[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.
EXTRACTS FROM WIER.
I.
Besides those noted by Scot in the margins, I have gathered the following from Wier, though very possibly some may have been overlooked. By far the greater number occur in the 12th Book of Scot; that is, they consist chiefly of various charms and illustrative tales.