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Forget about Maleficent and Lady Tremaine, Eleanor Audley's finest moment at Disney came when she made Madame Leota's rather silly incantations (let us admit this) sound both real and magical, even with "wherever they're at" in the mix. By some witchery, they work splendidly coming from her.
We paid some attention to the musical instruments mentioned by Mdm L in our original posts on the Séance circle (HERE and HERE), but otherwise we've said little about the contents of those incantations, mostly because they're self-explanatory, generic, Halloweeny images with no particular background to dig up. Among them, I've always thought that "toads in a pond" sounded uninspired and contrived, obviously concocted in order to find a rhyme for "beyond."
Turns out I may well have been wrong.
We've had a couple of posts about Grillot De Givry's Illustrated Anthology of Sorcery, Magic, and Alchemy (one of several titles the 1929 book has been issued under). It's one of the few books we know for a fact were used by multiple Imagineers who worked on the Mansion, including Marc Davis and Rolly Crump. As it turns out, we should perhaps add X Atencio to that roster.
On pages 76-77 in De Givry is a reproduction of Polish artist Jan Ziarnko's engraving of a Witch's Sabbat, executed for inclusion in Pierre de L'ancre's Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et démons, ou il est amplement traité des sorcierrs et da la sorcellerie ("A Treatise on the Inconstancy of Evil Angels and Demons, wherein the Subject of Sorcerers and Sorcery is Fully Discussed"), published in 1612. L'ancre's text included a scandalously detailed description of the Sabbat, and Ziarnko's lurid engraving left little to the shocked imaginations of 17th century readers.
As usual, De Givry gives us only a blurry black and white reproduction. Here's what it's supposed to look like:
The first thing I noticed is that the group of three witches at the bottom may have been an influence on Marc Davis. We know for a fact he looked through De Givry's book for ideas about witches, and that bellows witch looks might suspicious to me.
But I'm more interested in these lines by X Atencio:
"Creepies and Crawlies, Toads in a Pond, Let there be Music, from Regions Beyond."
There are plenty of creepies and crawlies around. The middle witch is only one of four figures in the engraving holding a bunch of snakes in her fist, and other slithery critters are found nearby as well:
But it's "toads in a pond" that really catches our eye. Ziarnko's engraving comes complete with annotations in L'ancre's book. The witches are about to behead and flay the snakes and toads before throwing them in the pot. A good supply of toads is guaranteed because we see at a pond nearby "little children who, with white wands and switches, at a place removed from the ceremonies, watch every one of them over the herds of toads owned by those witches who have custom to bring them to the Sabbath."
Well, there it is, Forgottenistas. Turns out that "toads in a pond" is an appropriate and well-documented image after all, found in a book we know the Imagineers were using. As if that weren't enough, if we look from here directly up to the top, we find a group of musicians, led by a demonic (?) lutist, supplying appropriately hellish tunes for the occasion, or what we might call "music from somewhere beyond."
This latter parallel is pretty weak sauce, I freely confess, but all things considered, I'm still inclined to think we are looking here at the image that inspired one of Madame Leota's incantations inside of Atencio's little grey cells. It's not the toads but the literal "pond" that does it for me.
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