Ведьмоведение: помогите собрать факты

Если вам интересно, когда уже я оставлю в покое эксмовские переводы имен - то вот когда сдохну, тогда и оставлю. Хотя гарантии нет.

Witch’s cottage. Although the basic unit of witchcraft is the witch, the basic continuous unit is the cottage. The cottage may have different incumbents over the years, but people seeking cow cures and other items will go to it as much as to the witch.

A witch’s cottage is a very specific architectural item, to the extent that ‘Middle Period Witch’ is a recognizable style. The chimney twists like a corkscrew. The roof is thatch so old that small trees flourish in it, the floors are switchbacks, which creak at night like a tea clipper in a gale. If at least two walls aren’t shored up with baulks of timber then it’s not a true witch’s cottage, but merely the home of some daft old bat who reads tea leaves and talks to her cat. (Of course, no one in their right mind would draw this deduction from Nanny Ogg`s cottage.)

Despite some popular misinformation, there have been few cottages made out of gingerbread, a singularly impractical building material outside those areas where the high ambient magic can compensate for the tendency of the walls to go stale and soggy.

Chicken legs (or duck, in swampy areas) are a popular addition.

The home of Granny WEATHERWAX is so typical of the type that the more detailed information found under GRANNY’S COTTAGE can be taken to apply to the homes of most witches.

Grannys Cottage. Home to Granny WEATHERWAX. A witchs cottage so typical that, if there were any kind of tourist organization in the RAMTOPS, it would be given a grant. The description can be taken to apply to a greater or lesser extent to all rural witch cottages, although as indicated this one can be considered a witchs cottage par eldritche.

It nestles in the woods. It leans against itself for support. Its of the architectural style known as 'the vernacular', i.e. somebody swearing, and by now it gives the impression of having grown in place rather than having been built. Granny`s cottage pulses with the force of Granny`s personality.

Access to the cottage is exclusively via the back door, but it is flrst worth taking some time to look at the garden. In the front of the building is a bit of lawn, with a forlorn windsock on a pole, although the cottage is largely surrounded by unruly beds of herbs which seem to move, even on windless days. There are also some leggy soft-fruit bushes and, in front of the Rimward wall, a bleached wooden bench to catch the sun. Such shrubs and flowers as are otherwise found are all cuttings or spare clumps given to Granny Weatherwax by neighbours. A witch would never dream of buying anything for the garden. Around the side is a water butt and a walled paddock for her goats when they are not turned loose in the forest (witches prefer goats to cows). In a corner are half a dozen beehives and an old goat shed.

Marking a boundary of the herb garden is a tree stump, beyond which is Granny Weatherwax`s privy. Apart from the usual offices, the privy also contains the key to the cottage (on a nail), half a copy of an Almanack and Booke of Dayes (also on a nail), a stump of candle on a shelf and a chrysalis (this shelf tends to be a repository of things Granny Weatherwax has found on her walks and which appear to be interesting: oddly shaped stones, strange roots, fossils, and so on). Next to the privy is a large beech tree.

A key sign that this is the garden of a witch is the lack of a wall. Creatures of the forest could wander across it at any time. They very seldom do.

And now, the cottage...

Through the back door is the hall, with Mss Weatherwax`s official witching hat hanging on a hook. This leads through into the stone-flagged kitchen, dominated by its wide chimney and inglenook fireplace, with its firedogs and hook over the fire for a big black kettle. Over the mantelpiece hang a small key, and a clock, kept mainly for its tick; in front of it are a rag rug and a rocking chair.

The room is otherwise furnished with a kitchen table and chairs, a dresser (which contains Granny`s box of memorabilia) and an old chest, with a pair of pewter candlesticks. There is also a small speckled mirror. None of the furniture is new. None of it even looks as though it could ever have been new. In a drawer on the dresser is a clean bandage and on top of the dresser is a box of dried herbs. Medicinal herbs, because people will even seek out Granny Weatherwax when whatever ailment they have got gets too bad. The room is grey-walled — the colour plaster gets from age, not from dirt. There is not a thing in it that isn`t useful — except perhaps a green glass ball. a present from Magrat GARLICK.

Off the kitchen is the scullery, which contains the walk-in pantry, a well (topped with a stone slab and a pump), a copper washpot, washboard, scrubbing brushes, slop bucket and a big copper still. Shelves containing bottles and jars of ingredients suggest quite correctly that this is where some of the more physical, take-one-spoonful-at-night-and-another-if-you-wake-up-in-the-morning aspects of witchcraft are carried out. A door in the scullery leads to the lean-to where the goats are bedded down in bad weather.

Back in the kitchen is a small door opening on to the cramped staircase which leads to the bedroom. The plaster on the bedroom ceiling is cracked, and bulges like a tent. On the washstand are a jug and a basin with a fetching rosebud pattern which also matches another china item under the bed. On the bed itself is a patchwork quilt which looks like a flat tortoise. It was made by Gordo SMITH and was given to Mss Weatherwax by ESK`s mother one HOGSWATCHNIGHT. On the quilt is Granny Weatherwax, lying very still and holding a card saying "I ATE`NT DEAD".

Er...

Don`t all rush for the stairs...