A Halloween Musing

RJ Pisko

R.J. Pisko, Columnist

Halloween – used to be correctly spelled as “Hallowe’en” , a contraction of “All Hallowed Evening” – or the eve of All Saints Day, November  1.  The costumes are getting wilder, eerier and more creative by the year.  But I don’t think anything will soon approach the bone-chilling imagination of Will Shakespeare as presented by the witches’ of “Macbeth”.

Here’s a pretty exact translation of their musings over the infamous cauldron, just in time for that Halloween Party Punch – real stomach-tuning stuff:

Round about the cauldron go:  (dancing around the huge pot on a fire)
In the poison'd entrails throw.   (rotten guts)
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one   (toad was under a cold rock for 31 days)
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,   (a sleeping potion from the toad’s sweat)
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

Double, double, toil and trouble;   (a curse – no doubt on Macbeth)
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,   (the meat of a swamp-dwelling snake)
 In the cauldron boil and bake;  (didn’t know you could boil and bake something at once – poetic license) 
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,  (forked tongue of a snake; the sting from another snake)
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,  (wing of a baby owl)
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witch's mummy, maw and gulf  (mummified flesh of a witch)
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,   (throat, stomach & guts of a salt-water shark)
Root of hemlock digg'd i’ the dark, (Hemlock – a deadly poisonous plant, uprooted at night) 
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat and slips of yew  (Gall is bile – that green stuff you throw up when there’s nothing left to throw up; yew is an evergreen tree native to English forests – longbows were made from this wood)
Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips, (yup – just what it says) 
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,  (finger of a stillborn baby – delivered in a ditch by a prostitute) 
Make the gruel thick and slab. (viscous, like cream of wheat)
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,   (Chadron is a coppery-red color)
For the ingredients of our cauldron.
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon’s blood, (yup – what it says) 
Then the charm is firm and good.  (I’m sure...)

Illustration: John Downman (public domain)

Well!  There’s a recipe that should gross out the most bloodthirsty of your Halloween party guests – or drop-ins – or drop-deads...

Toning things down a bit is this glossary of herbalists’ terminology – many of the terms are in reference to plants and herbs.

Bat's Wool : Moss
Dog's Tongue: Hounds Tongue
Eyes: Inner part of a blossom
Wing: Leaf
Tongue: Petal

Makes the ingredients seem a bit less fleshy – still a pretty creepy brew, though.