Alexander Dyce, A General Glossary to Shakespeare's Works

aroint “thee, witch!” MACBETH, i. 3. 6 ; “aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!” KING LEAR, iii. 4. 122. That Aroint thee is equivalent to“Away!”“Begone! ” seems to be agreed, though its etymology is quite uncertain: “Rynt ye; By your leave, stand handsomely. As, Rynt you, Witch, quoth Besse Locket to her mother. Proverb, Cheshire.” Ray's North Country Words, p. 52, ed. 1768. “The word [aroint] is still in common use in Cheshire; and what is remarkable is, that, according to Ray, it is still coupled with a witch, as ‘rynt you, witch, quoth Besse Locket to her mother,’ which is given as a Cheshire proverb; but which, as the term sounded in my ears when I once heard it pronounced, I should not have hesitated to spell aroint. I have also seen it spelled, and by a Cheshire man of good information, runt; nor is it at all unlikely that it is the same exclamation which in Lancashire is pronounced and spelled areawt, as equivalent to get out or away with thee. But it is most common in the middle parts of Cheshire; and there used, chiefly by milkmaids when milking. When a cow happens to stand improperly, in a dirty place, or with one of her sides so near a wall, a fence, a tree, or another cow, that the milker cannot readily come at the udder, or to her neck, to tie her up in her boose, or stall, —in such cases, the milkmaid, whilst she pushes the animal to a more convenient place, seldom fails to exclaim, ‘ Aroint thee, lovey (or bonny), aroint thee:’ using a coarser and harsher epithet, should the cow not move at the first bidding.” Boucher's Glossary of Arch. and Prov. Words. “A lady well acquainted with the dialect of Cheshire informed me that it [Aroint] is still in use there. For example, if the cow presses too close to the maid who is milking her, she will give the animal a push, saying at the same time ‘'Roint thee!’ by which she means ‘stand off.’ To this the cow is so well used, that even the word is often sufficient.” Nares's Gloss. “Rynt thee is an expression used by milkmaids to a cow when she has been milked, to bid her get out of the way. Ash calls it local.” Wilbraham's Attempt at a Gloss. of some Words used in Cheshire. In Hearne's Ectypa Varia, etc., 1737, is a print representing the Saviour harrowing hell, in which Satan is blowing a horn, with the words “Out, out, arongt” over his head, perhaps to express the sounds of the horn. (Hunter, in his New Illustr. of Shakespeare, vol. ii. p. 166, has cited an example of“araunte thee” from a passage of a book about Perkin Warbeck, with which he became acquainted through the medium of The Monthly Mirror; but undoubtedly no such book exists; the title and passage of it given in The M. M. are forgeries, and I should have said very clumsy ones, had they not deceived so experienced an antiquary as my old friend Joseph Hunter.)