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