The Witch At Night She Comes
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The Witch
The witch, the witch,
At night she comes.
Shut out your light
Or she'll taste your thumb.
She'll smell it first,
She'll lick it next,
Then she'll decide
That you're the best.
She'll take you away
On her wicked broom,
She'll fly you around
The weird, weird moon.
She'll take you away
To her home,
And start fixin' – the chrome.
You'll try to stop her
But never win!
For she's got her mind
Set on you for din' ...
by Leslie Anneliese, age 10
Halloween And Witches
The Witch is a poem for Halloween written as a child from a long time ago.
Settling down in front of the black and white keyboard of our piano as a little girl, I would play spooky minor chords while chanting these “scary” words.
Everyone kindly feigned fright and due alarm at this story that predicted one’s demise by becoming a witch's dinner!
I wonder now how I learned that witches eat children for dinner. It's a theme also found in the Disney movie Hocus Pocus. I have a fun blog post about that movie entitled Hocus Pocus Halloween.
Apparently, there's an archetype in our society where witches are wicked and we worry about being consumed for dinner like in the story of Hansel and Gretel.
Even Shakespeare includes a cautionary tale about witches in Macbeth:
“Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.”
“We see the evil queen carrying her basket of poisoned apples to innocent Snow White.
We see the Wicked Witch of the West flying on her broomstick, with her winged monkeys, chasing Dorothy and her friends.
We see the squinty-eyed old woman of Hansel and Gretel heating up her black oven, preparing to eat the candy-fattened children.”
Perhaps the notion that everything seems to be food for something else lurks beneath our awareness and is expressed in these stories.
Yet, stories of good witches are also to be found with the television show Bewitched and there is a good witch in The Wizard of Oz. The theatrical play Wicked also takes a look at our witches in the land of Oz from another perspective.
