Sea Witch

“ “I know what you want,” said the sea witch; “it is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess. ”

“ Forbidden by the worthy burghers to harbour in the town, she had selected, as more in unison with her wild and wandering life, and the mysterious character she claimed, a lonely abode, once a fisherman's lodge, on the rocky islet on the right of the outlet of Hurl Gate, still known as the Witch's Rock. Here she performed her unholy rites, and far and wide her fame spread as a sorceress. Seamen, as they shot through the dangerous pass, propitiated her; and those who would have fair winds sought them of her in full faith. The good came to her for good, and the evil for evil. ”

“ Of all the witches that may be found in all the fairy tales ever told there is none more delightfully sociable than the Sand Witch. This Witch, who lives underneath the heaps of sand at the ocean's edge, where, in the summertime, you dig with your shovel, is not at all like other witches. She never rides on a broomstick, and she never goes down chimneys. In the first place there are no broomsticks or chimneys on the beach at the sea-shore, and in the second place she would not know how to ride on a broomstick or climb down a chimney, if there were. ”

“ She lives in the present, Nature's own child. The ocean that gave her to us seems to have claimed her as its own. She loves the sea in all its moods. When the storm was at its fiercest and the huge waves swept over us, she insisted on being on deck, and clapped her hands and laughed in glee, as thoughtless of danger as one of Mother Cary's chickens. Now, when this horrible calm is drawing the very life out of us all, she sings and laughs and is merry; or, when not merry, wears a calm, passionless, almost soulless face. I don't wonder that the men think that she is a witch. ”

“ My Princess, behold in me your husband. I am free from the spell of the old man of the sea, who wanted me to become a sea monster and live under the ocean.
“I was changed into the shape of the ugly dwarf because I would not marry a mermaid who happened to fall in love with me one day while I was bathing, and she called upon a sea witch to change me into a sea monster, but I escaped before I took on the sea shape, but not before I was changed into the ugly dwarf you saw this morning. ”

“ The Witch of Fraddam still floats up and down, over the seas, around the coast, in her coffin, followed by the crock, which seems like a punt in attendance on a jolly-boat. She still works mischief, stirring up the sea with her ladle and broom till the waves swell into mountains, which heave off from their crests, so much mist and foam, that these wild wanderers of the winds can scarcely be seen through the mist. Woe to the mariner who sees the witch!
The Lord of Pengerswick alone had power over her. ”

“ There is true poetry in such a scene as this, beauty fit to move the heart of an anchorite. No wonder the sailor loves his ship like a mistress; no wonder he discourses of her charms with the eloquence of true love and confiding trust; no landsman can be more enamored of his promised bride.
But the craft to which we especially refer at the present writing, was a coquette of the first class, beautiful in the extreme, and richly meriting the name that her owners had placed in golden letters on her stern—the "Sea Witch." ”

“ A terrible whirlpool, where the waves rushed furiously round and round, was the next danger that they met. Then, when they were free of that, a great storm arose, and every fierce and ugly fish and monster that ever lived in the sea came rushing at the boat from out the foaming waves, roaring as if they were going to devour them.
‘Have no fear,’ said the palmer to Guyon. ‘These ugly shapes were only made by the wicked witch to frighten you.’
With his palmer’s staff he smote the sea. [Pg 55] The waves sank down to rest, and all the ugly monsters vanished away. ”

“ Then, guided by the loosed spirit of the sleeping Chluas, they sped forward on the ocean, driven by a freshening breeze. All the while the spirit-light, floating above the waves, led them on.
It was some two hours before dawn when they descried, in the distance, the lighted tower of the witch, upon an island. A dull, red flame shot out from it, and, as it turned for ever on itself, this flame lighted the sea around like a revolving wheel, clear and red against the surrounding blackness. ”

“ There are none that beg in the Countrey, but there be Witches too many, bottle-bellied Witches amongst the Quakers, and others that produce many strange apparitions if you will believe report, of a Shallop at Sea man’d with women; of a Ship, and a great red Horse standing by the main-mast, the Ship being in a small Cove to the East-ward vanished of a suddain. Of a Witch that appeared aboard of a Ship twenty leagues to Sea to a Mariner who took up the Carpenters broad Axe and cleft her head with it, the Witch dying of the wound at home, with such like bugbears and Terriculamentaes. ”

“ Father is a wrecker and mother is a witch. No one will come to us."
"Is your mother a witch?"
"She is," answered Tord, quite untroubled. "In stormy weather she rides out on a sea to meet the ships over which the waves are washing, and those who are carried overboard are hers."
"What does she do with them?" asked Berg.
"Oh, a witch always needs corpses. She makes ointments out of them, or perhaps she eats them. On moonlight nights she sits in the surf, where it is whitest, and the spray dashes over her. They say that she sits and searches for shipwrecked children's fingers and eyes." ”

“ This passage astonished every one, even her warmest admirers, and well it might, for it has never been equalled by a ship of her tonnage and not often excelled even by larger vessels. This performance of the Sea Witch was the more remarkable as she had rounded Cape Horn during the Antarctic midwinter. ”

“ Now it chanced that she was close to the seashore, and she, being minded to be drowned, rather than be overtaken by so foul a beast, ran to the very edge of the waves. There, by good hap, she saw a little shallop lying, in which the fisherman, an old man and poor, lay asleep, the while his nets were drying. Into this she leapt, and pushing off the shallop with an oar, was safe awhile. The monster would not venture on the sea, for it was not to his liking, and so set out to return to his mistress the witch, to tell her how his quest had failed. But first he turned upon the palfrey and rent it. ”

“ She will not allow a single egg-shell to go out of her sight without first making a hole through it, knocking out its bottom in short, in case, as she has more than once seriously told me, a witch should get hold of it and use it as a boat, in which to set to sea in order to raise violent storms, in which the ablest seamanship could not possibly save hundreds of vessels from being miserably wrecked! ”

“ This is akin to the theme that Matthew Arnold uses, [152] though with a different treatment, showing similarity to Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of The Little Mermaid. The cailleachuisge, or the water-witch, and the maighdeanmhara, the mermaid, and the kelpie, the sea-beast, are cursed with dæmonic spells and live forever in their witchery. When mortals forsake the earth and follow them their children are beings that have no souls. ”

“ Witch-Wife She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.
She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun 'tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.
She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine. ”

“ The way they do with the critters there is a little the cutest. If they want to tell for sartin if an old woman's a real witch, they throw her into a pond. If she's drownded she's no witch; but if she swims, its gospel proof she is—coz what old woman could swim if she warn't a nat'ral witch. They then tie her to a stake and set fire to her."
"Mit your leave, goot peoplesh, I vill shay vat dey doesh mit vitches in mine countree," said the Dutch burgher, deliberately taking the pipe from his mouth. ”

“ The sea has no sense and no pity. If the steamer had been smaller and not made of thick iron, the waves would have crushed it to pieces without the slightest compunction, and would have devoured all the people in it with no distinction of saints or sinners. The steamer had the same cruel and meaningless expression. This monster with its huge beak was dashing onwards, cutting millions of waves in its path; ”

“ The great waves roar far above her head, in foaming whirlpools that might sink a war-fleet, but the eggshell rides triumphantly among them, dancing upon their crests and shipping never a drop of water on its passage. Nor can the best efforts of the wind stay its speed. Only once does it deviate from its course, when a straining ship, its spars and sails all splintered and riven, drives through the mist to leeward. As she nears it, the witch rises to her feet, throws out one skinny hand towards it, and shrieks an incantation down the wind. ”

“ So a sail it was. They dropped down around the island and, skimming along over a faultless sea, came at last just as the shadows were deepening to Witches Cove.
“Let’s drop anchor and have our supper here,” suggested Pearl.
“Three gray witches may rise from the water and ask to join us,” said Ruth with a low laugh.
[202]
“Let them,” said Pearl, sending the anchor with a plunk into the sea. “There are worse creatures about than gray witches. Here’s hoping they don’t come too close to us.” ”

“ I want to see something so dazzling that it takes my breath away. I want to be initiated into the mysterious beauty of such a mermaid body, and I ask of you, what can I make of lovely limbs with a piece of gauze spread over them? Good heavens! No, she should have been naked as a wave and with the wild lure of the sea about her. Her skin should have had something of the phosphorescence of the summer ocean and her hair something of the black, tangled horror of the seaweed. ”

“ Such were the sirens who would have compassed the destruction of Odysseus. Such are the mermaids, to wed with one of whom must bring unutterable woe upon any of the sons of men. In lonely far-off places by the sea there still are tales of exquisite melodies heard in the gloaming, or at night when the moon makes a silver pathway across the water; still are there stories of women whose home is in the depths of the ocean, and who come to charm away men's souls by their beauty and by their pitiful longing for human love. ”

“ She rose to her feet, flung up head and arms; her bosom heaved with a breath of ecstasy, her lips parted, her eyes shone; the glory, power, magic, of the deep flashed into visible embodiment in her. The perfect woman, possessed by the spirit of the sea, unawares took worship of the boy's heart. To seal her supremacy, a wave leaping in the gorge broke to him the unnoted advance of the tide. ”

“ The apparition made a wondrous stir on deck. To those who had ever heard of such a being, it appeared that the Witch of the Moon, in all the indescribable magic of her beauty, had been translated into flesh. Men seemed upon the instant to find an errand to that quarter of the ship. Captain Eliphalet Wrye, who had been watching with great unconcern a transfer whose significance seemed to him quite ordinary, came forward in haste, eager to do the honours of his ship, and marvelling beyond measure at such a guest. ”

“ One by one, like death candles, lights were appearing. Here one, there one, they formed at last the flaming outline of a ship’s deck. All had been burned or blown away but the stout hull that for so many years had done battle with the waves. For an hour these burned brightly. Then, one by one they blinked out. The tide was rising. The sea had come to the rescue. It was extinguishing the fire. On the morrow the black skeleton of a gallant ship would show there above the restless waves. ”

“ The King and Queen embraced each other, and she told him the whole story—how the Witch came to the ship when they were all asleep and sent her off in the boat. After she had gone so far that she could not see the ship, she sailed on through darkness until she landed beside a three-headed Giant. The Giant wished her to marry him, but she refused ”

“ To the eyes of the ignorant and superstitious such a mysterious glow, suddenly lighting up the sea in the dusk of the evening, might well appear a phantom ship, hung with burning lamps, bearing down on the devoted islands, and in the stillness of night the roar of the surf on the barrier reef might sound in their ears like the voice of the demon calling for his prey. ”

“ With lips parted, and eyes dim with wonder, he sat idle in his boat and listened, listening till the sea-mists crept round him, and the wandering moon stained his brown limbs with silver.
And one evening he called to her, and said: ‘Little Mermaid, little Mermaid, I love thee. Take me for thy bridegroom, for I love thee.’
But the Mermaid shook her head. ‘Thou hast a human soul,’ she answered. ‘If only thou wouldst send away thy soul, then could I love thee.’
And the young Fisherman said to himself, ‘Of what use is my soul to me? I cannot see it. I may not touch it. ”

“ During next lines Black Witch raises arms aloft in supplication and backs toward place of Mirth’s entrance.)
Black Witch (Moving backwards, hands aloft in earnest supplication.) Come, Wind of night! oh, Night Wind come! Thy blasting fury loose upon this world! (Pauses, drops arms, no response, again muses sadly.) Ah! Wind of Night, on which I’ve drifted through the sky these thousand years, hast thou too deserted me? (Again raises arms aloft and cries in desperation) Will none come forth to do my will? ”