The Witches Chant From Macbeth

 

Art from one of my favorite ETSY shops:   

A Fanciful Twist. 

 

 

From Macbeth

by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Witches Chant

 

Round about the couldron go:
In the poisones entrails throw.
Toad,that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Sweated venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first in the charmed pot.
Double,double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blindworm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing.
For charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double,double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and couldron bubble.

Scale of dragon,tooth of wolf,
Witch's mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd in the dark,
Gall of goat; and slips of yew
silver'd in the moon's eclipse;
Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips;
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by the drab,-
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For ingrediants of our cauldron.
Double,double toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

 

I find this poem remarkable in that clearly the idea of all that is Halloween today (the characters, images, scenes, terminology, and traditions that the term invokes) existed in the 16th century perhaps not as a holiday but generally.  That fact reminds me of the breadth of our history and our potential place in it.  For a moment, my thoughts broaden.