Year of the Witch: The Witch of Fraddam

There are fairy tales that are about witches and their personal relationships with Hell, and then there are Ruth Manning-Sanders’ fairy tales about witches and their personal relationships with Hell – including that memorable time in ‘The Blackstairs Mountain’ when a bunch of witches threw an absolutely feral party and Satan showed up to play a few tunes, and that other time in ‘Old Witch Boneyleg’ when Satan was invited to a dinner party but had to rescue his witch bestie from her own oven instead. Fairy tale theology is flexible, is what I’m saying, and witches hang out with whoever the quite literal hell they choose.

In this Cornish story, from Ruth Manning-Sanders’ collection Peter and the Piskies, we are introduced to the Witch of Fraddam and her arch-nemesis Marec the Enchanter. She is doing her level best to become a rural supervillain, raising storms, blighting crops and ill-wishing people and beasts alike. Marec the Enchanter keeps thwarting her. One night the witch leaps astride a ragwort stalk and swoops off to a cliff where she opens a tunnel in a very showy and destructive way. From the mouth of it emerges a demon.

He casually greets the witch as a friend, which she’s not having in the least. He’s supposed to be helping her defeat her nemesis. “Marec the Enchanter still walks the earth, despite all I can do, and all you promised!” she shrieks. “Did I promise,” the demon remarks delicately. “I rather think, madam, that I merely made a bargain.” The witch does not have much patience with his ‘hair-splitting’. She screams at him, he grins at her, and the upshot of it all is that he irritates her into signing over her soul. This is a painful process. He strips off a piece of skin from her forearm, writes up a contract in her blood and gets her to sign.

Neither of them are terribly enthusiastic, which is understandable on the witch’s side and a bit offensive on the demon’s. He asks her what she wants. “To destr-r-r-roy the Enchanter Marec!” the witch screeches. The demon balks. That task is a lot harder than he is willing to take on, soul or no soul, so he weasels out of it by offering the witch advice and getting her to do all the legwork herself. There is a flower that grows blue streaked with white, blooming only at midnight, that will make an irresistibly sweet drink. Its berries are black streaked with purple and they will make a hell-broth. The sweet drink is a lure for Marec’s horse; the hell-broth is to be thrown upon the enchanter himself, to bring him under the witch’s power.

Step one: harvest the flower and berries. Step two: brew up the potions. Step three: set up an ambush. So far, so good – the witch is safely hidden behind a hedge, the sweet drink set out in a tub, the hell-broth in a crock at her elbow. Marec the Enchanter approaches and his horse is drawn to the fragrant contents of the tub. The witch is ready…she’s set…

Oh hey, guess what, Marec is telepathic. No, really, he ‘could hear her thoughts speaking’, divines the whole plan in a heartbeat and instructs his horse to kick over the tub instead of drinking. The tub tumbles into the crock, the crock knocks over the witch, the witch falls into the tub, the tub is now a COFFIN. Hear that wind blowing? The wind is the demon. He whisks up the coffin and drops it into the sea.

And so the witch becomes a sea-bound undead thing, floating about in her coffin, still raising storms with her whirling ladle – but the Enchanter Marec is still there to stop her, blowing his trumpet to calm the waves. Arch-enemies they remain, then, on and on without end.

This story is basically a superhero comic. It ought to be a superhero comic. Even damnation could not keep these nemeses apart and I think that’s beautiful.