Hag
She is short and stumpy with a
hump on her back. Her skin droops and
folds; her eyes are watery, angry and bloodshot. Her face is maimed, burned, or disfigured so as to frighten
children away. Her teeth are yellow and
crooked, and she has breath that could wake the dead. She is hideous, and she is a hag:
She was as ungoodly creature as
evere man sawe witheoute mesure…her face was red, her nose snotid withalle, her
mouithe wide, her teeth yallowe overe alle, with blerid eyen gretter then a
balle, her mouithe was not to lak, her teethe hing overe her lippes, her
cheekis side as wemens hippes…her neck long and therto great; her here cloterid
on an hepe…hanging pappis [breasts] to be an hors lode…like a barelle she was made…(Wells
331, 332)
Hags are among
the most permanent staples in the fairytale world. They are grotesque women who usually have magical abilities and
unearthly power. In The Wedding of
Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell, by a 14th century anonymous poet,
Sir Gawain of King Arthur’s court promises to marry a hag in return for her
saving Arthur’s life by revealing the answer to a riddle (Arthur). Although she is a terrible sight, Sir
Gawain’s knightly perfection allows him to easily wed this unearthly
beast. On their wedding night, the hag
(Dame Ragnell) gives Gawain a choice: either Dame Ragnell will be beautiful by
day and hideous at night, or she will be horrid during the day and lovely by
night. This choice proves to be too
difficult for Gawain to make, and he allows Dame Ragnell to choose for
him. This is exactly what Dame Ragnell
was waiting for: she had been bewitched
into hag-dom, and the only way to break the spell was to gain dominance over
Gawain after they had wed. When Gawain
surrendered to Dame Ragnell, the spell was reversed, and she became beautiful
in both the day and night.
Another example
of a hag with certain powers at her disposal is in Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight. In the story, the Lady
Bercilak (the wife of the Lord of the house) is attended by an unseemly and
grotesque woman. Although she is
probably the most ugly woman that anyone has ever seen, she has the best seat
at the table, “The old ancient lady, highest she sits; the lord at her left
hand leaned…” (Abrams, 179). It is later
revealed in the tale that the old hag is actually Morgan Le Faye and she is the
one who changes Lord Bercilak (the lord of the house) into the Green Knight who
Sir Gawain is sent to fight. Morgan Le
Faye’s motive in this story is to attack Guinevere, which is why she
manipulated Gawain and Bercilak against each other.
Hags are mystical and terrible creatures with the ability to
change a person’s fate with the wave of their hands. They are shape shifters; they change their appearance for either
their own motives that are normally undisclosed to other characters within the
story, or lie in wait for the right person to come along and break the
enchantment that they are under. They
are manipulative, intelligent, and intuitive.
Hags can make fairytale characters question what they see with their
eyes; never judge a book by its cover.
Bibliography
Abrams, et al. The
Norton Anthology of
English
Literature. Seventh ed., vol . 1
New York, W.W. Norton & Company: 2000.
Wells, J. E. The
Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell
Image borrowed from Ugly Witches