DUN. Great happiness! ROSSE. That now Sweno, the Norways' king,5 craves compofition; Nor would we deign him burial of his men, Till he disbursed, at Saint Colmes' inch,6 Ten thousand dollars to our general use. DUN. No more that thane of Cawdor shall de ceive Our bosom interest:-Go, pronounce his death, 5 That now 7 Sweno, the Norways' king,] The present irregularity of metre induces me to believe that-Sweno was only a marginal reference, injudiciously thrust into the text; and that the line priginally ftood thus : That now the Norways' king craves composition. Could it have been neceffary for Rosse to tell Duncan the name of his old enemy, the king of Norway? STEEVENS. 6 diffyllable. Saint Colmes' inch,] Colmes' is to be confidered as a Colmes'-inch, now called Inchcomb, is a small island lying in the Firth of Edinburgh, with an abbey upon it, dedicated to St. Columb; called by Camden Inch Colm, or The Isle of Columba. Some of the modern editors, without authority, read Saint Colmes'-kill Isle: but very erroneously; for Colmes' Inch, and Colm-kill, are two different islands; the former lying on the eastern coast, near the place where the Danes were defeated; the latter in the western feas, being the famous Iona, one of the Hebrides. Holinshed thus relates the whole circumftance: "The Danes that escaped, and got once to their ships, obteined of Makbeth for a great fumme of gold, that fuch of their friends as were flaine, might be buried in Saint Colmes' Inch. In memorie whereof many old fepultures are yet in the faid Inch, there to be seene graven with the armes of the Danes." Inch, or Inshe, in the Irish and Erse languages, signifies an island. See Lhuyd's Archæologia. STEEVENS. 7 pronounce his death,] The old copy, injurioufly to metre, reads pronounce his present death. STEEVENS. ROSSE. I'll fee it done. DUN. What he hath loft, noble Macbeth hath won. [Exeunt. SCENE III. A Heath. Thunder. Enter the three Witches. 1 WITCH. Where hast thou been, sister? 2 WITCH. Killing swine. 8 3 WITCH. Sifter, where thou ?? 1 WITCH. A failor's wife had chesnuts in her lap, And mounch'd, and mounch'd, and mounch'd: Give me, quoth I: * Killing fwine.] So, in a Detection of damnable Driftes practized by three Witches, &c. arraigned at Chelmisforde in Effex, 1579, bl. l. 12mo. "-Item, also she came on a tyme to the house of one Robert Lathburie &c. who diflyking her dealyng, fent her home emptie; but presently after her departure, his hogges fell ficke and died, to the number of twentie." STEEVENS. 91 Witch. Where hast thou been, fifter? 2 Witch. Killing fwine. 3 Witch. Sifter, where thou?] Thus the old copy; yet I cannot help supposing that these three speeches, collectively taken, were meant to form one verse, as follows : 1 Witch. Where haft been, fifter? 2 Witch. Killing swine. 3 Witch. Where thou ? If my supposition be well founded, there is as little reason for preferving the useless thou in the first line, as the repetition of fifter, in the third. STEEVENS. Aroint thee, witch!1 the rump-fed ronyon 2 cries.3 * Aroint thee, witch! Aroint, or avaunt, be gone. POPE. In one of the folio editions the reading is-Anoint thee, in a sense very confiftent with the common account of witches, who are related to perform many supernatural acts, by the means of unguents, and particularly to fly through the air to the places where they meet at their hellish festivals. In this sense, anoint thee, witch, will mean, away, witch, to your infernal affembly. 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 ery old drawing, that he has published, in which St. Patrick is represented visiting hell, and putting the devils into great confufion by his prefence, of whom one, that is driving the damned before him with a prong, has a label issuing out of 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. JOHNSON. Dr. Johnson's memory, on the present occafion, appears to have deceived him in more than a single instance. The fubject of the above-mentioned drawing is afcertained by a label affixed to it in Gothick letters. Iefus Christus, refurgens a mortuis Spoliat infernum. My predeceffor, indeed, might have been misled by an uncouth abbreviation in the Sacred Name. The words Out out arongt, are addressed to our Redeemer by Satan, who, the better to enforce them, accompanies them with a blast of the horn he holds in his right hand. Tartareum intendit cornu. If the instrument he grafps in his left hand was meant for a prong, it is of fingular make. Ecce fignum. Satan is not "driving the damned before him;" nor is any • Sce Ectypa Varia &c. Studio et cura Thomæ Hearne, &c. 1737. STERVENS. Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o'the Tiger: other dæmon present to undertake that office. Redemption, not punishment, is the subject of the piece. This story of Chrift's exploit, in his defcenfus ad inferos, (as Mr. Tyrwhitt has observed in a note on Chaucer, 3512,) is taken from the Gospel of Nicodemus, and was called by our ancestors the harrowinge of helle, under which title it was represented among the Chefter Whitsun Playes, MS. Harl. 2013. Rynt you, witch, quoth Beffe Locket to her mother, is a north country proverb. The word is used again in King Lear: "And aroint thee, witch, aroint thee." Anoint is the reading of the folio 1664, a book of no authority. STEEVENS. 2 - the rump-fed ronyon-] The chief cooks in noblemen's families, colleges, religious houses, hospitals, &c. anciently claimed the emoluments or kitchen fees of kidneys, fat, trotters, rumps, &c. which they fold to the poor. The weird fifter in this scene, as an infult on the poverty of the woman who had called her witch, reproaches her poor abject state, as not being able to procure better provision than offals, which are confidered as the refuse of the tables of others. COLEPEPER. So, in The Ordinance for the Government of Prince Edward, 1474, the following fees are allowed: "mutton's heads, the rumpes of every beefe," &c. Again, in The Ordinances of the Household of George Duke of Clarence: "-the hinder shankes of the mutton, with the rumpe, to be feable." Again, in Ben Jonson's Staple of News, old Penny-boy says to the Cook: " And then remember meat for my two dogs; "Fat flaps of mutton, kidneys, rumps," &c. Again, in Wit at several Weapons, by Beaumont and Fletcher : "A niggard to your commons, that you're fain "To fize your belly out with shoulder fees, "With kidneys, rumps, and cues of single beer." In The Book of Haukynge, &c. (commonly called The Book of St. Albans) bl. 1. no date, among the proper terms used in kepyng of haukes, it is faid: "The hauke tyreth upon rumps." STEEVENS. 3 -ronyon cries.] i. e. scabby or mangy woman. Fr. rogneux, royne, scurf. Thus Chaucer, in The Romaunt of the Rose, p. 551: But in a fieve I'll thither fail,4 "her necke "Withouten bleine, or scabbe, or roine." Shakspeare uses the substantive again in The Merry Wives of Windfor, and the adjective-roynish, in As you like it. STEEVENS. * in a fieve Ill thither fail,] Reginald Scott, in his Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, says it was believed that witches " could fail in an egg shell, a cockle or muscle shell, through and under the tempettuous seas." Again, says Sir W. D'Avenant, in his Albovine, 1629: " He fits like a witch failing in a fieve." Again, in Newes from Scotland: Declaring the damnable Life of Doctor Fian a notable Sorcerer, who was burned at Edinbrough in Januarie last, 1591; which Doctor was Register to the Devill, that fundrie Times preached at North Baricke Kirke, to a Number of notorious Witches. With the true Examination of the said Doctor and Witches, as they uttered them in the Presence of the Scottish King. Discovering how they pretended to bewitch and drowne his Majestie in the Sea comming from Denmarke, with other fuch wonderful Matters as the like hath not bin heard at anie Time. Published according to the Scottish Copie. Printed for William Wright: "-and that all they together went to sea, each one in a riddle for cive, and went in the fame very substantially with flaggons of wine, making merrie and drinking by the way in the fame riddles or cives," &c. Dr. Farmer found the title of this scarce pamphlet in an interleaved copy of Maunfells Catalogue, &c. 1595, with additions by Archbishop Harfenet and Thomas Baker the Antiquarian. It is almost needless to mention that I have fince met with the pamphlet itself. STEEVENS. $ And, like a rat without a tail,] It should be remembered, (as it was the belief of the times,) that though a witch could affume the form of any animal the pleased, the tail would still be wanting. The reason given by some of the old writers, for such a deficiency, is, that though the hands and feet, by an easy change, might be converted into the four paws of a beast, there was still no part about a woman which corresponded with the length of tail common to almost all our four-footed creatures. STEEVENS. |