“_Hec._ There take this unbaptised brat,
Boil it well; preserve the fat:
You know ’tis precious to transfer
Our ’nointed flesh into the air
In moonlight nights,
* * * * *
I thrust in eleoselinum lately,
Aconitum, frondes populeas and soot—
* * * * *
Then sium, acorum vulgare too,
Pentaphyllon, the blood of a flitter-mouse
Solanum somni_ficum_ et oleum.”
——— “By this means (saith he) in a moonlight night [see fifth line of i,
2, just quoted] they seeme to be carried through the air, to feasting,
singing, dansing, kissing, colling, and other acts of venerie, with
such youthes as they love and desire most.” In i, 2, just after the
previous lines, are these—
“When hundred leagues in the air, we feast and sing,
Dance, kiss, and coll, use everything:
What young man can we wish to pleasure us,
But we enjoy him in an incubus.”
P. 186. “frier Bartholomæus” [Spinæus] saith that ... “the witches
before they annoint themselves do heare in the night time a great noise
[= band or troop] of minstrels, which flie over them, with the ladie
of the fairies, and ... to their journie.” In iii, 1, Firestone says
... “Hark, hark, mother, they are over the steeple already, flying over
your head with a noise of musicians.”
P. 222. “It is constantlie affirmed in _M. Mal._ that _Stafus_ ...
had a disciple called _Hoppo_, who made Stadlin a maister witch, and
could all when they list, invisiblie transferre the third part of their
neighbors doong, hay, corne, &c: into their own ground, make haile,
tempests, and flouds, with thunder and lightning.” Bodin also, bk. ii,
c. 6; but he makes Hoppo and Stadlin co-disciples of Stafus and master
witches. Compare i, 2, _ad init._ for Hoppo and Stadlin, while further
on comes—
“Stadlin’s within:
She raises all your sudden ruinous storms
That shipwreck barks, and tear up growing oaks.
* * * * *
I’ll call forth Hoppo, and her incantation
Can straight destroy the young of all his cattle;
Blast vineyards, orchards, meadows; or in one night
Transport his dung, hay, corn, by reeks, whole stacks,
Into thine own ground.”
P. 244. “_A ab hur hus._” A charm against the toothache. Hence it is
most probable, especially if the ! of “Puckle!” be in the original,
that Hecate, after reaching that name, is interrupted by a sudden spasm
of toothache, which she would exorcise by this “_A ab hur hus_”. The
sudden pause, the contortions of her haggard visage, and the grotesque
movements of the 117-year-old hag would greatly add to the comedy of
the scene.
P. 542. When this mortal witch Hecate—not the Queen of Hell and of
Witchdom, as was the Hecate of antiquity and of Shakespeare, and
others in the middle ages, for, says one of the after writers given
in the later editions of M. Mal., “Hecate artem magicam doceret”—uses
in i, 2, the very rhymes spoken of under this page in the Shakespeare
writings, some [ands] and [&c., his] being omitted, and “devil-lambe”
being changed to “devil-ram”. In v, 2, she again mentions “Titty and
Tiffin, Leaid and Robin”, and this time “Pucky”, for the rhyme’s sake.
Hellwin and Prickle are—as shown by her other mention of them (see
note, p. 153), as well as her mention of them elsewhere—mere copyists’
or printers’ errors for Hellwain and Puckle.
• • • • •
P. 222. One would here add the quotation from Ovid’s _Metam._ made
by Hecate, the first line running in Scott, Middleton, Corn. Agrippa
(_Occult Phil._, l. 1, c. 72), and in Bodin, Dæmono, l. 2, c. 2: “Cum
volui ... ipsis mirantibus” instead of “Quorum ope cum ... mirantibus”;
but that from the accidental dropping of the line “Vivaque saxa”, etc.,
in Bodin, and its omission also in Middleton, it would seem, as Dyce
remarks, that Middleton took it from Bodin. In concluding, I would
state that most, but not all, of these references are taken from Dyce’s
_Middleton_.