Ok, I’ve poked around, but can’t seem to find this info. In The Wizard of Oz, what are the names of the Witches qand their respective directions? I know that Glinda was the Good witch of the north, but who were the others? Did they have names? What about south? Was there a good witch down there too? Someone tell me which witch is which! 
North and south had good witches. East and west had bad ones. IIRC, only Glinda was ever named.
(Also, if it matters, the Wizard of Oz finally returned to Oz, in about the 4th book I think, and became a pupil of Glinda, learning real magic instead of humbuggery.)
In the books, Glinda was actually the good witch of the South (from Quadling Country, to be exact). The movie combined her with good witch of the North (Gilliken Country). The nameless Good Witch of the North met Dorothy in Munchkinland and explained who she’d just killed. After leaving the Emerald City, Dorothy and Co. sought out Glinda in the South, and (again in the book) Glinda used her magic Golden Cap to return her to Kansas, sans her silver slippers.
The witch crushed underneath Dorothy’s house was the Wicked Witch of the East (a.k.a. Munchkin Country). The other witch was the Wicked Witch of the West (Winkie Country).
Other Oz witches were Mombi, who had the ability to change her heads from a selection of such, and Ozma, the magical ruler of Oz.
BZZZTTTT!!!
Mombi was the witch in the North to whom the Wizard entrusted the sequestering of the disguised Ozma. (In the earlier books, he was actually Machiavellian, not just a charming humbug. As Ozma was the legitimate ruler of Oz, the Wizard had her memory wiped and her turned into a boy, then left her as the servant of Mombi.)
I cannot recall the name of the Head-Swapping magic user at this moment, and my younger daughter now has posession of my Oz books, but I do recall that the illustration looked just like a Gibson Girl…
The multi-headed person was Princess Langwidere, who was ruling, in a sense, the kingdom of Ev while the royal family of Ev was imprisoned by the Nome King.
In the stage play that was scripted by Baum, the Good Witch of the North is named Locasta. This doesn’t appear in any of the books written by Baum. Ruth Thompson, who wrote some of the Oz books that are considered “official” calls the GW of the North “Tattypoo.” I’m not really sure who gets to decide which books are official Oz books. The series published by Reilly & Lee has 40 books, the first fourteen were written by Baum. The series of 40 is usually considered official, but some purists maintain it is only the first fourteen.
Okay, now I may be crazy but I’d swear in the movie version, Glinda calls the Wicked Witch of the West (the non-squooshed one) by name (not “Wicked Witch of the West” but by a woman’s name) when she speaks to her. Does this happen or should I stop drinking before watching movies?
I think you’re imagining things, evilbeth, unless you’re thinking of her when she was Miss Gulch.
Dr. Fidelius, shame on me! I got confused with the 1985 film, “Return to Oz.” That film combined Mombi with Princess Langwidere, the head-swapping witch (played by Jean Marsh). They also threw in the Nome King for good measure.
Okay, I just checked out some facts on an Oz website. In later books, the Good Witch of the North was referred to as Locasta, with Glinda being from the South. They came into power after conquering two weaker, evil witches, Mombi and Singra. Neither one of these are the Wicked Witches of the East/West. Mombi later put a spell on Princess Ozma, turning her into a little boy nicknamed Tip.
The Wicked Witches were never given names in the official books. In the post-modern revisionary story, “Wicked”, the WW of the West was named Elphaba, while the East was named Nessarose.
For some reason, the name “Gaylette” comes to mind for the Quadling goodwitch. I don’t have a citation for this, but I’m sure this is coming from some valid archive in my brain. Can someone else recall this name?
Sorry, I meant the Gillikin goodwitch was named Gaylette.
Most of this has been dealt with (Tattypoo for the GWN (Good Witch of the North)), etc.
However, I’d swear that somewhere, there was a comment in a story that before the wizard came, there were 8 witches, 4 good, 4 bad, one in each quadrant. Glinda and the GWN took out their evil counterparts (Mombi was one), and the Wicked Witches of the East and West dealt with their good counterparts. The remaining four witchs were deadlocked until the Wizard showed up, built the Emerald City in the center of Oz and did his best not to screw up the balance of power and tried to preserve the state of mutually assured destruction (so to speak).
I’m fairly certain that this wasn’t in the Cannonical 40, but wasn’t in an “adult” Oz book like Wicked either (I’ve been an Oz fan for 30 years, and thought Wicked was fascinating, except for the ending)
(And what, exactly, was the GWN doing in Munchkinland (the Eastern quadrant) anyway?
And finally, why didn’t Glinda, who’s far more powerful than any other person in Oz (possibly including Ozma) just do the magic equivilant of a tac-nuke on the WWW and the WWE, rather than let the Winkies and Munchkins languish in durance vile?
Fenris
(Evilbeth: Glinda, in the movie, calls the WWW “You horrid thing” or “You evil creature” or somesuch. But with that helium voice it’s hard to decipher)
Oh, since no one has posted this, let me bring up the colors: Blue for Munchkins, Yellow for Winkiews, Red for Quadlings, Purple for Gillikans, and of course Green for Emerald Citizens.
In the first book, Dorothy wore a blue and white checked dress. The Munchkins thought she was half witch, because white was the color of witches.
And Fenris, yes Glinda was the most powerful person in Oz…AFTER Dorothy rubbed out the two wicked witches! When the witches were alive they were as powerful as Glinda was. I’m sure Glinda wanted to do something about them but was unable to. The Good Witch of the North seems to have been a bit of a dud though. I can’t remember her appearing in any of the Baum books, except the first one, where she was the first witch Dorothy met.
Did she have any sort of personality at all? Was her character ever developed?
Don’t forget: east is on the left, west is on the right. Boy did that ever confuse me as a kid! Has anyone ever tried to explain this?
Yeah, but…
Ok, we’re getting into a who’d win sort of thing here, but I have trouble reconciling the All Powerful Glinda with one who couldn’t easily have squashed the WWE and the WWW. Lemme put it this way: I don’t see Glinda being particularly bothered by either a sudden downpour or a house being dropped on her.
On the other hand, it could be explained away by saying that the Silver Slippers (pretty powerful artifacts) were used to protect the WWW and the WWE from Glinda (as I recall, they were the second toughest artifacts, following the Nome King’s wishing belt)
Gawd, I’m a fanboy. :rolleyes:
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Yeah, in one of the icky-treacly-cutsey Ruth Plumly Thompson books, it turned out that “Tattypoo” <gag, retch, barf> was under some sort of enchantment. If I recall correctly, when the enchantment was broken, she changed from her apple cheeked self (from the Denslow illos) to a sweet young thang and lost her magic. I think.
It’s even worse than I thought. It turns out Mombi was behind the Good Witch’s disappearance :rolleyes: I just dug up a bit from a Wizard of Oz FAQ
I don’t care what ANYONE says. Thompson books are NOT cannon to me.
Also, in this FAQ, it says that
Fenris
Now, when did the spell get cast that stopped everyone from aging in Oz? How could there be a long line of kings and queens and a baby princess Ozma if no one ages?
That really creeped me out when I read the Oz books when I was around 10 or so. Sure, old people don’t get older, kids stay kids. But then Baum said that babies stay babies, FOREVER. He presented this as a good thing, since you would be taken care of for the rest of your life. But can you imagine a hundred year old baby? And what about the parents who have to care for a newborn baby for the rest of eternity?
Oh, and I forgot the name of those tiger/bear things. What were they called again?
Oh, and my favorite characters? The Glass Cat and the Woozy. The Glass Cat was really cool, because it was cynical and sarcastic and superior and didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the earnest characters.
There was just now a book that dealt with that. It was a badly failed book, but it tried to explain it. I can’t remember the title, though. I’ll try to dig it up. I just always assumed that when Ozma regained her throne, people quit aging. Things changed pretty dramatically around the time of Ozma of Oz
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Kahlidas (I’ve misspelled it, but close enough)
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Bungles, the Glass Cat rocked, as did Eureka, the Pink Kitten. I also always liked The Scarecrow, Tik-Tok, The Shaggy Man (who also had a pretty snotty streak) and…erm…whatshisname…the Nome King’s assistant who eventually took over for him. Kaliko?
And I had the hots for John R. Neill’s Polychrome! Yowza!!
Button-Bright’s the one who gave me the creeps: he always seemed near autistic.
My big problem was trying to reconcile the Wizard who had Pastoria…dealt with, the Wizard who gave the infant Ozma into Mombi’s care, the Wizard who told a 6(or so) year old girl to go out and try to kill a nigh-invincible evil witch with the cuddly Wizard from the later books…
Fenris
Temrinus Est:
WEST is on the left, EAST is on the right. I always thought it was the other way around, too, because of the phrase “north,south,east & west”, since we’re accustomed to reading left-to-right, it seemed obvious that east was on the left, since it came first in the phrase. But, of course, it’s the opposite.
Please don’t get us more confused than we already are!
Yes, I realize that the Oz map had them backwards. Did anyone ever answer Terminus Est on why the map was drawn backwards? Was Oz a mirror image of the real world? Or what?