Black Spirits and White, Red Spirits and Gray

In The Full Moon Ritual, I have suggested the following method for casting the circle. Whoever is casting will walk clockwise around the ritual space three times with salt water, incense, and a sword (or athame, walking cane, staff, or wand) while reciting:
Black spirits and white,
Red spirits and grey,
Harken to this rhyme I say.
Four points of the Circle, weave the spell,
East, South, West, North, your tale tell.
East is for pale break of day,
South is red for noon's fiery hour,
In the West is twilight grey,
And North is black, for the place of power.
Three times round the Circle's cast.
Great ones, spirits from the past,
Witness it and guard it fast.
Many Wiccans will recognize that this chant has been adapted from the following chant.
Black spirits and white,
Red spirits and grey,
Come ye, come ye, come ye that may.
Throughout and about, around and around,
The circle drawn, the circle bound.
Doreen Valiente wrote in The Rebirth of Witchcraft (1989) that she channeled this verse from a "John Brakespeare," explaining that John Breakespere was an 18th century witch.

On August 1, 2010, Garnet emailed me with some interesting information relating to this verse provided by Doreen Valiente. [Thanks, Garnet!]

According to Garnet, something very similar was in a 17th century play, The Witch, by Thomas Middleton. It appears in Act V., scene ii in Hecate's cave with a cauldron:

HECATE: Black spirits and white, red spirits and grey,
Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may.
Titty, Tiffin, keep it stiff in.
Firedrake, Puckey, make it lucky.
Liard, Robin, you must bob in.
Round, around, around, about, about,
All ill come running in, all good keep out.
FIRST WITCH: Here's the blood of a bat.
HECATE: Put in that, oh, put in that.
SECOND WITCH: Here's libbard's bane.1
HECATE: Put in again.
FIRST WITCH: The juice of toad, the oil of adder.
SECOND WITCH: Those will make the younker2 madder.
HECATE: Put in; there's all, and rid the stench.
FIRESTONE: Nay, here's three ounces of the red-hair'd wench.
ALL: Round, around, around, about, about,
All ill come running in, all good keep out.
HECATE
So, so, enough: into the vessel with it.
There, 't hath the true perfection: I am so light
At any mischief; there's no villainy
But is a tune, methinks.
FIRESTONE
[Aside] A tune? 'Tis to the tune of damnation then, I warrant you, and that song hath a villainous burthen.

Thomas Middleton, The Witch, Act V, scene ii.

Indeed, I did remember reading something from my old English-literature major days that Shakespeare had borrowed a song from Middleton or Middleton had borrowed it from him. (Plagiarism was rampant in those days.)

For those who need to brush up on their Shakespeare, there is a brief reference to a song in Macbeth Act IV, scene i. "Hecate," the Greco-Roman Goddess of sorcery, entered the stage and spoke to the "Weird Sisters." She urged them to "sing" around the bubbling cauldron just like elves and fairies in a ring, adding: "Enchanting all that you put in."

Then there is just one brief stage direction in the surviving copies of Shakespeare's Macbeth: "Music and a song: 'Black spirits,' & c" That's it. That's the whole reference.

No lyrics are provided for this song, which is apparently similar to, or the same as, the song in Middleton's The Witch.

I poked around for information on the web on the subject. Finally, I got Shakespeare's Songbook, Volume 1, by Ross W. Duffin, Stephen Orgel (2004) via interlibrary loan. The authors write:

There are a lot of questions surrounding this song and its citation in Macbeth. The dialogue song text above is from Thomas Middleton's The Witch, acted perhaps as early as 1609, not printed at the time but surviving in a manuscript of ca. 1623. No music survives, so Middleton's text has been set conjecturally above a contemporary ballad tune. There are content problems with the song in relation to Macbeth, and the dating makes it seem as if the Folio appearance was a borrowing from Middleton's work. However, Macbeth itself probably dates back to 1606 and maybe even to 1603, so we are left to wonder whether there was an earlier song by this title that was used in Shakespeare's original version of the play. There is no question that the characters of Middleton's drama were known previously since they derive from Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584)... (p. 65)
Without question, part of this song in Middleton's The Witch drew directly from folklore collected in Reginald Scot's 16th century Discoverie of Witchcraft. The names "Tittie and Tiffin," "Suckin and Pidgin," "Liard and Robin," "fierdrake," and "puckle" are listed in Scot's book.3 Even more interestingly, Scot refers to "white spirits and black spirits, gray spirits and red spirits."

Doreen Valiente's John Brakespeare does not mention any of the spirit names, but does refer to the spirits with the colors: white, black, gray, and red. As I stated above, these colors were associated in British Isles folklore with spirits.

Returning to Shakespeare's Songbook, the authors explain that although there are many allusions to songs in Elizabethan popular culture in Shakespeare's plays, most of the lyrics survived without their intended melodies. The authors refer back to Middleton's play for a clue to what the popular melody might have been.

Certainly, the phrase "to the tune of" supports the use of a known melody for the lyric in spite of its complex versification. A "Tune of Damnation" that fits fairly well, the one used here, is Packington's Pound. (p. 66)
The authors of Shakespeare's Songbook use Packington's Pound to recreate what the song may have sounded like in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Their reconstruction of the lyrics are as follows:
Black Spirits, & white: Red Spirits, & Gray,
Mingle, Mingle, Mingle, you that mingle may.
Liard, Robin, you must bob in
Suckin & Pidgin, come closer a smidgin.
Round, around, about, about
All ill come running-in, all Good keep-out
Titty, Tiffin: keep it stiff in
Fire-Drake, Puckey, make it Luckey.
Liard, Robin, you must bob in
Suckin & Pidgin, come closer a smidgin.
Round, around, about, about
All ill come running-in, all Good keep-out

Here's the blood of a bat,
Oh put in that, oh put in that.
Here's libbard's Bane. Put in again.
The Juice of Toad: the Oil of Adder.
Those will make the yonker madder.
Round, a-round, a-round, about, about
All ill come running-in, all Good keep-out
Black Spirits, & white: Red Spirits, & Gray,
Mingle, Mingle, Mingle, you that mingle may.
Titty, Tiffin: keep it stiff in
Fire-Drake, Puckey, make it Luckey.
Liard, Robin, you must bob in
Round, a-round, a-round, about, about
All ill come running-in, all Good keep-out

Ross W. Duffin, Shakespeare's Songbook, Volume 1, 2004 (p. 65)

If you want to read the musical notations or listen to the tune, you will have to get a copy of Shakespeare's Songbook with the accompanying CD.

The authors also explain:

It is also possible that a more generalized Black Spirits song existed and was called for by Shakespeare, but that Middleton rewrote the words to better fit his own play... (p. 67)
Here is the author's second reconstruction:
Black Spirits & white: Red Spirits & Gray,
Mingle Mingle, you that mingle may.
The Juice of Toad; the Oil of Adder.
Those will make the yonker mader.
Round, a-round, a-bout, a-bout.
All ill come running-in, all good keep-out.
Here's the Blood of a Bat. Put in that, put in that.
Here's Libbard's Bane. Put-in a-gain.
The Juice of Toad; the Oil of Adder.
Those will make the yonker madder.
Round, a-round, a-bout, a-bout.
All ill come running-in, all good keep-out. (p. 67)
It is unlikely that Middleton or Shakespeare were attempting to preserve a specific chant from English sorcery. It is likely that they were both using popular music and/or lyrics from folksongs. Apparently these folksongs contained snippets of British Isles folklore concerning spirits, witches, and magic.

In the August 1, 2010 email, Garnet commented: "So, it may well be that Doreen claimed that she got it from a channeled source and that Thomas Middleton took it from an actual witch chant of his day...but it may also be that it wasn't..."

There's at least two possible explanations here. Without question, the colored spirits (white, black, gray, and red) were part of 16th and 17th century British Isles folklore. Therefore:

  1. Doreen Valiente read some of this information in either Discoverie of Witchcraft or footnotes to John Middleton's The Witch or footnotes to William Shakespeare's Macbeth. She internalized it and later drew it from her subconscious in trance.
  2. In her trance, Doreen Valiente channeled information from the spirit of a 17th century witch named John Brakespeare.
copyright 2010 Myth Woodling

Endnotes

1 libbard's bane: A libbard is a leopard. "Leopard's bane" is a plant of the genus Doronicum, a kind of Aconitum
2 younker: A younker is a young nobleman or gentleman.
3 In case you are wondering about the significance of the names recorded by Scot, "firedrake," "Robin," "puckle," "Liard," "Suckin," "Pidgin," "Titty," "Tiffin." They are collected from reportedly true cases of witchcraft. I am familiar with the first three from British Isles folklore. A "firedrake" is simply another name for a fire elemental, the salamander. "Robin" is "Robin Goodfellow," a well known English Faerie and a trickster. Scot listed him as one of the "domestical spirits." "Puckle" is probably "Pucky" or "Puck." "Puck" is also a creature of Faerie. In Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, Robin Goodfellow and Puck are conflated as the same sprite.

Macbeth, King James and the Witches