No Jews, Tatars, Turks, stillborn infants, other humans, or any other animals (quadrupedal or otherwise) or plants (non-ligneous or otherwise) were harmed in the making of this post.
Thank you for your comprehension.
PS. The quotes from Macbeth were adapted into modern language orthographically (ex. Tartar -> Tatar) and semantically (ex. drab -> whore) by the author of this blog for better understanding the play. Thank you for your comprehension.
Macbeth, Act Four, Scene I (the infamous witches' stew)
Third Witch (to the tune of the Thénardiers' song):
Nose of Muslim Turk, liver of a Jew,
filling up the cauldron with this and that, too...
Tatar's lips are more than welcome,
flavour is intensified,
reasonable charges, plus some little extras on the side...
Oh, Macbeth!
Well, the real play does not have the Thénardiers' song, though its mention of a liver in a modified "liver of a/n X" phrase made the filk come up pretty smoothly... (Someday I will do the whole song, with all three witches as M. Thénardier and Macbeth as Mme. Thénardier!)
What really drew my attention was the fact that the human ingredients in the stew included significant parts of non-Europeans (for being non-Europeans, non-Christians --though the Tatar is Orthodox!--, etcetera):
Third Witch: [···]
Liver of blaspheming Jew, [···]
Nose of Turk, and Tatar's lips, [···]
See what the freak I mean? They don't take these organs from Europeans, but from non-European foreigners. Racist and chauvinist brew, isn't it?
The third witch initially adds parts of animals which are a little weirder than the second witch's (scale of dragon!) but then adds in human body parts all of which have an anti-Christian theme: the Jew, the Turk, and the Tatar are all non-Christians. Or maybe NOT. The Tatar is Orthodox.
Three of these parts come from explicitly non-Christians and an Orthodox (the Jew and presumably two Muslims or a Muslim Turk and an Orthodox Tatar), which perhaps carry more magic than the presumably “saved” Catholic Christian recently dead.
The liver of blaspheming Jew endorses the common anti-Semitic beliefs of that era, alongside the racial prejudices held against the Turk and Tartar (sic).
(A country audience, however, may have interpreted Macbeth’s cauldron quite differently from the royal courtiers. Many of these exotic ingredients are actually poetic variants on the common names for herbs.
Liver of Jew = Jew’s myrtle or box holly; Nose of Turk = Turk’s cap; Tartar’s (sic) lips = ginseng or tartar root [···]
Why did Shakespeare choose these fierce-sounding ingredients? Joyce Froome (Wicked Enchantments) argues that, for the wise women of Pendle, these herbs would be part of their everyday folk magic. Catt Foy (Witches & Pagans) suggests that maybe “Shakespeare knew a little more about herbcraft than he was letting on,” and Nigel Beale (Literary Tourists Blog) believes he chose names “designed to gross out the masses, to stop them from practicing magic.”)
Beyond that, parts of human bodies were mixed in the compound as well,
some of them regarding religious prejudices against Jews, Muslims, and
barbarians.
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Religious prejudices against Jews came from the Church widespread belief
that they were responsible for the murder of Christ. Furthermore, they were
considered blasphemous for they denied that Jesus was the Messiah.
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s (sic) lips,
Muslims and barbarians were, like Jews, subject to religious prejudices. The Tatar is Orthodox, Christian yet exotic.
Plus there are two more human ingredients, which are more international (though still two against the three "racist" ones) in this ominous recipe: one is mummy, as in preserved corpse (there can be found some in the fens and marshes of the British Isles among other European wetlands, and in the New World, but the Egyptian ones are the most renowned), and another one is as macabre as it is international (it references a practice common to all continents except Antarctica, where the only resident mammals are seals and would by no means dedicate themselves to that):
Finger of birth-strangled baby,
ditch-delivered by a whore.
Makes the gruel thick, for sure.
So, this refers any of the ten (or maybe eleven or twelve, in case of mutation) hand appendages (the Hungarian translation specifies a pinky!) of a stillborn infant, strangled with the umbilical cord as it was born in a roadside ditch unto a prostitute mother. A literal son or daughter of a bitch. I could have also written these verses as:
Finger of child of a bitch,
strangled at birth in a ditch:
thickens the brew of the witch.
(Pardon me, Shakespeare) But I prefer my first version because it has the more extreme "whore", not those obvious and painful rhymes, and is more faithful to the Bard's original (lexically modernized, then adapting the rhyme).
"The plot thickens... is that a soup metaphor?" Like Gustave and Zero, we could say that. A stillborn lovechild is extremely unfortunate, being unbaptized and illegitimate. So yes, this baby coud be born in any continent except Antarctica (seals have flippers and do not practice the world's oldest profession). But still grouped in with the Jew, Turk, and Tatar in the same cauldron of outcasts.
[···] thus making the baby damned like the unbaptized Turk, Tatar, and Jew.
In the cauldron scene of Macbeth, the three weird sisters throw the “liver” of a “blaspheming Jew” into their potion (4.1.26). As one of a series of disembodied parts the Jew’s liver may not at first seem all that remarkable, but given these beliefs about the odour of otherness, the witches’ ingredients take on new significance.
Yet the Third Witch’s additions to the brew focus on human parts that invoke the specific foulness of miscegenation, menstruation, and aborted reproduction.
The cultural and racial others “Jew,” “Turk,” and “Tatar” balance uncomfortably on the border of human and animal. Smell again marries them together in a monstrous hybrid. Where all these men are unchristened, like the “birth-strangled babe,” the Jew is likely mentioned “because of the Jews’ reputation, in anti-Semitic tradition, for obscene rites” with the blood of “Christian children” (Biggins 271). The organs of prominence, both “nose” and “liver,” revisit not only male menstruation but sexual passion.
- 1 liver of a blaspheming Jew – minced
- Thanks Janet, you realize this makes us look antisemitic, right?
- 1 nose of a Turkish man or woman
- 1 pair of lips of a Tatar
- Fun fact: there are around 6 million Tatars living in and around the Volga Region!
- 1 finger from a baby strangled at or just after birth and left in a ditch by a whore
- Yeah, this one’s dark. Let’s blame Janet again for the last three ingredients.
Oh, that is so dark, right? Like Gilbert and Sullivan's patter songs (Modern Major General, Heavy Dragoon, I've Got a Little List...) have been updated through the ages with new references and more political correctness, surely there is a bowdlerized PC version of this stew somewhere. One without any offensive ingredients in its recipe.
Besides... if the liver of a Jew is drained of blood... is it kosher? :o
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