Blog Post #6 - Strega Nona

In preparation for this week’s class, I decided to take a trip down memory lane and re-read the Italian folktale, Strega Nona (1975). When parents would come to read to our class in elementary school, Strega Nona was a book that they would often bring with them – and I remember it being one of my favorites. To this day, Strega Nona has a uniquely comforting and familiar quality to it. Having the same effect on me at twenty-two years old as it did at five years old, Strega Nona – which means “Grandma Witch” – is a warm, maternal, and welcoming figure; she is someone who reminds me of my late grandma, Gail. Reading her story never fails to make me hungry for a home-cooked meal!

In her small Calabrian town, Strega Nona is an integral source of potions, cures, magic, and comfort. Interestingly, the book begins with the line: “Although all of the people in town talked about her in whispers, they all went to see her if they had troubles. Even the priest and the sisters of the convent went, because Strega Nona did have a magic touch.” This introduction fits with what we’ve seen of witches and witchcraft, in the sense that folk healers were both ostracized from the “ordinary” people around them in the day-to-day and were relied upon for healing in times of need. “She could cure a headache, with oil and water and a hairpin. She made special potions for the girls who wanted husbands. And she was very good at getting rid of warts.” Strega Nona also had a magical pasta pot, which was always as full as it needed to be, which was intriguing to her hungry houseworker, Big Anthony. One day, when Strega Nona was away and Big Anthony was supposed to be looking after her house and her garden, he decided to recite her magic verse (“Bubble, bubble, pasta pot; Boil me some pasta, nice and hot; I’m hungry and it’s time to sup; Boil enough pasta to fill me up…. Enough, enough, pasta pot; I have my pasta, nice and hot; so simmer down my pot of clay; until I’m hungry another day.”) However, when Big Anthony recited the verse, he forgot to blow three kisses to the magic pasta pot at the end of the magic verse – and, so, the pasta pot kept bubbling and more and more pasta kept piling up. The pasta overflowed out of the pot, filling up Strega Nona’s entire house and spilling out to begin flowing through the village like a tidal wave. It was only upon Strega Nona’s returning home that she was able to correct the spell, blowing three kisses, so that the pasta pot stopped boiling. And, in the end, it was Big Anthony who had to eat up all of the pasta that he caused to spill over into the village.

Some of the lessons that Strega Nona teaches to young children are the importance of paying attention and listening to instructions, the consequences that can happen if you don’t follow instructions, and the value of honesty and truthfulness. Interestingly, though, there was some pushback from people who didn’t agree with the book’s positive depiction of magic and witchcraft – especially as it came out during a satanic panic that persisted throughout the late 1980s. For example, one parent claimed in an editorial for The Desert Sun: “It is teaching the occult to our children in a way that they think is harmless and fun to do, when in fact many children are coming up missing each year because they are stolen to be used in the satanic rituals performed… by various groups of witches.”