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The Witch (also referred to as the Crafty Wood Carver) is a supporting character in Brave.

Brave[]

"Deep in the overgrown Highland forest, a ramshackle blackhouse cottage is home to the Crafty Carver. This seemingly harmless, eccentric and long-in-the-tooth crone specializes in the whittling of wooden bear trinkets, figurines and curios. But the mysterious recluse is more than meets the eye. When Merida sees through the guise and reveals her as the Witch she truly is, Merida begs for a magical solution to her problems. The Witch begrudgingly gives in, conjuring a haphazard spell with an obscure riddle, which hold Merida’s fate in the balance."[1]

The witch lives the life of a wood carver, and uses her knowledge in magic to help her in her work. the Will O’ the Wisps lead Merida to the hut of the witch who insists in presenting herself as a simple wood carver. But Merida rapidly realizes her real nature, after seeing a broom moving by itself, a speaking crow, and other abnormal wonders. In exchange of buying her entire wood carving stock with her necklace, Merida convinces the witch to give her a spell in the form of a cake, to change her mother and thus change her fate. While brewing the spell, the witch remarked that long ago, a prince desired a similar spell to change his fate and grant him the strength of ten men.

When Merida comes back to the witch's hut, hoping to find a remedy to the spell, she finds, instead of the witch gone for the season (for the Wicker Man festival in Stornoway), a potion-powered automated message through which the witch reveals the spell will become permanent by the second sunrise. The witch also leaves Merida a riddle, which contains the way to revert the spell. The riddle details, "Mend the bond torn by pride." Merida presumed it meant repairing the tapestry depicting her family and blanket it over her mother to break the spell. But Merida later discovered that she simply had to love her mother for all her faults.

The Legend of Mor'du[]

In this animated short, the witch invites a new guest in her rebuilt hut. Her crow assumes the guest wants the bear spell, so she tells the story of the man who became the demon bear Mor'du. When she got to the part where the prince found her cottage, the witch embellished that she was a beautiful woman, only for the crow to order her to stop embellishing. Upon the tale's conclusion, the witch offers the spell in the form of a cake to the guest, who turns out to be Wee Dingwall. He panics, says he only stopped by for water, and runs out of the cottage.

Trivia[]

  • The witch makes numerous allusions to modernity: her collections of woodcarvings includes a bear in the position of Auguste Rodin's sculpture "The Thinker", a parody of Michelangelo's fresco "The Creation of Adam" with bears instead of human figures, and a depiction of a pizza delivery truck. Additionally she gives 50% discount on all her stock, following a modern marketing technic, and has a system working exactly as an automated message. Also, the crow asks a guard to sign a delivery notice.
  • The witch has a woodcarving of Sulley among her collection.
  • The witch mentions that has gone to the "Wicker Man festival" in Stornoway, referencing the 1973 British horror film The Wicker Man, also revolving around a similar pagan festival in Scotland; except that it is set in Summerisle instead of Stornoway.
  • The scene where she gives Merida the spell is compared to the Poor Unfortunate Souls scene in Disney's The Little Mermaid.
  • She is referred to as the Witch Carver by some fans to distinguish her from other witches and because of her carving occupation.

Gallery[]

References[]

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