There is a very strong tradition of religious mysticism in older works, say of Milton, Blake, Dante, and Virgil, to name a few. An offshoot of that would be anything that a christian worldview would regard as evil, including witchcraft. The spell of the Weird Sisters from Shakespeare's Macbeth is one of those examples. Students of theater learn to call it "the Scottish play", as the superstition indicates the spell may at one time have been real or reflective of real fears.
1 WITCH. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew’d.
2 WITCH. Thrice and once, the hedge-pig whin’d.
3 WITCH. Harpier cries:—’tis time! ’tis time!
1 WITCH. Round about the caldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.—
Toad, that under cold stone,
Days and nights has thirty-one;
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot!
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
2 WITCH. Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
3 WITCH. Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf;
Witches’ mummy; maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark;
Root of hemlock digg’d i the dark;
Liver of blaspheming Jew;
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse;
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips;
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,—
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingrediants of our caldron.
ALL. Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
2 WITCH. Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
The Hag by Robert Herrick also has a witchy theme, one where no mention of what she may do to an individual is necessary to cultivate an aura of fear.
The Hag is astride,
This night for to ride;
The Devill and shee together:
Through thick, and through thin,
Now out, and then in,
Though ne’r so foule be the weather.
A Thorn or a Burr
She takes for a Spurre:
With a lash of a Bramble she rides now,
Through Brakes and through Bryars,
O’re Ditches, and Mires,
She followes the Spirit that guides now.
No Beast, for his food,
Dares now range the wood;
But husht in his laire he lies lurking:
While mischiefs, by these,
On Land and on Seas,
At noone of Night are working,
The storme will arise,
And trouble the skies;
This night, and more for the wonder,
The ghost from the Tomb
Affrighted shall come,
Cal’d out by the clap of the Thunder.
Another with a salient, frightening female is Dylan Thomas's Love in the Asylum, about an inpatient who is visited by either a shape-shifting magical creature or a figment of his imagination.
A stranger has come
To share my room in the house not right in the head,
A girl mad as birds
To share my room in the house not right in the head,
A girl mad as birds
Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume.
Strait in the mazed bed
She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds
Strait in the mazed bed
She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds
Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room,
At large as the dead,
Or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards.
At large as the dead,
Or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards.
She has come possessed
Who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall,
Possessed by the skies
Who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall,
Possessed by the skies
She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dust
Yet raves at her will
On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.
Yet raves at her will
On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.
And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last
I may without fail
Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.
I may without fail
Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.
I didn't set out to choose poems with all-female subjects of fear, but it did end up working that way. For the male poet, especially in these early days of western literature, their culture cultivated a bit of mystique around the female. I didn't do a comparison for poems about witches versus wizards, but I imagine the witch column would come out much greater. In terms of fear, a woman on the fringes of your community being able to control you is likely much more frightening than a powerful man who isolates himself from society (drawing on mythical stereotypes here for my analysis. I'm sure a folkloric expert could give me more concrete examples). Not only could the witch control others, she can affect flight, either via the broom, a familiar, or a transmogrification of shape, and presumably harm or kill anyone she pleased. Her credo being far outside of the typical christian mores of the time would mean those motivations wouldn't be understood by the rest of the community, and this would likely amp up the amount of fear her abilities could generate.
Perhaps I will compare these to modern poems dealing with fear and see how much has changed!
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