Marion Gibson

Understanding Witchcraft? Accusers’ Stories in Print in Early Modern England

Beginning an essay about witchcraft and truth with a quotation from Macbeth might give an impression of cosy familiarity (no pun intended). Here are the weird sisters, safely fictional and well-known: … Oftentimes to win us to our harm The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles to betray’s In deepest consequence1 But this essay opens with this quotation (neatly incorporating the title of Jim Sharpe’s comprehensive guide to the history of English witchcraft) because I want to concentrate on the second part of the famous warning, and examine in anxious detail some of our sources for understanding what witchcraft was. When we look closely, it can be seen that some of the ‘honest trifles’ — legal documents and pamphlets concerning witchcraft cases — which we use as part of our foundation for understanding witchcraft are seriously (but interestingly) flawed as data-sources. Some of them are as fictional as Macbeth itself. In these cases, they are less likely to ‘tell us truths’ than they are to’betray us’. This article will look briefly at how some of these sources represent witchcraft to us, and why it is represented by them in these ways. My suggestion is that the sources from which information about witchcraft comes, and the ways in which that information is used by the legal system and by witchcraft pamphlets, determine in part our understanding of witchcraft. I shall concentrate here on informants (victims and other witnesses) and their stories.

Kissing the Medium: The Spiritualist-Witch as Countercultural Heroine in The Thirty-Nine Steps (1959)

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Brill via the ISBN in this record

Vikings and victories: sea-stories from ‘The seafarer’ to Skyfall and the future of British maritime culture

In 2011, Nick Harvey, communication and campaigns manager for Seafarers UK, wrote an article for the Maritime Foundation deploring what he called ‘alarming ignorance of our island nations dependence on the sea’. ‘Our nationwide survey revealed that general maritime knowledge amongst the public at large is severely lacking, and “sea-blindness” is a huge problem,’ he stated. Knowledge of Britains past and present seafarers appeared patchy and a character from American film was identified by some as Britains greatest seaman. But why might Britain have become ‘sea-blind’, as the survey results suggest? Building on Harveys claim that the fictional Jack Sparrow has replaced Alfred the Great and Nelson as a national maritime icon, this article seeks to demonstrate the close connection between literary culture, the politics of identity and the fortunes of the British seafaring tradition, especially its navy. The representation of seafarers in a literary trend is seen to be an accurate indicator of the nations attitude to maritime activities at any given time. Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives, this article suggests that the impact of literary and filmic depictions is more important than has been recognised: opinion formers are likely to be influenced by such depictions rather than, or alongside, overt arguments about hardware or policy.

Wicker men and Straw dogs: internal colonialism in Celtic novels and films 1968–1978

This article explores depictions of Celtic barbarism and paganism in novels and films 1968–1978 to consider how Hechters concept “internal colonialism” relates to their portrayals of “Celts” and their “colonisers”. Whilst the fictions portray Celts as threatening to the British nation state and its American allies, the non-Celtic colonial powers are ultimately blamed for the violent horror in each text. The article focuses on depictions relating to Cornwall. This case study shows how much “a product of its time” Hechters theory was, and examines the interplay between academia and popular culture in producing theories of nationalism.

Scottish Witches and Witch-Hunters

The first chapter in this sequence, ‘Musical Instruments and Narrative’, addresses the question of what music supported the narratives. Her review of the previous literature suggests the harp, the fiddle, and, to some extent, the lute, all of which produce ‘patterns of strong and weak sounds’ (78), were the key instruments in accompanying romances. Zaerr makes a case here for considering the fiddle, with its capacity for sustaining notes, as the archetypical accompanying instrument, which ‘surges and recedes beneath the words’ (104). She turns to address ‘Metre, Accent and Rhythm’ in the succeeding chapter, the longest in the book. The welter of quotations and references to the writings of others that begin this chapter suggests that she is furthest from her comfort zone here, but she soon regains her footing to put forward a challenging proposition that, contrary to the suggestions of those such as Karl Reichl, romances may have been sung to melodies which leap, which possess a wide ambit, and which include more than one melodic motif. In support of this contention, she provides a setting of an extract from Bevis of Hampton to the melody of ‘Edi beo thu’. She further argues that what may have been seen as scribal corruptions may rather be attempts to energize a text as it interacts with the independent, overlaying stress patterns of an accompaniment. What is effective in performance, she reminds us, may appear ‘horrifying in a written context’ (139). In the following chapter, she provides some sample settings, based on modified medieval melodies. For example, she sets parts of the alliterative poem The Wars of Alexander to a (much-modified) tune found in the manuscript of the German romance, Der jüngere Titurel. This, she claims, meets ‘the challenges of this metre: the undifferentiated lines, the variable number of syllables (and even stresses) in each line, and the requirement that some lines move through the caesura without a pause’ (152). A brief chapter then defends the utility of historical performance as an approach to the romances, and the book concludes with two appendices and a glossary of terms. Performance and the Middle English Romance itself is an interesting centaur-like beast. Sometimes Zaerr allows herself to be more daring in her footnotes than in the body of the text—in one instance, the text proper reads ‘a minstrel might try out his material at a monastery or in a marketplace’ (38), where the corresponding footnote remarks, ‘My own experience performing medieval romances and music in a grocery store called Waremart (with a loudspeaker hailing fresh bread in aisle 5), and in a cowboy bar called the Ranch Club, lead me to conclude that performers do not always limit themselves to expected venues’. Here, the footnote carries the humorous and the personal, enriching the reader’s experience. Sometimes key remarks which are confined to footnotes, as on page 140, might well have been elevated to the text proper. Another set of paratexts to the text proper are her own performances, viewable online (https://english. boisestate.edu/lindamariezaerr/videoclips/). These performances give her discussion another dimension altogether. It would be even better to have access to more instances of such work. All in all, we can say that Zaerr’s book is an intriguing one, one which points to the future of things past.

Annabel Gregory, Rye spirits: faith, faction and fairies in a seventeenth-century English town

performances or changes added at the whims of a copyist or even the composer himself. Herissone’s study is a highly significant contribution to a better understanding of compositional processes and musical invention in Restoration England. It is revealing how important it is to understand a time’s use of musical sources in order to attain renewed insights, helping us to explain the complex and evanescent nature of music. But the book is also important for another reason: though the author’s primary aim is not to review the consequences of editing music, it ultimately challenges common approaches to critical editing, in particular to music of the early modern period. Due to the “serial recomposition,” as Herissone defines the constant reworkings and changes, the understanding of a more dynamic work concept must lead us to an approach that is not focused on the composer’s intentions or final authorial intention. Also understanding aspects of performance practice and “background variation” is of great value for any critical editor. Hopefully the present study will lead to investigations of music of later periods too. My only reservation is the music examples produced in Finale. The layout is not of the highest standard and most of the examples are rather squeezed and graphically somewhat unsatisfactory. It is a pity – though unfortunately a common fault in many academic books on music.

The Lancashire Witches: A Chronicle of Sorcery and Death on Pendle Hill

compared between the two ethnic groups. In this regard, the case study about the Udmurts is helpful, since they are an example of a group working to revitalize both ritual and folklore. Without such a case study, it would be too easy to come away with the impression that minority ethnic groups in northern Russia address either ritual or folklore. In their readable style, the authors provide a significant contribution to contemporary folkloristic ethnography in the former Soviet Union. Their fieldwork is exemplary, both in their methods and in their ability to establish rapport with those whom they are researching. Finally, their work highlights the significance of language choice/proficiency and gender for fieldworkers. The book will be of interest to anthropologists, folklorists, and researchers in religious studies, as well as those interested in post-socialist area studies. Similar work should be carried out for other former Soviet regions.

Cultivating the Sacred: Ritual Creativity and Practice among Women in Contemporary Europe

mentioned several times in passing) surely would be imperative, especially to illuminate the intrinsic interrelationship between magic and religion. The incentive to popularise has resulted in a number of alien intrusions, most evidently a gratuitous comparison with Primo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli (the English version dating from 1947). It stays enigmatic why that book was chosen instead of the numerous other twentieth-century Mediterranean studies of witchcraft and magic, especially since Levi’s value as an ethnographer has been questioned. Moreover, if historical continuity was really to be taken seriously, then there are also many studies of the Renaissance era to take into account. A lack of space may have prevented this, especially when several ancient figures and practices had to be omitted, but ultimately it boils down to an author’s selection. It should be noted that in 1980 Anthony Harris published a book entitled Night’s Black Agents. That, however, deals with seventeenth-century English drama.

Applying The Act Of 1604 Witches In Essex, Northamptonshire And Lancashire Before And After 1604

One of the most obvious questions that can be asked of the Witchcraft Act of 1604 is this: what actual differences were made to legal and cultural practice by the alteration of the definitions of, and penalties for, witchcraft introduced in the new Act of 1604? What, if anything, changed? This chapter in addressing the specific part of the question - relating to changes in legal practice - presents an examination of contemporary accounts of witchcraft trials before and after 1604. In 1582, Brian Darcy, a Justice of the Peace from Essex, collected a large quantity of evidence against around twenty people accused of witchcraft in St. Osyth, Clacton, Little Oakley and Essex other villages. In 1612 several communities in Northamptonshire were troubled by accusations. If there was good usable evidence of covenant in Lancashire in 1612, then there was even better evidence of the newly-delineated offence of grave-robbing for the purposes of necromancy. Keywords: Essex; Lancashire; Northamptonshire; Witchcraft Act of 1604

The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England (review)

Nathan Johnstone’s The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England begins with the fear expressed by early modern Protestants that the devil would somehow manage to convince mankind that he did not exist, and it proceeds from this dizzying paradox to explore Protestant demonology’s focus on the temptations of the imagination — to unbelief, hypocrisy, rebellion, and despair. Johnstone, thinking almost “New Historically,” sums up these temptations as subversive, both of the Christian individual and the godly nation. This is no easy simplification, however, and indeed one of the book’s great strengths is its ability to address both the headline trends of culture and history and the minute and sometimes conflicting detail that is often glossed over in less able critical writing. This history book is at home with both the factual minutiae of the past and the broader intellectual context of the scholarship of Renaissance cultural history, including that of Stephen Greenblatt, Catherine Belsey, Lyndal Roper, Diane Purkiss, and the most inventive recent historians of the period such as Peter Lake. Offering a broad but detailed history of the Reformation and its debates about the devil, Johnstone thus describes how the discourse of temptation of the body politic evolved with, and was part of, the discourse of demonic threat to the human body, surveying the historiography of the devil and theodicy, languages of temptation and narratives of crime, and the politics of representing demonized opponents in a sharply divided society. It is refreshing to find that such a good and solid historian is not afraid to engage with literature, the linguistic turn, and interdisciplinary thinking in general. The book’s obvious connections with the work of Stuart Clark, such as Thinking with Demons (Oxford, 1997) and “Protestant Demonology” (in Ankarloo and Henningsen, eds., Early Modern European Witchcraft [Oxford, 1990]), are thus those of affinity but judicious questioning. Johnstone suggests that a focus in recent scholarship on witchcraft can be misleading in thinking about the devil, over-emphasizing the significance of certain kinds of demonology at the expense of demonism. Demonism, argues Johnstone, is more nebulous than the academic demonology of witchcraft and is focused more evidently upon temptation. Freeing Satan from his witches gives a truer picture of his omnipresence in early modern culture, allowing a range of subtle readings to emerge. While other key contexts and precursors for The Devil and Demonism in Early Modern England are clearly the works of historians of witchcraft such as Jim Comptes rendus / Book Reviews 627