Hootenanny Halloween Countdown: Something Wicked This Way Comes...

Greetings my tasty ones...

Today marks the beginning of my favorite season of the year... Halloween!  That's right kiddies... I do not solely celebrate All Hallow's Eve but rather an entire season of macabre mayhem and spiritsssssssss.....

This year I have chosen to mark the Verbal Hootenanny's Countdown with some of my favorite quotes from some of the scariest tales told on the Silver Screen.

I hope you'll join me as I begin my journey into the depths of madness, courtesy of the Month of October.

Our first selection is from one of the earliest tales of magic and evil.  Of witches and madness.  Of ghosts and curses.   A story of a man who learns what COULD BE and, with the help of his serpentine wife, begins to make it so... however, as these stories often go, all is not what it seems:  Fair is foul and foul is fair.

Our first quote of the season comes from Act IV, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare's Macbeth.  Hovering above a boiling cauldron, the 3 Witches who have helped shape Macbeth's fate chant a spell to summon the future...

First Witch

Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.

Second Witch

Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.

Third Witch

Harpier cries 'Tis time, 'tis time.

First Witch

Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch

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.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Third Witch

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch

Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

Enter HECATE to the other three Witches

HECATE

O well done! I commend your pains;
And every one shall share i' the gains;
And now about the cauldron sing,
Live elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in.

HECATE retires

Second Witch

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks!

Enter MACBETH.

Shakespeare kicked ass, didn't he?

Such spooky writing and yet so pretty at the same time...  hope it helps get you in the mood.

Stay tuned Hootenanny-ers... Halloween doth come!