Well I cant help but question the explanation for the witches and broomstick answer so I thought I would post another theory;
At one time the common people were very supersticious, every year they would save some of the wheat crop to plow into the field the next year to ensure a good crop. Witches would steal the wheat from them during the year, so they started attaching the wheat to a stick and using it as a broom. They thought this would hide it from the witches, but instead they would come and fly away with the broom and destroying any hope for a good crop the next year. Thats what I heard anyway.
You got it backwards, witches didn’t ride broomsticks, the witches fly under their natural power and carried the broomsticks with them.
Broomsticks are the most persecuted and hated of all religious practicioners. From earliest days, hate-filled and prejudiced housewifes (and others) grabbed broomsticks, suddenly, around the throat, and rubbed their arses on the ground furiously. Thousands of broomsticks were beaten to death in this way.
Treated as slaves and worse than slaves, broomsticks were relegated to the darkest closets, were not fed with the family, were kept naked and subservient. Disney’s FANTASIA has a scene where Mickey chops a broomstick to pieces, and audiences even today laugh and cheer!
In the Middle Ages, a few good-hearted wiccans tried to save broomsticks from this involuntary slavery, by rescuing them and flying them to safety. Wiccans can fly under their own natural powers, although they usually keep this secret. The nasty, broomstick-hating Christians saw the witches flying away with the broomstick, and attributed the power of flight to the broomstick! This only engendered more fear and distrust, leading to the great broomstick fires of 1542 in Milano, Italy, when thousand of broomsticks were burned at the stake. The sight of all those broomsticks, tied to the stake, with straw all around them to ignite the fire… would have brought a tear to your eye.
In some locations nowadays, broomsticks are actually extinct or have been replaced by lifeless plastic copies.
First that thing in Banshee’s flame thread in the BBQ Pit, then the post in the “Snake Cruelty” thread in Mailbag Comments, now this. I think Dex has lost it.
But if you check the Necronomicon (the Junior Woodchucks’ Guidebook for Witches, Warlacks and Things that Go Bump in the Night), you’ll will find there a recipe for a curse inducing sarcasm. When I was a young lad, a neighbourhood lady (who lived in a gingerbread house, by the way) put that curse on me, and sometimes the sarcasm uncontrollably leaks out. Especially so when Cecil has published a fairly well authenticated story, and yet some posters “know better” because they were told something different by a friend or a teacher or a preacher or a wiccan or a parent or …
The worst case I had was when Cecil had published a definitive explanation of the phrase “not over until the fat lady sings”, and yet people were still posting what they had “heard”. That ol’ curse had me typing like crazy for days.
Just as an addendum to Dex’s post. If you are going to get a copy of the Necronomicon, be sure to get one with the original illustrations. The Disney version is an abomination.
Dr. Dee’s translation is considered canonical, but he was working from the notes left by Baron Munchausen. There is much he left out as well. Personally, I’ve found the best modern English translation to be Dr. Seuss’.
“I see you
Cthulhu…”
“Seven shaggy shoggoths
on a sad shoggoth stroll…”
etc.
And be sure to pick up a concordance.
Dr. Fidelius, Charlatan
Associate Curator Anomalous Paleontology, Miskatonic University
Homo vult decipi; decipiatur
Apart from the dubiousness of the theory Cecil outlines, I think it offers some intriguing – and potentially profitable – marketing possibilities for the folks at Hallmark, not to mention O-Cedar.