The Midnight Folk is a children's fantasy novel by John Masefield. It is about a boy, Kay Harker, who sets out to discover what became of a fortune stolen from a sea-faring ancestor before it is found by a coven of witches who are also seeking it for their own ends. He is aided in this by various talking animals, most notably Nibbins the cat, who used to be a witch's cat but has reformed. One of the other household cats, Blackmalkin, takes its name from the witch's familiar in the opening scene of Shakespeare's Macbeth. John Edward Masefield (1 June 1878 – 12 May 1967), was a British poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1930 until his death in 1967. ... This article is part of the Witchcraft series. ... In witchcraft, a familiar spirit, commonly called familiar (from Middle English familiar, related to family) is a spirit who obeys a witch, conjurer, etc. ... William Shakespeare—born April 1564; baptised April 26, 1564; died April 23, 1616 (O.S.), May 3, 1616 (N.S.)—has a reputation as the greatest of all writers in English. ... Scene from Macbeth, depicting the witches conjuring of an apparition in Act IV, Scene I. Painting by William Rimmer This article is on the play Macbeth by Shakespeare. ...

There is a sequel, The Box of Delights, which features the same villain; the evil wizard (and jewel thief) Abner Brown. Kay's guardian in that book, Caroline Louisa, first appears in the Midnight Folk as a kind of white witch. Kay's ancestor comes from an earlier, adult fantasy novel by Masefield, Sard Harker. The Box of Delights is a childrens fantasy novel by John Masefield. ... The White Witch is the chief villain of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first published book in C. S. Lewiss Chronicles of Narnia. ...