The Witch that Said Thank You

Acrylic on board, 40 x 35 cm, Artist’s Collection

This painting is from a fairy tale about a Roma girl who helps a witch. Its source is Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling, written by 19th-century American folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland, who studied the Romani of Europe.

“Once there was a gypsy girl who noticed that when anybody ate eggs they broke up the shells, and asking why this was done received for an answer: You must break the shell to bits for fear, Lest the witches should make it a boat, my dear. For over the sea away from home, Far by night the witches roam.”

The girl, thinking it wasn’t fair that witches couldn’t also own boats, threw her eggshell as far as she could. Some time later, she found herself trapped on a flooding island. But she was saved by a woman with witchy eyes paddling a white boat with a broom. Returning the girl to dry land, the woman said: “That is the shell you threw to me, Even a witch can grateful be.”