Pictures of Terry Pratchett's witches marked the occasion of Halloween 2019.
This year's All Hallows' Eve is a very suitable time of year for a little more light witch material.
Witches Abroad, which has been mentioned in connection with snakes, is one of the funniest of the Witches of Lancre series. This quotation is typical:
“On nights such as this, witches are abroad. Well, not actually abroad. They don't like the food and you can't trust the water and the shamans always hog the deckchairs.”
However, when duty calls the three witches take to the air for some long journeys involving 'foreign parts':
This special edition of Equal Rites reminds me of a poem:
This evocative little poem by Walter de la Mare makes the witches seem like a colony of swarming bats:
The Ride-by-Nights
Up on their brooms the Witches stream,
Crooked and black in the crescent's gleam,
One foot high, and one foot low,
Bearded, cloaked, and cowled, they go.
'Neath Charlie's Wane they twitter and tweet,
And away they swarm 'neath the Dragon's feet,
With a whoop and a flutter they swing and sway,
And surge pell-mell down the Milky Way.
Between the legs of the glittering Chair
They hover and squeak in the empty air.
Then round they swoop past the glimmering Lion
To where Sirius barks behind huge Orion;
Up, then, and over to wheel amain
Under the silver, and home again.
Crooked and black in the crescent's gleam,
One foot high, and one foot low,
Bearded, cloaked, and cowled, they go.
'Neath Charlie's Wane they twitter and tweet,
And away they swarm 'neath the Dragon's feet,
With a whoop and a flutter they swing and sway,
And surge pell-mell down the Milky Way.
Between the legs of the glittering Chair
They hover and squeak in the empty air.
Then round they swoop past the glimmering Lion
To where Sirius barks behind huge Orion;
Up, then, and over to wheel amain
Under the silver, and home again.
