An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Broomstick or Besom, The

The broomstick has come to be the traditional companion to the witch, and the enchanted steed for her wild and unholy night-flights through the air. Even Walt Disney paid tribute to its legendary magical character, in his film Fantasia, when he drew Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, with a bewitched broomstick that did its work only too well.

However, the broomstick was only one of the means witches were supposed to use for the purpose of flight. (See BUNE-WAND.) Its frequent occurrence in folklore points to the fact that it possessed some special significance.

This significance is in fact a phallic one. In Yorkshire folk-belief, it was unlucky for an unmarried girl to step over a broomstick, because it meant that she would be a mother before she was a wife. In Sussex, the May-Pole, which was itself a phallic symbol, used to be topped with a large birch broom. A ’besom’ is a dialect term for a shameless, immoral female.

’To marry over the broomstick’, ’jump the besom’, was an old-time form of irregular marriage, in which both parties jumped over a broomstick, to signify that they were joined in common-law union. At gypsy wedding ceremonies, the bride and groom jump backwards and forwards over a broomstick; further evidence of the broom’s connection with sex and fertility.

In a curious and interesting old book, A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant, by Albert Barrère and Charles Godfrey Leland (London, 1899 and 1897, also Gale Detroit, 1889), we are told that a slang term in those days for a ’dildo’ or artificial penis was ’a broom-handle’; and the female genitals were known vulgarly as ’the broom’. To ’have a brush’ was to have sexual intercourse. This throws considerable light on the real significance of the broomstick in witch rituals, and in old folk-dances, in which it often plays a part.

The original household broom was a bunch of the actual broom plant, Planta genista, tied round a stick. “Broom! Green broom!” was an old street cry, used by vendors of broom-bunches for this purpose. The Planta genista was the badge of the Plantagenet family, who derived their name from it. They were rumoured to favour the Old Religion. (See ROYALTY.)

At one time of the year, the broom plant was unlucky. The old saying goes: “If you sweep the house with blossomed broom in May, you will sweep the head of the house away.” This could perhaps have some connection with old sacrificial rites at the commencement of summer.

Sometimes the broomstick was regarded as having power to repel witches; perhaps with the idea of turning their own magic against them. At any rate, a broomstick placed across the threshold of a house was supposed to keep witches out.

A broomstick could also be a luck symbol. When alterations were being made to an old house at Blandford in Dorset in 1930, a broomstick was found walled up in the structure. It was recognised as having been put there for luck, and it was allowed to remain in its hiding-place.

These additional meanings of the broomstick are in accord with its phallic significance. Things which are sex symbols are life symbols, and hence luck bringers and protectors against the Evil Eye.

In Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584, and, edited by Hugh Ross Williamson, Centaur, Southern Illinois University Press, 1964), he says of the witches’ Sabbats: “At these magicall assemblies, the witches never faile to danse; and in their danse they sing these words, Har, har, divell divell, danse here danse here, plaie here plaie here, Sabbath, sabbath. And whiles they sing and danse, everie one hath a broome in hir hand, and holdeth it up aloft.” He was quoting from the descriptions of witch rites given by a French demonologist, Jean Bodin, It appears from other old descriptions that witches also performed a kind of jumping dance, riding on staffs; and if broomsticks were used for this purpose, too, it is easy to see how this dance, combined with the witches’ experience of wild visions and dreams of flying while in a stage of magical trance, gave rise to the popular picture of broomstick-riding witches in flight through the air.

When broomsticks or besoms began to be made of more durable materials than the broom plant, the usual combination of woods for them was birch twigs for the brush, an ashen stake for the handle, and osier willow for the binding. However, in the Wyre Forest area of Worcestershire, the traditional woods are oak twigs for the sprays, which is the makers’ term for the broom part; hazel for the staff; and birch for the binding. All of these trees are full of magical meanings of their own, and feature in the old Druidic tree alphabets of Ancient Britain. The ash is a sacred and magical tree; the oak is the king of the woods; the hazel is the tree of wisdom; the willow is a tree of moon-magic; and the birch is a symbol of purification.