Witchy woman? Today is some sort of hagfish appreciation day. I have nothing to say on the matter.
Instead I’m focusing on the word hag and ask how many people picked up on Bellairs’s use of the word across his writing?
The earliest use comes in the form of the road called the Hagway in The Pedant and the Shuffly, which we talked about back in 2012:
The Indiana Toll Road was the inspiration behind the Hagway and Dale Fitschen recalls driving Bellairs on it between Chicago and Gary: “In winter, the sky was gray and the air yellow, miles of utility towers, polluted ponds, and blasted heath. Twere godawful on morale to pass that on the way to make an attempt at sprightly teaching.”
Other prime examples include Jonathan Barnavelt referring to Mrs. Zimmermann as “hag face” and Professor Childermass teaching at Haggstrum College.
Childermass and Johnny Dixon also witness the Hag, a prominent rock formation in New Hampshire in the shape of a grotesque face. The Hag is Bellairs’s take of one of New Hampshire’s prized symbols, the 40-foot-tall Old Man of the Mountain, or the Great Stone Face, which fell in May 2003.
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