—­What haste looks through his eyes? 
So should he look, that teems to speak things strange.

He looks like one that is big with something of importance; a metaphor so natural, that it is every day used in common discourse.

NOTE V.

SCENE III.

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: