The Witch's Downfall
How a Witch Paid the Price for Kindness
Hello lovely people, I hope you’re all doing much better than well! I’m back to share a folktale with you all that breaks my witchy heart.
In most Flemish folktales, the people and especially farmers who are most often targeted by witches, don’t want to have anything to do with those who brew potions and chant spells. They are more than happy to make a detour if they have to pass by a witch’s cottage, but this isn’t the case in a tale I recently discovered.
In this folktale, we meet a farmer who is struggling financially. Besides despairing, there’s not much for him to do besides selling his furniture at a local market. While he’s there he overhears some people talking about a witch who lives not far away from his farm. A light bulb goes off in his head, a light bulb that perhaps never should have emitted any light at all for the witch’s sake.
He goes home. The next day, he sings while he gets out of bed, whistles while he heats some milk on the stove, and greatly confuses his wife as he closes the door behind him with a broad smile. Weren’t they about to lose everything they had worked so hard for all those years?
Gloomy clouds gathered in the bleak sky, tempestuous rain poured down, but all the farmer saw was sunshine, although his heart sank a little bit when he saw that the witch lived in a tumbledown cottage. It was so unsteady that it seemed to sway to the left every time a gust of wind made the bramble bushes which surrounded her cottage shudder. It was nothing like the palace with golden gargoyles and a bejeweled doorknob as he had expected, but then he remembered that witches were an odd sort of people. The cracks in the timber and broken glass in the filthy windows didn’t mean anything at all.
He knocked at the door, ‘woman,’ he said, ‘you must help me.’ her eyes had been warm when she opened the door, but they changed into something cold as soon as he started to speak. He had the feeling that they were dead. ‘Poverty has been affecting me and my family,’ he continued, ‘I will lose my farm, and I need money.’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘Well… you’re a witch. Surely you can use those skills of yours for a good cause? Conjure some money? I don’t imagine it’s such a hard thing to do. Must be fairly easy, right?’
‘You’re knocking on the wrong door,’ she said, ‘go into the woods, walk past the sacred gnarled tree and follow the stream. There you’ll see a house. Knock on that door and you will have what your heart desires.’
The farmer did as he had been instructed to do, but the witch who lived so far away from society wasn’t too eager to help him either. The farmer was determined not to leave her alone until she agreed. He had heard there were ghosts in these woods, but he didn’t care. He was prepared to sleep against the witch’s door and fight them off with his bare hands if necessary. He would have money.
After hours of arguing, she finally relented. But there was one condition: he must never tell anyone where he got the money from.
‘Flames will eat your flesh and bones until there’s nothing left but a heap of ash that will smell just as horrible as your little, rotten heart already does,’ she said.
The farmer still wouldn’t leave the witch alone. She had to promise him that he could return and ask for more as often as he deemed necessary. The witch would have none of it, but because she wanted to return to her grimoires, she eventually agreed.
Not much time went by before the farmer returned to the witch’s cottage. Of course, he needed more money. The witch had been stingy. There had been enough to clear his debts and buy new furniture, but not enough to commission a family portrait.
‘Fine,’ the witch said, ‘but every time I conjure money, my body and soul weaken, so you will have less than last time.’
‘I won’t have less, I want more,’ the farmer said, ‘you’ll have to teach me the dark arts.’
This was an idea the witch did like, there’s after all no better occupation than teaching someone magic, but she knew he would be a bad pupil. She didn’t think the farmer was intelligent enough to do something as simple as making a vase float from one corner of the room to the other. Could someone like him possess the extraordinary talents, determination, and devotion necessary to practise magic?
No. Of course not. He gave up after five minutes. He was blind to the magical powers that dwelled in the very air which he breathed. Learning required too much effort, but he still wanted money and he wanted it now.
‘I can’t tell where I got the money from,’ the man said suddenly, ‘but I can tell the authorities that you’re a witch. You’ll burn before you can burn me.’
The witch let out a ghastly scream, the trees in the forest shrieked with her, and some even believe that the devil himself cried that night. She worked herself to death. The excessive use of magic for conjuring consumed her body and soul while the farmer became richer and richer and she became poorer and poorer.
What I don’t quite understand about this folktale is why the witch didn’t burn him, turning this ending into such a sad one as the greedy farmer continues to live a happy life, but I like to imagine that there’s a variant of this tale out there somewhere where the witch rewards evil with evil.
Thank you for reading! If you would like to read more stories from the world of Flemish folklore, check out my books Flemish Folktales Retold and The Witches of Flemish Folklore. You can also become a paid subscriber here or on Ko-fi.
Also, don’t forget to think of witches, ghosts, and other unearthly beings that fly in the sky during the holidays! :-)
Sounds all too familiar.