Ellen Knight Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Ellen Knight from Tunbridge Wells
Thought she’d try her hand at spells
Found inside a witch’s book
By a foggy soggy brook.

First she turned her sister’s braces
Into caterpillar’s laces
Next, to vex her brother Eddy
Her magic powers shrank his teddy
Which fell down in the toilet bowl
One flush and it was swallowed whole.

Her ma said, ‘Ellen, eat your greens’.
She changed them into fairy queens
Which flew ten times around the telly
Frightening to fits her Aunty Nelly.

When Pa grew cross and tried to shout
Her magic whisked his dentures out
They jumped across the room and flew
Into her granny’s Irish stew.
And there they sank beneath the gravy
Like two old dinghies from the navy.

Grown bold, she changed her cousin’s cat
Into a tiger large and fat
Which went with her to the the-atre
And at the curtain’s fall it ate her!

So little girls who’d like to be
A witch of power and mystery,
Make dog or mouse or fish go splat –
But never ever change a cat!