There were six of us sitting down to lunch. Conversation swirled and batted around as it does among people who do not know each other all that well. I don’t know how the ‘eye of newt’ arose, but the scientist at the table remarked, “You know, I don’t think newts have eyes.” The rest of us were incredulous. Salamanders and lizards cropped up as people visualised them – all seemed to be sure that newts would have eyes.
My fellow diners laughed when I took out my cell phone to check on the eyes / no eyes of newts. What we discovered, to our astonishment, was that newts are able to regenerate fully functional limbs, organs and tissues, including heart muscle, components of its nervous system and the lens of its eye. Apart from cave-dwelling newts and salamanders, they can see very well.
The librarian then recalled the well-known witches brew from Macbeth:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron 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 howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
This opened a fresh direction in our conversation and Google was once more called into play. These are some of the interesting things that cropped up:
Not being familiar with the plants in England, we were all surprised that the ingredients mentioned in this brew were not animals at all, but plants! The ‘eye of newt’, for example, refers to a mustard seed. As I was made aware when I visit the Chelsea Physic Garden some years ago, herbalists often referenced body parts when describing parts of plants – especially when some resemblance is noted between the colour or shape of the plant and parts of the body. That garden is a haven for anyone interested in the way commonly used plants and herbs have been given different names based on certain attributes of the plant, its growth habits or even specific reasons it was used for.
So, when we look at the ‘eye of newt’, we realise that an ‘eye’ is a seed, and mustard seeds are dark yellow, like the eyes of some newts.
As ‘fenny’ relates to a marsh or bog, it is thought by some that ‘fillet of a fenny snake’ could refer to either leeches or a member of the arum family.
While the ‘toe of frog’ sounds plausible, it is more likely to refer to a bulbous buttercup; the ‘wool of bat’ refers either to moss or to holly leaves. The ‘tongue of dog is a plant known as houndstongue (Cynoglossum officinale), a highly toxic plant that features long, hairy stalks that can grow very tall. The ‘adders fork’ is a different plant, known as adder’s tongue, a fern in the genus Ophioglossum – other sources consider it to be the dogtooth violet (Erythronium americanum), commonly called the trout lily. These plants are all unfamiliar to me. ‘Tongue’ would usually refer to the leaf or a petal of a particular plant.
Getting on to ‘blind-worm’s sting’ – unlike the newt that began this conversation, a blindworm is a legless lizard with tiny eyes. As none of the other ingredients are actually animals, it seems quite likely that this one could be wormwood, which has long been used in traditional medicines. Some sources consider knotwood as a better alternative.
Talking about legless lizards, the ‘lizard’s leg’ might refer to ivy. For some reason, the owlet’s wing is thought to refer to either garlic or ginger.
None of that sounds as bad as the visions conjured up by those of us sans the necessary plant lore knowledge. Nonetheless, the potion the witches are intent on boiling up symbolizes the turmoil in Macbeth’s soul, and the ingredients, like eye of newt, represent the witches’ desire to destroy him.
Something Over Tea 