John Masefield and the magic of Christmas Eve

The writer and poet John Masefield’s two children’s books The Midnight Folk (1927) and its sequel The Box of Delights (1935) have been previously mentioned on here because of the witch Sylvia Daisy Pouncer.

Sylvia Daisy plays a much larger part in The Midnight Folk than she does in The Box of Delights, but the latter book is of interest for other reasons. 

Masefield’s words create beautiful pictures in the imagination - the descriptions of winter and the Christmas season are particularly good - and invoke positive magical influences which are ideal for helping to counteract seasonal depression and the sinister forces that are active at this time of year. 

The story, which features magic, adventure, time travel, sinister wolves, brave children and the battle between good and evil, begins a few days before Christmas with the young hero Kay Harker returning from boarding school for the holidays; it ends on Christmas Eve with a joyful and triumphant midnight service in the Cathedral. 

It is interesting that Sylvia Daisy Pouncer and her evil associates try to prevent this service from being held. As was mentioned in this article, disrupting the midnight service on Christmas Eve is a big coup for practitioners of black magic.

A six-episode BBC TV series was made in 1984. Although for me books are always best and many associated films make me feel furious, disappointed and disgusted, I have found this series to be worth watching. I like the theme music very much.

The Box of Delights series is available on DVD, and some kind person has loaded the episodes onto YouTube.

I may come back to John Masefield’s children’s book again. In the meantime, I hope that this brief description and strong recommendation will inspire people who haven’t already discovered The Box of Delights to investigate this wonderful book and its TV adaption. 

Linwood Sleigh’s witches: Miss Heckatty, Mother Withershins and Winnie Jago

The Boy in the Ivy by Linwood Sleigh is yet another very good book that I remembered as containing modern-day witches and wanted to re-read. It is out of print; when I first saw how much was being charged for the few copies available, I decided to forget it! After a long time, I felt a sudden impulse to search online once again just in case; I found a copy on Amazon at a very reasonable price. When the book arrived, I found that it had been signed by the author!

Three of the witches it contains are of especial interest to me.

Miss Heckatty

When she first appears, Miss Heckatty is presented as a selfish, inconsiderate, annoying character, a ‘horrid old lady’. She moves some items a boy left on a window seat on the train to reserve it and takes the seat for herself. She knits during the journey and keeps jabbing the boy beside her with her elbow. 

Miss Heckatty is a learned lady; just like Dr. Melanie Powers in L. M. Boston’s An Enemy at Green Knowe, she is the scholarly type of witch. She too is hunting something – an extremely rare flower with magic properties as opposed to occult papers. Also just like Melanie Powers, Miss Heckatty goes to tea with a family because it gives her a pretext to get into a place where she hopes to find what she is looking for. The visit provides opportunities to look around and do some investigating. Witches often have ulterior motives for what they do.

Miss Heckatty is greedy: she takes the biggest cakes, but unlike Dr. Powers she does this openly. She is unkind to her worn, miserable, downtrodden students. 

Three fictional modern-day witches

I have always liked reading stories about witches, especially modern-day witches.

I no longer read such fiction just for enjoyment and escape: I am looking for examples of and information about the various types of unseen influences.

I remembered some books I read long ago that feature modern-day witches and have been re-reading them in the hope of finding relevant material. I already have enough for several articles: there are many connections to be made between some fictional modern-day witches and people I have encountered, and there are scenes in these books that remind me of incidents I have experienced myself. 

It is interesting that some of these witches were created by men, although on the basis of their first names one or two of them are often assumed to be women.

I will start with three very different modern-day witches of interest created by three very different authors. 

John Masefield’s witch: Sylvia Daisy Pouncer
The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, two children’s classic fantasy novels written by John Masefield, contain a character called Sylvia Daisy Pouncer, who is publicly a governess and secretly a witch.

She is said to have been modelled on Masefield's aunt, who raised him and his siblings after their parents died. She disapproved of his love of reading: she sent him as a teenager to live on a naval training ship to cure him of the filthy habit! She is also said to have been inspired by a hated governess who taught Masefield and his siblings.