Lyrics

My Grandaddy never said a word about hunting witches.
But I remember how he would look at certain people.
Quietly. Long.
Not in judgment.
But like he could see something in them that others couldn’t.

He never said anything harsh, but sometimes after we left someone’s place, he’d say something odd, like,

“That boy don’t whistle right.”
Or,
“She don’t cast no shadow when she talks.”
At the time I thought he was just Southern.
Now I know he was watching for signs.
Reading signs.
He was still hunting, even then.

And now I wonder—what was he hunting for?
And why did the land need someone to do it?

I used to think philosophy had nothing to do with these stories.
But now I see: it’s everything.

Aristotle speaks of telos—purpose. Final cause.
The acorn becomes the oak because that is what it must become.
My Grandaddy’s life, so far as I can read it now, had a telos. He was more than a farmer, more than a government man, more than a grandfather.
He was a keeper of harmony.

And witches?
In the old tongue, “witch” wasn’t about gender or broomsticks. It was about imbalance. The ones who poison the land. The ones who speak rot into the roots and lie to the wind. The ones who use knowledge without wisdom.

A witch hunter isn’t someone who hates magic.
He’s someone who keeps it honest.

And now the land whispers to me.
It says: “Pick up the blade.”

Not to kill, but to cut through the lies.
To find truth. To bring balance.
To tend the field, and purge what poisons.

They’ll say I’m romanticizing an old man’s quiet life.
They’ll say I’ve let ghost stories get in the way of reason.

But I’ve studied Aristotle under Ed Halper, the smallest and most powerful teacher I have ever known.
And Ed would say:

“The truth does not depend on who believes it. Only that it is.”
My Grandaddy walked through fire and was not burned.
Walked the land and left it healthier than he found it.
Taught with silence.
Hunted without fanfare.
Healed what others ignored.

Whether he was ghost or god or something between,
I know this now:
He walks with me.

And I walk with him.

And I will write,
so the others may remember
what the land remembers
and what must not be forgotten.