The Incantation - Analysis

A Macbeth spell re-cast as Federation satire

The central move of the poem is to treat Australian federal politics as a witch-brew whose ingredients are ordinary people’s suffering and public vice, stirred up into a self-congratulating national myth. Paterson borrows the stage-directions and chant of Shakespeare’s cauldron scene—A darkened cave, three witches, the repeated refrain—to suggest that what looks like rational parliamentary process is closer to ritual and manipulation. The “incantation” isn’t magic in a fantasy sense; it’s the spell of political rhetoric, coalition-making, and crowd-pleasing slogans that can turn grievance into policy and policy into chaos.

The opening brays and neighs—Federal Jackass, War-horse—immediately animalize the actors and lower the dignity of the arena. The witches don’t announce a serious civic project; they announce a performance where noise, timing, and theatrical entrances matter: So Georgie comes, ’tis time. Politics arrives as a cue, not a deliberation.

The cauldron’s first “ingredient”: the bush pays for the spell

The first witch’s list ties the “nation” to the material costs of protectionism and drought: Fillet of a tariff snake makes policy into something skinned and cooked, while Lamb that perished in the drought and Starving stock pull the reader out of Canberra talk and into dead animals and failing stations. Even the domestic image Home-made flannels turns sour with mostly cotton, hinting at inferior goods or false promises produced by “Australian” industry. The phrase Drops of sweat from cultivators is the poem’s moral meter: real labor is being rendered down to fuel legislation, and the line Sweating to feed legislators makes the exploitation blunt rather than lyrical.

The sting is that this exploitation is wrapped in lofty language. After the grim list, the witch declares: Thus the great Australian Nation Seeks political salvation. The poem’s irony sharpens here: “salvation” is supposedly national, but the ingredients are particular bodies—farmers, stokers, drought-struck graziers—whose pain becomes the raw material of someone else’s “nation.”

Egalitarian slogans fed by drink, gambling, and sleep

The second witch shifts from production to consumption and street-life: Heel-taps, Socialist cigars, a boozer curst with the great Australian thirst, the Two-up gambler, the Loafer sleeping in the park. These are not merely “vices” tossed in for moralizing; they function as a parody of democratic authenticity. The witch insists these ingredients prove the sequel: All men are born free. In other words, the poem mocks a politics that treats a rough, self-indulgent national stereotype as evidence for equality, as if freedom were guaranteed by betting games and beer rather than secured by institutions or justice.

The refrain Double, double, toil and trouble becomes a civic diagnosis: the “toil” belongs to workers and cultivators, while the “trouble” is what returns from the pot—confused, overheated policy justified as popular will.

Named politicians as bodily organs: the state made of spite

The third witch makes the satire more pointed by turning specific politicians into anatomy: Lung of Labour agitator, Gall of Isaacs, Spleen that Kingston, Sawdust stuffing. The effect is to show the political class not as minds debating ideas but as glands producing irritation—lungs, gall, spleen—organs of breath, bile, and resentment. Even the apparently neutral trait Alfred Deakin’s gift of gab is treated like thickener in slop: Mix the gruel thick. Speech, here, is not illumination; it’s a binding agent that makes a mixture harder to resist.

The poem also lets uglier assumptions leak through. The line about a white stoker’s nob Toiling at a nigger’s job shows how “nation” is being imagined in racialized terms even while the witches chant equality elsewhere. That contradiction—egalitarian slogans beside a casually racist hierarchy—helps explain why the whole brew feels morally tainted before it even boils.

The turn: from “bubble” to a plea for help, and Hecate’s final aim

The key turn arrives when the chorus changes from the confident Macbeth-echo—Fire burn, cauldron bubble—to a sudden appeal: Heav’n help Australia. That small alteration admits what the incantation has been concealing: the witches’ recipe is not just mischievous; it is dangerous enough to require rescue. Paterson’s tone moves from mocking relish to alarm, without dropping the theatrical mask.

Hecate’s entrance clarifies the poem’s bleak punchline. She praises the “pains” because everyone shall share i’ the gains, a promise that sounds democratic but feels like a con: the same “everyone” has already shared in drought, sweat, and bad goods. Then she instructs them to throw in the People’s rights and to Cool it with an Employer’s blood. Rights become just another ingredient, and class conflict becomes the cooling agent that makes the charm firm and good. The final goal is not reform but spectacle: thus with chaos in possession Ring in the coming session. The poem’s last note is that the “incantation” works when disorder itself becomes the point—politics as a cauldron that must keep boiling to keep its makers powerful.