Have Witches Always Flown on Broomsticks?
BY LEGEND, BROOMSTICKS ARE THE MOST common means
of transportation for witches. A popular American writer of the
nineteenth century, Oliver Wendell Holmes, penned this rhyme on the
subject:
In Essex county there’s many a roof
Well known to him of the cloven hoof;
The small square windows are full in view
Which the midnight hags went sailing
through,
On their well-trained broomsticks
mounted high,
Seen like shadows against the sky;
Crossing the track of owls and bats,
Hugging before them their coal-black cats.
Women were more likely than men to use this means of travel, perhaps because the broom is used for domestic chores, which men avoided. Sorcerers, when they did fly, usually rode on pitchforks. For reasons never explained, witches in Europe and America were seen flying more often than those in Britain.
Witches were sometimes accused of flying out to sea
to create a storm.
Witches were rumored to rub their broomsticks
with a magical ointment to make them fly. Then, according to
legend, they rode straight out of the chimney. This colorful
exaggeration derived from the real practice of pushing a broom up a
chimney to let neighbors know one was away from home. Still, it
sounds a bit like traveling by floo powder.
If villagers suspected that witches were flying
about they would ring church bells, which reportedly had the power
to knock witches off broomsticks.
One witch has emerged from the chimney on her broomstick, and another is halfway up it, in this sixteenth-century woodcut.
