The Witch of Coös

All is not as it seems behind the innocent façade presented by two citizens of Coös County. Sinister forces and dark secrets wait for their opportunity to burst forth. Coös County encompasses a vast expanse of sparsely inhabited mountainous terrain in the northernmost portion of New Hampshire, posing a formidable stretch of road for any traveler passing through. Such is the case for the narrator of Robert Frost’s “The Witch of Coös" (originally published in 1922), as the poem opens with his discovery of shelter after spending the day traveling: “I stayed the night for shelter at a farm / behind the mountain, with a mother and son.”

In the mode of Coleridge’s wedding-guest in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1834), forced to listen to the tale of the Ancient Mariner, Frost’s narrator finds himself transfixed by the story his hosts begin to tell him. The mother and son are “Two old believers. They did all the talking.” Taking this opportunity, perhaps their first in years, to talk to someone other than each other or themselves, the two “old believers” launch into an incredible tale of marital strife, witchcraft and a living skeleton.

At first glance, this tale may appear to be a far cry from typical Frost fare. A sense of the supernatural pervades the poem -- the mother begins by readily admitting her identity as a witch, while her son proclaims: “Mother can make a common table rear / And kick with two legs like an army mule.” But behind the talk of witchcraft, Frost reveals the mother to be plagued by very human problems. For there is one subject about which the witch has no knowledge: the souls of the dead. She muses, “Yes, there’s something the dead are keeping back.”

It is with this topic that Frost segues into a theme familiar to his readers: interpersonal conflict. For in talking about the dead, the mother begins telling the story of two long dead men who once played an important role in her life. One is her late husband, Toffile, and the other is the animated skeleton in the attic. Locked up there in the attic, behind the headboard of her bed, is the physical presence of her darkest secret, banished but never entirely gone. As the son explains: “Mother hears it in the night.”

Despite the strangeness of the witch’s predicament, this story reaches far beyond the remote landscape of Coös County. Everyone has their own “skeletons in the closet” (or attic) hidden from public view, but nevertheless burdensome, even debilitating. Often these skeletons are hidden behind a placid exterior; no one would suspect a charming rural farmhouse in Coös County to hold such terrible secrets, just as people often assume an outwardly content and seemingly well-off person to have no major obstacles in life.

Personally, I try my best to maintain a calm exterior, disguising my sorrows from my acquaintances and sometimes even my closest friends. Accordingly, I hope you will forgive me for not revealing my “skeletons” in such a public forum as this column. Nevertheless, this seems to be the very remedy that Frost suggests in “The Witch of Coös.” The eponymous witch and her son have kept their (literal) skeleton confined too long, finally finding psychological release in confessing their entire story to an outside audience.

It is my belief that this kind of personal confession would be of great benefit to many Tufts students. Often only when a secret is finally revealed do we realize how debilitating it was to keep it hidden. But what of the witch’s secret -- who is the skeleton and how did it come to be in the attic? Stay tuned next week for the answer!