~ THE WITCH"S WIND ~
by Mitch Bowen
O’ lore, o’ lore, of stories told, and many dark and frightening,
the one most fearful of them all, of wind and flood and lightening…
of fem fatale and winches’ spells, from Delilah to Athena,
t’was none so spiteful and be-damned as the witch’s wind… Katrina.
No place to run, no place to hide, for any earthly living creature.
A fateful day, a wicked tide… death, revenge, and Mother Nature.
Long ago, the tale begins, 'round 1832,
deep in the swamp, near Indian Village, just southwest of Baton Rouge,
born the last of thirteen children, four that died and nine survived,
on a misty bayou morning, a babe, in innocence, arrived.
Marie Agnes Deloise, her mother gave her name…
of native blood and Creole and from fishers’ kin, she came,
to live a brief and happy time along the sleepy Mississip’,
‘til trappers sold them all as slaves and put them on a smuggler’s ship.
But just before the vessel sailed off for the market in Savanna,
the sisters’ faces caught the eye of the mean and crafty Captain Dana.
“Look a’here, six bony misses… all of them with skin high-yellow.
With such light skin they’ll not fetch much, ‘cept maybe in a French bordello.”
And so was sealed their tattered fates, though saved from whips and harsher stations…
ne’er again to see their brothers, who were sent to work the rich plantations.
In the delta town of New Orleans, there dwelled a mistress, Madame Pearl.
She gave the Captain seven dollars and a trick, for every girl.
All the sisters, taken in, were ages nine to almost twenty.
The younger two, Marie and Jo Anna, were spared the patron’s dirty penny.
But, in time, as beauty blooms and both girls slowly came of age,
seduced by wine and fineries they learned to make a harlot’s wage.
Spellbound from quite early on, the sisters had no earthly notion;
they had come beneath the sway of a local Cajun witch’s potion.
Being raised in servitude, they fantasized a life of freedom,
their spirits being led astray; they joined some witches and their creedum.
Katrina was a handsome dame, who drew herself an inner circle;
the daughter of a merchantman, her smock was black, with red and purple.
She practiced with an older witch, Ophelia, from the old French Quarter,
who gave her vowels and sounds to utter, to call up storms from o’er the water.
Katrina befriended young Marie and sisters, Jo Anna and Iva Rae;
the older sisters having been “hired-out” to a roadhouse out in Santa Fe.
And so it was that Miss Katrina… Madame Katie, to her friends,
came to turn the Camp Street brothel into a secret witches’ den.
But then, in May of 1860, when the mayor said that, “Sin must go!”,
Miss Katie and her vixens brewed three deadly whirlwinds in a row.
All the witches, in their anger, had good call to be defiant,
'cause everyone in New Orleans knew the mayor was their biggest client.
One by one the storms blew in, each one a much more fearsome blow,
the last one came in late October, from or’ the Gulf of Mexico.
The city was in shock and shambles, ports and commerce were impeded.
The mayor tried to weather the storm, but in November, he was defeated.
They found him on a loading dock; a pistol lay beside his head…
the gun, still cocked, no blood, no wounds, no bullet spent… just a note, that read:
‘‘Soon enough, it’ll all be over. Soon enough, we’ll all be dead.”
Signed, “Mayor Stith… ” that’s all it said.
So, for a neglected length of time, for several years or so, thereafter,
New Orleans, nights were filled with madness, and the cackled pitch of witches’ laughter.
Bathed in oils and dressed in satin, with purses of the finest silk,
they strolled about on Bourbon street with johns and thieves and the Devil's ilk,
which made the good folk very angry. Soldered in their Christian ways,
they fought to have the brothels closed... but the witches and whores were there to stay!
But, even in the world of witches, goodness and charity have their agents.
And, Marie’s desire to be a “good witch” tried the other witches’ patience.
She and her sisters, when called to mass, refused to kneel in mischief’s circle,
choosing instead to do white magic, with milkfat and honey and glycerin-sparkle.
“’Tis your own jinxin’ that causes your wrinkles.” Marie spoke the truth that the others denied.
But, even Ophelia, the wise, old priestess, agreed with Marie, but then, shortly, she died.
But, just before dying she called for Marie and she secretly gave her The Book of Moriah;
the old witch’s handbook of vowels and potions, for calling up storms, both of ice, and of fire.
As Katrina and all the bad witches grew older, and their skin became all-the-more ugly and wrinkled,
they grew more and more jealous of Marie and her sisters, declaring; “With angel-dust, those girls are sprinkled!”
For, even then, at age thirty-seven, Marie showed no wrinkles, not even a line,
from her head to her toes, as smooth as an hourglass, no moles or blemishes scoring her time.
And so, all those winches, being hell-bent with envy, came to resent Miss Marie, more and more.
While the good witches prospered, commanding good business, Katrina and the others grew poorer and poorer.
And when all of their potions and all of their hexes and all of their curses and spells didn’t phase her,
they forswore their own credo and conjured a plan to “fix” Miss Marie, using scissors and razor…
except for her sisters who heard certain rumors, and fled “up the river” to save both their necks.
Neither of them err again to be heard from, some said, the fever, some said a hex.
The plan was pure childish; an ill-thought connivance, meant to embarrass Marie on her birthday.
They offered to sew her a red-velvet party dress; feigning good will, they lied in the worst way.
‘Twas their intention to measure her figure and make her a dress for her "Fortieth-Year Ball"…
then sprinkle the fabric with witch’s itch-powder, and when she put it on she’d be climbing the walls.
The weakest one, Donna, being somewhat retarded, slipped up and let on that something was doing.
So Marie played the role and indulged them a fitting, all along, knowing that trouble was brewing.
But witches have noses as keen as a she-wolf. They started smelling a cat in the bag.
Words turned from syrupy to spiteful and hateful, then Camille said, “We could turn her into a hag!”
The first strike was more of an ill-fated gesture; Camille, not intending to really do harm.
But as she pretended to stab with the scissors, Marie hit her hand with the back of her arm.
The room spun around them, some witches ran screaming; blood in the circle means someone will die.
Marie crumpled forward, then, looked up… to their horror; the point of the scissors had put out her eye!
Now armed with the scissors and brimming with anger, Marie started flailing and cursing the mob.
But, the witches subdued her and armed with a razor, held her down, while Katrina, then, finished the job.
They, cruelly, proceeded to finish the job.
Marie was found bloodied and wrapped in red velvet, a painful recovery, she wailed and she writhed…
laid up for a month, in a Charity ward, weak and disfigured. She barely survived.
A rich man from Storyville, who once was a patron and once offered marriage if she would consent,
having heard she was cut-up and had no more income, he offered to help her with food and some rent.
He bought her a ticket and sent her up-river; the riverboat screamed, every turn of the wheel.
She arrived on a Friday, veiled in her darkness, with a bag and a book, in St. Gabriel.
In the years that came after, reposed in her silence, she lived in a shrimp shack all by herself…
growing more and more bitter with each passing season… working her magick and casting her spells.
And there, all about, in the swamp, she was known for her spiritual meddlings; done for a small fee.
Everyone called her “The Black Water Hattie”… a “hattie” being a witch, you see.
And as she got old and grew crooked and feeble, she practiced her vowels in a low, gurgling tone,
in the damp Cyprus hollows, just to-in’ and fro-in’, at midnight, with a candle and her book, all alone.
Then, she saw the future, while stump-water-seeing… she visioned New Orleans in a hundred-odd years.
Even her haggard old heart broke again, when she saw what was coming. She cursed at her tears.
She visioned a city turned bad and corrupted, with politicians and gangsters and deviates loosed,
with gamblers and prostitutes, walking the streets, where even the churches were wrought with abuse.
The harbors were choked with the refuse of progress; the stench of the city soured the air.
New Orleans sunk into a deep human cesspool, with a witch named Katrina, still residing in there!
This was the vision that called up the anger and surged like the tide, washing reason away.
That was the image that put things in motion and pulled at the wind for thirty thousand days!
Her crumpled old figure cast a long, angled shadow as she weaved and she uttered, sprinkling potash on the flame.
Then, one at a time she spelled out the future, and the fate of so many, in the witches she named…
“Oya, Oya,” she called… and they came.
“Come Carol, come Hazel, come Bertha and Fran,
come Donna, come Hilda, come Joan and Diane,
I call all ye witches… Carmen, Camille,
Come all ye bad witches, by a good witch’s will!
Oh yes, Katrina, now let’s not forget,
you owe the tiller a much greater debt…
you should know better than to sleep with the Devil.
Now the sky has a hole and the sea is unleveled.
When witches drink blood, the whole world comes unraveled!
So, come dance with your sisters, come turn on my words,
come take back the marsh for the fish and the birds.
‘Til Ophelia’s soft voice comes to wisp us to heaven, we bargain with hell, for a way to get home.
For some it’s a ride on a boat up a river, for others, a nightmare in the eye of a storm…
atonement is precious, whatever the form.
Now, one last divining and then I’ll been done.”
She lifted her veil, “ Just one more to come…”
“After Katrina has spent all her mischief, and the city of sin has been drowned and then razed,
I see the rebirth of the old sunken city… and a good witch, named Lydia…The Witch of the Glades,
I see New Orleans, a city upraised.”
Then, in the mist of the cool bayou morning, a morning much like on the day she was born,
the old witch’s shawl was found caught in the bramble and her cloak and her scarf were found scattered and torn.
No one could say just what happened to Hattie, she and her book disappeared in the wild.
Life just went on like, the breeze on the river, the snake telling nothing… the gator just smiled.
Meanwhile, far away, some time in the future, in a satellite image of a storm spinning ‘round…
etched in the eye of impending Katrina, a perfectly scribed pentagram, there, can be found! A good witch’s spell, finally, coming unwound!
~ THE END ~
All people, places and events portrayed in this story are fictional, except as relating to actual known towns and locations, and historical facts. Any similarities, in respect to real people, places and events, otherwise, are entirely incidental.
Mitch Bowen / ©copyright 2005
"If you take [a copy of] the Christian Bible and put it out in the wind and the rain, soon the paper on which the words are printed will disintegrate and the words will be gone. Our bible IS the wind and the rain." Herbalist Carol McGrath as told to her by a Native-American woman. (Source: Religious Tolerance .org)
O’ lore, o’ lore, of stories told, and many dark and frightening,
the one most fearful of them all, of wind and flood and lightening…
of fem fatale and winches’ spells, from Delilah to Athena,
t’was none so spiteful and be-damned as the witch’s wind… Katrina.
No place to run, no place to hide, for any earthly living creature.
A fateful day, a wicked tide… death, revenge, and Mother Nature.
Long ago, the tale begins, 'round 1832,
deep in the swamp, near Indian Village, just southwest of Baton Rouge,
born the last of thirteen children, four that died and nine survived,
on a misty bayou morning, a babe, in innocence, arrived.
Marie Agnes Deloise, her mother gave her name…
of native blood and Creole and from fishers’ kin, she came,
to live a brief and happy time along the sleepy Mississip’,
‘til trappers sold them all as slaves and put them on a smuggler’s ship.
But just before the vessel sailed off for the market in Savanna,
the sisters’ faces caught the eye of the mean and crafty Captain Dana.
“Look a’here, six bony misses… all of them with skin high-yellow.
With such light skin they’ll not fetch much, ‘cept maybe in a French bordello.”
And so was sealed their tattered fates, though saved from whips and harsher stations…
ne’er again to see their brothers, who were sent to work the rich plantations.
In the delta town of New Orleans, there dwelled a mistress, Madame Pearl.
She gave the Captain seven dollars and a trick, for every girl.
All the sisters, taken in, were ages nine to almost twenty.
The younger two, Marie and Jo Anna, were spared the patron’s dirty penny.
But, in time, as beauty blooms and both girls slowly came of age,
seduced by wine and fineries they learned to make a harlot’s wage.
Spellbound from quite early on, the sisters had no earthly notion;
they had come beneath the sway of a local Cajun witch’s potion.
Being raised in servitude, they fantasized a life of freedom,
their spirits being led astray; they joined some witches and their creedum.
Katrina was a handsome dame, who drew herself an inner circle;
the daughter of a merchantman, her smock was black, with red and purple.
She practiced with an older witch, Ophelia, from the old French Quarter,
who gave her vowels and sounds to utter, to call up storms from o’er the water.
Katrina befriended young Marie and sisters, Jo Anna and Iva Rae;
the older sisters having been “hired-out” to a roadhouse out in Santa Fe.
And so it was that Miss Katrina… Madame Katie, to her friends,
came to turn the Camp Street brothel into a secret witches’ den.
But then, in May of 1860, when the mayor said that, “Sin must go!”,
Miss Katie and her vixens brewed three deadly whirlwinds in a row.
All the witches, in their anger, had good call to be defiant,
'cause everyone in New Orleans knew the mayor was their biggest client.
One by one the storms blew in, each one a much more fearsome blow,
the last one came in late October, from or’ the Gulf of Mexico.
The city was in shock and shambles, ports and commerce were impeded.
The mayor tried to weather the storm, but in November, he was defeated.
They found him on a loading dock; a pistol lay beside his head…
the gun, still cocked, no blood, no wounds, no bullet spent… just a note, that read:
‘‘Soon enough, it’ll all be over. Soon enough, we’ll all be dead.”
Signed, “Mayor Stith… ” that’s all it said.
So, for a neglected length of time, for several years or so, thereafter,
New Orleans, nights were filled with madness, and the cackled pitch of witches’ laughter.
Bathed in oils and dressed in satin, with purses of the finest silk,
they strolled about on Bourbon street with johns and thieves and the Devil's ilk,
which made the good folk very angry. Soldered in their Christian ways,
they fought to have the brothels closed... but the witches and whores were there to stay!
But, even in the world of witches, goodness and charity have their agents.
And, Marie’s desire to be a “good witch” tried the other witches’ patience.
She and her sisters, when called to mass, refused to kneel in mischief’s circle,
choosing instead to do white magic, with milkfat and honey and glycerin-sparkle.
“’Tis your own jinxin’ that causes your wrinkles.” Marie spoke the truth that the others denied.
But, even Ophelia, the wise, old priestess, agreed with Marie, but then, shortly, she died.
But, just before dying she called for Marie and she secretly gave her The Book of Moriah;
the old witch’s handbook of vowels and potions, for calling up storms, both of ice, and of fire.
As Katrina and all the bad witches grew older, and their skin became all-the-more ugly and wrinkled,
they grew more and more jealous of Marie and her sisters, declaring; “With angel-dust, those girls are sprinkled!”
For, even then, at age thirty-seven, Marie showed no wrinkles, not even a line,
from her head to her toes, as smooth as an hourglass, no moles or blemishes scoring her time.
And so, all those winches, being hell-bent with envy, came to resent Miss Marie, more and more.
While the good witches prospered, commanding good business, Katrina and the others grew poorer and poorer.
And when all of their potions and all of their hexes and all of their curses and spells didn’t phase her,
they forswore their own credo and conjured a plan to “fix” Miss Marie, using scissors and razor…
except for her sisters who heard certain rumors, and fled “up the river” to save both their necks.
Neither of them err again to be heard from, some said, the fever, some said a hex.
The plan was pure childish; an ill-thought connivance, meant to embarrass Marie on her birthday.
They offered to sew her a red-velvet party dress; feigning good will, they lied in the worst way.
‘Twas their intention to measure her figure and make her a dress for her "Fortieth-Year Ball"…
then sprinkle the fabric with witch’s itch-powder, and when she put it on she’d be climbing the walls.
The weakest one, Donna, being somewhat retarded, slipped up and let on that something was doing.
So Marie played the role and indulged them a fitting, all along, knowing that trouble was brewing.
But witches have noses as keen as a she-wolf. They started smelling a cat in the bag.
Words turned from syrupy to spiteful and hateful, then Camille said, “We could turn her into a hag!”
The first strike was more of an ill-fated gesture; Camille, not intending to really do harm.
But as she pretended to stab with the scissors, Marie hit her hand with the back of her arm.
The room spun around them, some witches ran screaming; blood in the circle means someone will die.
Marie crumpled forward, then, looked up… to their horror; the point of the scissors had put out her eye!
Now armed with the scissors and brimming with anger, Marie started flailing and cursing the mob.
But, the witches subdued her and armed with a razor, held her down, while Katrina, then, finished the job.
They, cruelly, proceeded to finish the job.
Marie was found bloodied and wrapped in red velvet, a painful recovery, she wailed and she writhed…
laid up for a month, in a Charity ward, weak and disfigured. She barely survived.
A rich man from Storyville, who once was a patron and once offered marriage if she would consent,
having heard she was cut-up and had no more income, he offered to help her with food and some rent.
He bought her a ticket and sent her up-river; the riverboat screamed, every turn of the wheel.
She arrived on a Friday, veiled in her darkness, with a bag and a book, in St. Gabriel.
In the years that came after, reposed in her silence, she lived in a shrimp shack all by herself…
growing more and more bitter with each passing season… working her magick and casting her spells.
And there, all about, in the swamp, she was known for her spiritual meddlings; done for a small fee.
Everyone called her “The Black Water Hattie”… a “hattie” being a witch, you see.
And as she got old and grew crooked and feeble, she practiced her vowels in a low, gurgling tone,
in the damp Cyprus hollows, just to-in’ and fro-in’, at midnight, with a candle and her book, all alone.
Then, she saw the future, while stump-water-seeing… she visioned New Orleans in a hundred-odd years.
Even her haggard old heart broke again, when she saw what was coming. She cursed at her tears.
She visioned a city turned bad and corrupted, with politicians and gangsters and deviates loosed,
with gamblers and prostitutes, walking the streets, where even the churches were wrought with abuse.
The harbors were choked with the refuse of progress; the stench of the city soured the air.
New Orleans sunk into a deep human cesspool, with a witch named Katrina, still residing in there!
This was the vision that called up the anger and surged like the tide, washing reason away.
That was the image that put things in motion and pulled at the wind for thirty thousand days!
Her crumpled old figure cast a long, angled shadow as she weaved and she uttered, sprinkling potash on the flame.
Then, one at a time she spelled out the future, and the fate of so many, in the witches she named…
“Oya, Oya,” she called… and they came.
“Come Carol, come Hazel, come Bertha and Fran,
come Donna, come Hilda, come Joan and Diane,
I call all ye witches… Carmen, Camille,
Come all ye bad witches, by a good witch’s will!
Oh yes, Katrina, now let’s not forget,
you owe the tiller a much greater debt…
you should know better than to sleep with the Devil.
Now the sky has a hole and the sea is unleveled.
When witches drink blood, the whole world comes unraveled!
So, come dance with your sisters, come turn on my words,
come take back the marsh for the fish and the birds.
‘Til Ophelia’s soft voice comes to wisp us to heaven, we bargain with hell, for a way to get home.
For some it’s a ride on a boat up a river, for others, a nightmare in the eye of a storm…
atonement is precious, whatever the form.
Now, one last divining and then I’ll been done.”
She lifted her veil, “ Just one more to come…”
“After Katrina has spent all her mischief, and the city of sin has been drowned and then razed,
I see the rebirth of the old sunken city… and a good witch, named Lydia…The Witch of the Glades,
I see New Orleans, a city upraised.”
Then, in the mist of the cool bayou morning, a morning much like on the day she was born,
the old witch’s shawl was found caught in the bramble and her cloak and her scarf were found scattered and torn.
No one could say just what happened to Hattie, she and her book disappeared in the wild.
Life just went on like, the breeze on the river, the snake telling nothing… the gator just smiled.
Meanwhile, far away, some time in the future, in a satellite image of a storm spinning ‘round…
etched in the eye of impending Katrina, a perfectly scribed pentagram, there, can be found! A good witch’s spell, finally, coming unwound!
~ THE END ~
All people, places and events portrayed in this story are fictional, except as relating to actual known towns and locations, and historical facts. Any similarities, in respect to real people, places and events, otherwise, are entirely incidental.
Mitch Bowen / ©copyright 2005
"If you take [a copy of] the Christian Bible and put it out in the wind and the rain, soon the paper on which the words are printed will disintegrate and the words will be gone. Our bible IS the wind and the rain." Herbalist Carol McGrath as told to her by a Native-American woman. (Source: Religious Tolerance .org)
posted by Mitch Bowen | 12:25 PM
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