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Updated: June 28, 2025
"To fence with broomsticks, I should rather suppose," said the King "Come, Doctor Rochecliffe, this sudden fit of assumed importance befits you as little as your late frolic.
There is small friendship and scant courtesy between them and the boors of this country; every village they pass is likely to rise on them, and so the scoundrels are driven back to their colours by a wholesome terror of spits, pike-staves, hay-forks, and broomsticks. But now let us talk about your plans and wants, and the means of corresponding with you.
I didn't mean the birch, I meant the broomsticks." "Oh, I see!" said David. "But nay, nay, sir, that wouldn't do.
Aroused by loud noises in the neighborhood of his residence, the minister arose early, dressed and hastened into the street. A large crowd of colored citizens, mostly women, stood upon the street corner half a block away, excitedly talking and brandishing broomsticks, stove-pokers, hoes, axes and other rude implements of war. All was confusion among them.
He isn't sure that she hasn't supernatural allies working with her witches on broomsticks circling closely round him, demons in pursuit of him or waiting to leap out on him. And how about mere robbers and cutthroats? Suppose but look! that streak, yonder, look! the Golden Drugget. There it is, familiar, serene, festal.
Gilbert had already told her that he meant to dress up two broomsticks as American soldiers, and these were to "march" on each side of Winifred, with her aid and assistance.
"Admitting the blind credulity of the multitude," said Nicholas, "and their proneness to discern the hand of the witch in the most trifling accidents; admitting also, their readiness to accuse any old crone unlucky enough to offend them of sorcery; I still believe that there are actual practisers of the black art, who, for a brief term of power, have entered into a league with Satan, worship him and attend his sabbaths, and have a familiar, in the shape of a cat, dog, toad, or mole, to obey their behests, transform themselves into various shapes as a hound, horse, or hare, raise storms of wind or hail, maim cattle, bewitch and slay human beings, and ride whither they will on broomsticks.
I would rise an hour earlier in the morning to practise throwing at broomsticks set up in waste places. At another time, the sport coming into temporary fashion, I wearied body and mind for weeks in vain attempts to acquire skill on stilts. That even fat Tubby could out-distance me upon them saddened my life for months.
Learned men freed themselves from the trammels of a debasing superstition, and governments, both civil and ecclesiastical, repressed the popular delusion they had so long encouraged. The Parliament of Normandy condemned a number of women to death, in the year 1670, on the old charge of riding on broomsticks to the Domdaniel; but Louis XIV. commuted the sentence into banishment for life.
I must not conceal the fact, that at one time there was some danger of this plague of witchcraft extending into the New Netherlands; and certain witches, mounted on broomsticks, are said to have been seen whisking in the air over some of the Dutch villages near the borders; but the worthy Nederlanders took the precaution to nail horse-shoes to their doors, which it is well known are effectual barriers against all diabolical vermin of the kind.
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