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Hag Witch

Folklore
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

An old woman associated with dark magic, often depicted as ugly and fearsome, but possessing deep ancestral knowledge and power.

Detailed Definition
Hag Witches in poetry reclaim the crone as wise, not monstrous. They appear in feminist and mythic verse as the keepers of forgotten rites, where age is not decay but depth, and ugliness is the armor of those who refuse to be erased.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Burns’ “Tam o’ Shanter,” the hag witch rides a broomstick: “Auld Nick, the witch, and all her crew”; in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the weird sisters are hag witches with “choppy fingers” and “skinny lips”; in Keats’ “Lamia,” the hag witch of the marsh is the mother of all deception; in Coleridge’s “Christabel,” the hag witch is the shadow beneath the door; in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (poetically rendered), the hag witch haunts the moors as Catherine’s spirit; in Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush,” the hag witch is winter’s skeletal hand upon the land.
Additional Notes
Hag Witch is an old woman associated with dark magic, often depicted as ugly and fearsome, yet possessing deep ancestral knowledge, herbal wisdom, and prophetic sight. In folklore, she is the crone of the triple goddess—wise, feared, and marginalized. In poetry, she challenges ageist tropes, embodying resilience, hidden power, and the dignity of the discarded. Poets reclaim her as a symbol of matriarchal authority, ecological knowledge, and the truth that wisdom wears no face of youth.
Also Known As
Hag Old Crone
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