This is the sergeant, Mal. Sold. Doubtful it stood; As two spent swimmers, that do cling together, And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald (Worthy to be a rebel; for to that3 The multiplying villainies of nature Do swarm upon him), from the western isles 2 Sergeants, in ancient times, were not the petty officers now distinguished by that title; but men performing one kind of feudal military service, in rank next to esquires. 3 Vide Tyrwhitt's Glossary to Chaucer, v. for; and Pegge's Anecdotes of the English Language, p. 205. For to that means no more than for that; or cause that. The late editions erroneously point this passage, and as erroneously explain it. I follow the punctuation of the first folio. i.e. supplied with armed troops so named. Of and with are indiscriminately used by our ancient writers. Gallowglasses were heavy armed foot soldiers of Ireland and the western isles: Kernes were the lighter armed troops. See Ware's Antiquit. c. xii. p. 57, or Dissertation on the Antient History of Ireland. Dublin, 1753, 8vo. p. 70. 5 But fortune on his damned quarry smiling. Quarry is a term borrowed from the chase, and signified the game pursued; from Coriolanus, Act i. Sc. 1, we gather it signified also a heap of what was killed in the chase: "I'd make a quarry With thousands of these quartered slaves, as high As I could pitch my lance." Damned is doomed, or condemned; quarrel has been improperly substituted. The meaning is that Fortune, while she smiled on him, deceived him. 7 Thus the old copy. It has been suggested that we should read all-to-weak, an idiom frequent in our older language, and Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel, Like valour's minion, Carv'd out his passage, till he fac'd the slave; And ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps And fix'd his head upon our battlements. Dun. O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman! Sold. As whence the sun 'gins his reflexion Shipwracking storms and direful thunders break 9; So from that spring, whence comfort seem'd to come, Discomfort swells. Mark, king of Scotland, mark : No sooner justice had, with valour arm'd, Compell'd these skipping Kernes to trust their heels; With furbish'd arms, and new supplies of men, Dun. Dismay'd not this our captains, Macbeth and Sold. Yes; as sparrows, eagles; or the hare, the lion. If I say sooth, I must report, they were As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks 10; which is even used by Milton, who has all-to-ruffled, where all-to is merely augmentative: I doubt whether change is necessary here, as the old reading is perfectly intelligible. The old copy reads which nev'r. The allusion is to the storms that prevail in spring, at the vernal equinox-the equinoctial gales. The beginning of the reflexion of the sun (Cf. So from that Spring) is the epoch of his passing from the severe to the milder season, opening however with storms. Break is not in the first folio. The second has breaking. Pope substituted break. 10 Cracks, that is reports. So in the old play of King John, 1591: "As harmless and without effect, As is the echo of a cannon's crack." The anachronism of mentioning cannon as in use at this early period was disregarded by the poet, who has again mentioned them as in use in the reign of King John. Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds, But I am faint, my gashes cry for help. Dun. So well thy words become thee, as thy wounds; They smack of honour both :-Go, get him surgeons. [Exit Soldier, attended. Enter ROSSE and ANGUS. Who comes here? Mal. The worthy thane of Rosse. Len. What a haste looks through his eyes! So should he look, that seems to speak things strange11. Rosse. God save the king! Dun. Whence cam'st thou, worthy thane? Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky 12 Assisted by that most disloyal traitor The thane of Cawdor, 'gan a dismal conflict: Point against point, rebellious arm 'gainst arm, Dun. Rosse. That now Great happiness! Sweno, the Norways' king, craves composition; "That seems to speak things strange, i. e. that seems about to speak them. 12 So in King John: 13 "Mocking the air with colours idly spread." By Bellona's bridegroom Shakespeare means Macbeth. Lapp'd in proof is defended by armour of proof. 14 Confronted him with self-comparisons. By him is meart Norway, and by self-comparisons is meant that he gave him as good as he brought, showed that he was his equal. Nor would we deign him burial of his men, Dun. No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive Our bosom interest:-Go, pronounce his present death, And with his former title greet Macbeth. Rosse. I'll see it done. Dun. What he hath lost, 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. 3 Witch. Sister, where thou? 1 Witch. A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap, And mounch'd, and mounch'd, and mounch'd:Give me, quoth I: Aroint thee1, witch! the rump-fed ronyon2 cries. Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger: 15 Colmes' is here a dissyllable. Colmes' Inch, now called Inchcomb, is a small island, lying in the Firth of Edinburgh, with an abbey upon it dedicated to St. Columb. Inch or inse, in Erse, signifies an island. The etymology of this imprecation is yet to seek. Rynt ye for out with ye! stand off! is still used in Cheshire; where there is also a proverbial saying, "Rynt ye, witch, qouth Besse Locket to her mother." Tooke thought it was from roynous, and might signify "a scab or scale on thee!" The French have a phrase of somewhat similar sound and import-" Arry-avant, away there ho!" Mr. Douce thinks that "aroint thee" will be found to have a Saxon origin. The instance of its early use adduced by Mr. Hunter, from Berchyl's Rebellion of Perkin Warbeck, cited in the Monthly Mirror, is a palpable and clumsy forgery, possibly by Tom Hill. 2 Rump-fed ronyon, a scabby or mangy woman fed on offals; the rumps being formerly part of the emoluments or kitchen fees of the cooks in great houses. But in a sieve I'll thither sail3, 2 Witch. I'll give thee a wind. 3 Witch. And I another. 1 Witch. I myself have all the other; And the very ports they blow, All the quarters that they know I' the shipman's card 5. 3 In The Discovery of Witchcraft, by Reginald Scott, 1584, he says it was believed that witches "could sail in an egg-shell, a cockle or muscle-shell through and under the tempestuous seas." And in another pamphlet, "Declaring the damnable Life of Doctor Fian, a notable Sorcerer, who was burned at Edenborough in Januarie last, 1591”—“All they together went to sea, each one in a riddle or cive, and went in the same very substantially, with flaggons of wine making merrie, and drinking by the way in the same riddles or cives," &c. Sir W. D'Avenant, in his Albovine, 1629, says:— "He sits like a witch sailing in a sieve." It was the belief of the times that though a witch could assume the form of any animal she pleased, the tail would still be wanting. This free gift of a wind is to be considered as an act of sisterly friendship; for witches were supposed to sell them. So in Summer's Last Will and Testament, 1600: "In Ireland and in Denmark both Witches for gold will sell a man a wind, Which, in the corner of a napkin wrapp'd, Shall blow him safe unto what coast he will." See Harington's note on the 38th Book of Orlando Furioso, and Giles Fletcher's Russe Commonwealth, 1591, p. 77 b. quoted by Mr. Hunter. The following note in Braithwaite's "Two Lancashire Lovers" shows the universality of the notion :-" The incomparable Barclay in his Mirror of Minde, cap. 8, discovering Norway to be a rude nation, and with most men who have conversed or commerced with them, held infamous for Witchcraft. They, by report, saith he, "can sell Windes, which those that saile from thence doe buy, equalling by a true prodigy the fabulous story of Ulisses and Eolus. And these Penell Pugges [i. e. witches of the Penell Hills] have affirmed the like upon their own confession." 5 i. e. the sailor's chart; carte-marine. The words to show are |