{"id":1700,"date":"2010-06-29T11:44:28","date_gmt":"2010-06-29T17:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1700"},"modified":"2010-06-29T11:50:23","modified_gmt":"2010-06-29T17:50:23","slug":"1700","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1700","title":{"rendered":"The ‘Old Religion’ of Pendle Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the early 17th century, a condemned witch goes to the gallows, saying under her breath an incantation of the Old Religion.<\/p>\n

Only the incantation invokes the Virgin Mary, Ave, Regina Caelorum<\/em><\/a>, and the old religion is Roman Catholicism, made virtually synonymous with treason during the reigns of Edward VI<\/a>, Elizabeth I<\/a>, and James I <\/a>of England.<\/p>\n

Considerations of treason would go over the heads of the Pendle witches<\/a>, however, a group of mostly poor rural women in northern England caught up in an atmosphere of religious turmoil and fear of invasion from Catholic Spain.<\/p>\n

Based on court trial records<\/a>, Mary Sharratt’s Daughters of the Witching Hill<\/em><\/a> tells a generational family story of “cunning women,” folk healers in a popular Catholic tradition (like Mexican curanderas<\/em>) whose conduct becomes criminalized after the “stripping of the altars<\/a>” and the destruction of popular Catholicism in the mid-1500s.<\/p>\n

In a way that reminds me a bit of some of Mary Stewart’s work, Sharratt follows three generations of women struggling with poverty and seeking the doubled-edged respect and fear of being capable of healing\u2014and thus also of cursing.<\/p>\n

To be honest [says Bess Southerns, the grandmother] I didn’t give a toss about the Pope in Rome or any plots in faraway lands, but I yearned for the sense of sanctity and protection that hung over us then [before the Protestant Reformation], the talk of miracles and wonders, a prayer and a saint to ward us from every ill and the solace of the Blessed Mother. Now we’d been left to stand stark and unshielded, to bear whatever cruel lot Providence cast our way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When Bess, also known as Mother Demdike, risks teaching the making of clay images to a friend’s daughter, Annie, the girl responds, “Are you saying that anyone who moulds clay might work witchcraft, Mother Demdike? Then there’d scarely be a landlord left alive.”<\/p>\n

Whatever we might say about the talk of familiar spirits appearing as dogs and boys that the accused witches revealed at their trial<\/a>, Sharratt treats these as real elements of the plot, giving the story a Gothic edge that moves it beyond the Christian world and suggests why today’s English Witches might still look back four hundred years and wonder just what was happening in Lancashire.<\/p>\n

This publisher’s video “trailer” lets you see the novel’s physical setting.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the early 17th century, a condemned witch goes to the gallows, saying under her breath an incantation of the Old Religion. Only the incantation invokes the Virgin Mary, Ave, Regina Caelorum, and the old religion is Roman Catholicism, made virtually synonymous with treason during the reigns of Edward VI, Elizabeth I, and James I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,29,12],"class_list":["post-1700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-england","tag-witchcraft","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-1700","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8830,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8830","url_meta":{"origin":1700,"position":0},"title":"Mystery Deity in Hitler Hex","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 27, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Today the Internet served me \"Putting a Hex on Hitler: LIFE Goes to a 'Black Magic' Party.\" For background, you have to know that the pictorial weekly news magazine Life had a regular feature called \"Life Goes to a Party\" \u2014 and many of these parties featured big-name musicians \u2014\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/incantation-in-progress.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":793,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=793","url_meta":{"origin":1700,"position":1},"title":"Helen Duncan’s Family Tries Again for a Pardon","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Mary Martin was 11 years old when her father taught her to box. She would come home from school scratched and bruised, her ears ringing with abuse from the playground. Mary Martin had the unhappy distinction of being the granddaughter of Britain's last convicted witch.Descendants of Helen Duncan, the \"last\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2369,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2369","url_meta":{"origin":1700,"position":2},"title":"If You Really Practice the *Old* Religion . . .","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":". . . then you need some ritual skull cups. Come to think of it, I think that I know someone who does.","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":755,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=755","url_meta":{"origin":1700,"position":3},"title":"Who’s a Celt now? – 7","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A quirky translation of witches' chantsPart 1, Part 2, Part 3,Part 4, Part 5, Part 6Stephen Oppenheimer, the anthropologist who combines DNA, archaeological, and linguistic evidence to argue against any \"glorious Celtic heritage\" in England, further argues that Celtic languages were not widespread there before the Roman invasion.His work reminded\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Celts\"","block_context":{"text":"Celts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=celts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1046,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1046","url_meta":{"origin":1700,"position":4},"title":"Seeing the World with Greek Eyes","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 28, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\"I am a Greek born 2,381 years after my ancestors built and dedicated the Parthenon . . . . I am telling Greek history outside the conventional Christian worldview,\" writes Eaggelos G. Vallianatos, author of The Passion of the Greeks: Christianity and the Rape of the HellenesBorn in a Greek\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9327,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9327","url_meta":{"origin":1700,"position":5},"title":"The Best New Book about the Salem Witch Trials","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 24, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Wouldn't you like to live in an enchanted world, where everything in nature brought messages from gods and spirits? The New England Puritans did so, but with a smaller cast of characters: their God and their Devil. But there were lots of messages all the same: If your cow died,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/the-witches.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1700"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1702,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1700\/revisions\/1702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}