The quintessential villain in fairy tales is the witch. Every child dreads the moment when she enters into the story. The witch is at the origin of nightmares. The witch is evil. Evil is bad. Simple, right? No, not at all.

Today, I would like to bring to you all a poem by Sara Henderson Hay that portrays the icon figure of the witch in a refreshing key.

Sara Henderson Hay was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1906. She was a poet, book editor, journalist and book reviewer for the New York Times, among many. She studied at Columbia University where she published her poems in the school's magazine. She received many awards for her collections of poetry, including the Edna St. Vincent Millay Memorial Award presented to her by Poetry Society of America in 1952 and the Pegasus Award in 1960. She moved back to Pittsburgh where she passed away in 1987.

That is the traditional view of the witch, an ugly old woman who wants to be hurt and punish (and occasionally eat children, as in the case of Hansel & Gretel). The poet Sara Henderson Hay proposes an interesting plot twist. The witch is not fully and inherently evil. She - since it's represented as a woman - can be both genders, a he or a she. Henderson Hay offers her interpretation by hinting that the Witch is in all of us. Human beings aren't only good or evil. They are made of both. Sometimes good people commit crimes in order to keep going, like a parent unable to provide for their family willing to steal food for them. Does that make them bad? Or a lawbreaker capable of incredible acts of kindness, like a drug dealer who shovels the garage of his elder neighbor. Does that make them good? Sara Henderson Hay is not here to give an answer or a moral judgment. She is here to describe the line between good and evil and how thin the divide actually is. The author ultimately suggests that the Witch is us. Everyone is good AND evil. There is some evil in good people and there is some good in evil people. We can then say, the villain is within.

The Witch

It pleases me to give a man three wishes,
Then trick him into wasting every one.
To set the simpering goosegirl on the throne,
While the true princess weeps among the ashes.
I like to come unbidden to the christening,
Cackling a curse on the young princeling's head,
To slip a toad into the maiden's bed,
To conjure up the briers, the glass slope glistening.

And I am near, oh nearer than you've known.
You cannot shut me in a fairy book.
It was my step you heard, mine and my creatures',
Soft at your heel. And if you lean and look
Long in your mirror, you will see my features
Inextricably mingled with your own.

by Sara Henderson Hay