Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron, bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
These famous words from Shakespeare’s Macbeth are chanted by three old witches as they pour the contents of various bottles into a bubbling cauldron.
Herbalists, thought of as witches at the time, were said to use gruesome code words for the plants they worked with to keep their herbal remedies a secret.
By combining body parts and animals from lists like these as code, a witch or herbalist could sell their potions with the confidence that customers wouldn’t be able to steal their recipes.
Different parts of a plant had body part code names:
EYE - seed
GUTS - root
TONGUE - petal
HEART - bud
TAIL - stem
HEAD - blossom
BLOOD OR SEMEN - sap
HAIR - dried, stringy herbs
TOE, PAW, WING, OR FOOT - leaf
Herbs had animal code names, often based on similarities in morphology:
NEWT - mustard
CAT - catnip
DOG - couchgrass
FROG - buttercup
LAMB - lettuce
TOAD - sage
RAT - valerian
SNAKE - bistorta
EAGLE - wild garlic
So "eye of newt" is simply witch code for mustard seed, and "toe of frog" is code for buttercup leaf. Not so gruesome after all!
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