch!--the rump-fed ronyon cries. Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' th' Tyger: But in a sieve I'll thither sail, And like a rat without a tail, I'll do--I'll do--and I'll do.

_2 Witch_. I'll give thee a wind.

_1 Witch_. Thou art kind.

_3 Witch_. And I another.

_1 Witch_. I myself have all the other. And the (b) very points they blow; All the quarters that they know, I' th' ship-man's card.-- I will drain him dry as hay, Sleep shall neither night nor day, Hang upon his pent-house lid; He shall live a man (c) forbid; Weary sev'n nights, nine times nine, Shall he dwindle, peak and pine; Tho' his bark cannot be lost, Yet it shall be tempest-tost. Look, what I have.

_2 Witch_. Shew me, Shew me.

(a) Aroint thee, witch! In one of the folio editions the reading is _anoint thee_, in a sense very consistent with the common accounts of witches, who are related to perform many supernatural acts by the means of unguents, and particularly to fly through the air to the place where they meet at their hellish festivals. In this sense _anoint thee, witch_, will mean, _away, witch, to your infernal assembly_. This reading I was inclined to favour, because I had met with the word _aroint_ in no other author; till looking into Hearne's Collections, I found it in a very old drawing, that he has published, in which St. Patrick is represented visiting hell, and putting the devils into great confusion by his presence, of whom one that is driving the damned before him with a prong, has a label issuing out from his mouth with these words, "OUT OUT ARONGT," of which the last is evidently the same with _aroint_, and used in the same sense as in this passage.

(b) And the _very_ points they blow. As the word _very_ is here of no other use than to fill up the verse, it is likely that Shakespeare wrote _various_, which might be easily mistaken for _very_, being either negligently read, hastily pronounced, or imperfectly heard.

(c) He shall live a man _forbid_. Mr. Theobald has very justly explained _forbid_ by _accursed_, but without giving any reason of his interpretation. To _bid_ is originally _to pray_, as in this Saxon fragment:

[Anglo-Saxon: He is wis thaet bit g bote,] &c.

He is wise that _prays_ and makes amends.

As to _forbid_, therefore, implies to _prohibit_, in opposition to the word _bid_, in its present sense, it signifies by the same kind of opposition to _curse_, when it is derived from the same word in its primitive meaning.

NOTE VI.