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Modern witches have been jumping brooms at weddings pretty much since there were modern witches. One readily sees why: of the affinity between witches and brooms, you don't need me to tell you.

Jumping the broom in the sense of a de facto marriage, unsanctioned by either church or state, originates in Lalland Scots lore. It's from there that the custom spread to the southeastern US and became current among enslaved Africans, denied the right to legal marriage.

The first time that I presided at a public handfasting, the couple had made for the purpose, from the three traditional woods, a beautiful ritual broom. (Ash, birch, and willow, in case you're wondering.) Lo and behold, come the day of the wedding, the ritual broom languished forgotten at home. (It's not a real ritual unless something goes wrong.) So they ended up jumping a manky old broom from the janitor's closet instead. The broom-jump retained its magical transformative power, nonetheless. Hey, a broom's a broom.

As to meaning, I'll leave that to you to divine. Personally, I can't help but suspect that “jumping the broom” was originally some sort of sexual euphemism, but maybe that's just me. As a humble domestic tool, of course, the broom represents the home and home-life; I've also heard it said to stand-in for the threshold.

In lots of places, couples tend to do a simple run-and-jump—over and off—but around here we do things a little differently. First you sweep the bad luck away from the couple: three times around, widdershins, of course.

Then you lay down the broom. Three times, as people clap, the couple circles deosil, hand-in-hand. Each time around, they jump the broom. Third time over, we pelt them with barley, and done's done.

(Rice? Rice? Ha! What are you, some kind of cowan?)

“YEW GAHZ LUKE LAHK-A BUNCH-A WEETCH-izz!”

The guy leaning out of the truck's passenger-side window looks like the answer to a “Hello, Central Casting? Could you send us over a Good Ole Boy, please?” call, plaid shirt and all. He's got the accent down, too.

In fact, he's got a point. How often do you see five or six people crossing the street, each with a broom over his or her shoulder? Even in Paganistan, it can't be all that often.

The brooms actually are genuine Amana Colonies “Witch's Brooms”: so-called because they can stand upright unassisted. Skilled craftsmanship is virtually indistinguishable from magic.

Real brooms, real witches. We're carrying them because we are, in fact, the Besom Brigade, a local synchronized march-and-drill team, gathering for our Saturday morning rehearsal. 21^st century Witch-hood requires a healthy capacity for self-satire.

They say that there are many paths to the top of the mountain.

Maybe so.

But in my experience, different paths lead to different places.

Some paths lead to the valley. Some paths lead to the sea.

Yes, some paths do lead to the top of the mountain.

But, of course, there are many mountains.

Every year in late April, I thoroughly clean my back porch for the first time since the descent into winter. Over the winter and early spring, things tend to collect -- dust, dead bugs, spider webs, tree pollen from early spring. The latter (especially from the pines that surround my house) makes it futile to do this any earlier because all of my hard work -- sweeping, hosing it down, vacuuming, and mopping -- would be nulled a few days later by a thick film of yellow powder. But by mid-spring, everything seems to calm down enough to make the deep cleaning worthwhile, which ends up putting this ritual right before Walpurgisnacht and May Day, which I celebrate to honor my German and Scandinavian roots. I won't go into the history of Walpurgisnacht here because it's already covered on a wealth of websites and books; I'd rather focus on one household tool that has a significant place in the lore of this holiday (especially to me personally): the broom.

Brooms are often featured in many spring holidays. At Easter in Sweden and Finland, the festivities take on a more Halloween- or Carnivale-esque character than in other places, and little girls dress up as Easter witches, wearing kerchiefs on their heads and carrying small brooms in their hands. On Walpurgisnacht, a Wild Hunt of witches and specters rides across the night sky to hold their revels on the Brocken. It's common knowledge that the broom as a flying implement is a development of the magic worker's staff. For hundreds of years, it has served as a symbol of feminine power masked as a common, humble household tool.

Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

 (Glinda the Good, The Wizard of Oz) 

Well, they call her Glinda the Good.

But she can't even tell the difference between a dog and a witch dog.

So obviously (I'm afraid I'm in a bit of a muddle, she says) she isn't, not very.

When it comes to witching, the difference between good and bad isn't the difference between help or harm.

No: when Tiffany Aching says of Mrs. Lettice Earwig (author of To Ride a Golden Broomstick) that she's “not really, when you get down to it, a very good witch” (Pratchett 99), it has nothing to do with helpful or harmful. Nothing at all.

Time was, here in Paganistan, the Besom Brigade used to show up at the Heart of the Beast May Day Parade, black steeple hats and all, doing our precision broom drills down the middle of Bloomington Avenue.

There's no need to be afraid:

we are the marching Besom Brigade.

Schmeering on that herbal lube,

riding all night on our brooms.

Sound off.

Thir-teen!

Heads or tails?

It's the classic broom-rider's dilemma: bristles in front or in back?

I'd always assumed this to be—as so often in the Craft—a matter of personal preference, or possibly denominational affiliation. But a recent conversation with Paganistan's premier Purveyor of Fine Besoms (since 1273) has convinced me otherwise.