"Rynt, you witch!" quoth Bess Lockit to her mother. Rynt, according to Skeat, is the original Cumberland word for "aroint," i.e., "aroint thee, get thee gone." Icelandic ryma--"to make room, to clear the way"--given, however, only as a guess. It seems to have been specially applied to witches. "'Aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed ronyon cried." ("Macbeth"). Halliwell gives the word as rynt, and devotes a column to it, without coming to any satisfactory conclusion. I think it is simply the old word rynt or wrynt, another form of writhe, meaning to twist or strangle, as if one should say, "Be thou strangled!" which was indeed a frequent malediction. Halliwell himself gives "wreint" as meaning "awry," and "wreith destordre"--"to wring or wreith" ("Hollyband's Dictionarie," 1593). The commonest curse of English gypsies at the present day is "Beng tasser tute!" "May the devil strangle you"--literally twist, which is an exact translation of wrinthe or rynt. "The gode man to hys cage can goo And wrythed the pye's neck yn to." ("MS. Cantab." ap. H.) Rynt may mean twist away, i.e., begone, as they say in America, "he wriggled away." They that burn you for a witch lose all their coals. Never talk of witches on a Friday. Ye're ower aude ffarand to be fraid o' witches. Witches are most apt to confess on a Friday. Friday is the witches' Sabbath. To hug one as the devil hugs a witch. As black } As cross } As ugly } as a witch. As sinful } Four fingers and a thumb--witch, I defy thee. In Italy the signs are made differently. In Naples the gettatura consists of throwing out the fore and middle fingers, so as to imitate horns, with the thumb and fingers closed. Some say the thumb should be within the middle and third fingers. In Florence the anti-witch gesture is to fare la fica, or stick the thumb out between the fore and middle fingers. You're like a witch, you say your prayers backward. Witch-wood (i.e., the mountain ash). You're half a witch--i.e., very cunning. Buzz! buzz! buzz! "In the middle of the sixteenth century if a person waved his hat or bonnet in the air and cried 'Buzz!' three times, under the belief that by this act he could take the life of another, the old law and law-makers considered the person so saying and acting to be worthy of death, he being a murderer in intent, and having dealings with witches" ("Denham Tract"). Very doubtful, and probably founded on a well known old story. "I wish I was as far from God as my nails are free from dirt!"