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In February 2002, the Discovery Channel showed a documentary, Discovering the Real World of Harry Potter (Atlantic Productions), during which self-proclaimed witch-king Kevin Carlyon declared that Harry Potter rode his broomstick the wrong way round! He had earlier made the same claim in an interview with Reuters the previous July: "Warner Bros claims the film is an accurate portrayal of things that happen in witchcraft, yet woodcuts from the 16th and 17th centuries show broomsticks being ridden with the brush part in the front. It's a common mistake -- even the sixties TV series Bewitched showed broomsticks being ridden backwards, but this is not correct". This argument has been made a number of times before. The usual claim is the oldest depictions of witches on broomsticks show them flying bristle-end first, and that it's only since the discovery of aerodynamics that we started depicting broomsticks being flown handle first. Well, let's have a look at some old woodcuts, taken from chapbooks and other contemporary literature about things like witch-trails. While the stories they tell are about as reliable as the Sunday Sport North Pole bus service, they do tell us about the popular lore surrounding witchcraft - which is exactly what the broomstick thing is. The earliest known image of a witch flying on a broomstick is in a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Martin Le Franc's Le Champion de Dames dates to 1440, and f.105c. shows two witches, one on a white stick (a common mode of transport for French witches), and the other on the familiar broomstick. The bristles are to the rear. The first printed representation of flying witches appears nearly 50 years later in 1489. Ulrich Molitor's De Lamiis, which is in the famous collection at Cornell University, shows three half-human, half animal characters riding a stang. The split end is to the rear (i.e. to our eyes, it's aerodynamically correct). Another edition published in 1545, entitled Hexen Meysterey includes some different images. One of the new pictures seems to show a demon accosting a witch riding a stang. Oh, look, the cleft end is to the rear. Around this time, trial records are full of stuff about the Devil giving witches sticks to fly on, but the actual broomstick comes later - possibly once the pattern of female accused was established. There is one late 16th century example of stangs being flown forked end first on the cover of the German translation of Bishop Peter Binsfield's Tractatus de confessionibus maleficorum et sagarom published in 1591. The German translation of Remi's Daemonolatriae also includes a similar image, but this was not published until the very end of the 17th century. The earliest printed depiction of a witch on a broomstick I know about is a 1565 print by Breughel. To one side, the rear end of a witch can be spotted disappearing up a chimney, with the bristles of her broomstick behind her. A 1579 illustration by Gillot de Givry shows two witches escaping up a chimney on brooms. Again, the bristles follow them.
Slightly later, in 1613 -- right in the middle of Carlyon's An undated (but between 1641 and ca. 1750) woodcut in a collection compiled by William Dodd shows one witch in a circle, waving her wand at various demony things, and two others flying about her. One of them is clearly on a broomstick being ridden in the modern fashion. There's a cruder version of the same image in an edition of The History of Mother Shipton published at Aldermanbury around 1750. The other witch in this version seems to be riding on a giant pin, with the head to the fore! Another woodcut from the same volume shows two witches and a devil on broomsticks pointing the way King Kevin says they don't. So what about the Carlyon way? The earliest definite example of a witch riding a broomstick with the bristles to the fore comes from Germany in 1712. A frontispiece of a translation of Dissetatio de criminie magiae (a satire on popular witch myths) shows loads of people flying on all sorts of objects). Of the four broomsticks shown, two are the 'modern' way and two the allegedly proper way. In conclusion, the vast majority of 18th century and earlier depictions of witches on broomsticks show them the familiar way round. This is unlikely to be because the artists responsible were aware of aerodynamics, though. I'd guess it's more to do with a broom being easier to hold by the handle and, if you're using a broom and have to jump on it and fly off in a hurry, it will naturally end up with the handle to the fore. |
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