You should be careful who you gossip about. Gossip about a witch, and she will know. Not only that, she will send you something in return. And if she’s a witch who wishes (as most witches do) for eternal youth, then that something might just be the signs of old age she wishes someone else to wear on her behalf.

That’s the essence of this second Cursery Rhyme from my unpublished children’s story Isabella Mawtle’s Immortal Vanishing Cream. It tells you quite a lot about Isabella, and why you should keep your gossip to yourself, or at least away from the ears of a witch…

‘I’m a 329-year-old whitch!
Not a ‘witch’ but a ‘whhhitch’,
Say it right, if you please.
I’m a whitch, which is why
I don’t witter or warble,
I whhhisper, I whhhheedle,
I whimper and wheeze.
When I spell out my spells,
I spell them out crisp,
I speak them in lines
With a whitchety lisp,
And all those old gossips
Who talk of my shame,
Why, I make them grow old
When they whisper my name.
When they tittle and tattle
And laugh at my tears,
I stamp them with warts
And I brand them with years.
Even now, my old eye-bags
Have packed up their lies
And have gone off to live
On the old miller’s eyes,
Where they puff up like
Pastries and slowly turn sour,
And hang from his face like
Two sackfuls of flour.
And there, my old crow’s-feet
Have found a new life:
See them perched on the face
Of the fat butcher’s wife,
Where they flap at her pig’s-feet
And fly to her moans,
As they peck at the neck
Roll of fat on her bones.
(There is always a debt
To repay on our loans!)
A shade on her chops!
An ache in her joints!
Three fingers point back from
The finger that points!’

Excerpt from ‘Isabella Mawtle’s Immortal Vanishing Cream’,
Copyright © Jason Hook 2018