Ballads & Folk Songs About Witches by Jessica Brand

Susannah Martin

jbrand30 — 2024-02-02 22:47:52 UTC

Susannah Martin (née North, baptized September 30, 1621 – July 19, 1692) was one of fourteen women executed for the suspicion of practicing witchcraft during the Salem witch trials of colonial Massachusetts. The words came almost verbatim from the transcript of Susanna's trial. The band Touchstone just set them to music.

The Gloucester Witch

jbrand30 — 2024-02-02 22:48:35 UTC

The locally famous Peg Notwithstanding, the Gloucester (MA) Witch, the severe lesson of the witchcraft delusion, belief in the existence of witches had by no means died out. The woman Wesson lived in what was then called the Garrison house, standing on the spot now occupied by the Catholic parochial residence (near St. Ann’s Church on Pleasant St.), removed a few years since to Maplewood Avenue, where it serves as a tenement house.

Tan Lin

jbrand30 — 2024-02-02 22:54:55 UTC

Tam Lin is an old fairy ballad from the borderlands of Scotland, concerning a mortal woman who encounters a mysterious man in a forbidden forest. When she finds herself pregnant with his child, she seeks him out again and learns he is a mortal man, captive to the faeries and at risk for sacrifice as their tribute to hell. To rescue him, she must find the faeries at midnight on Halloween and pull him from horse as the faerie troop passes by. She must hold onto him as he is transformed into a variety of beasts, or fire, or other dangers. She does so, and at the end of the tale, the Faerie Queen speaks her wrath at the departed man, wishing she'd taken out his eyes or his heart to prevent his rescue.

Broomfield Hill

jbrand30 — 2024-02-02 22:56:36 UTC

This ballad may have been known as early as the 16^th century in Britain, for mention is the song Broom, broom on hill in various publications of that period, including The Complaynt of Scotland (1549). European analogs of the ballad tale date from an even earlier period, one which has the same story with an interesting variation having been written in the 12^th century. Most early versions, as well as the foreign analogs, mention using a magic rune, charm, or herb to cast a spell over the knight to induce deep sleep.

Two Magicians

jbrand30 — 2024-02-02 22:59:31 UTC

"The Twa Magicians", "The Two Magicians", "The Lady and the Blacksmith", or "The Coal Black Smith" (Roud 1350, Child 44) is a British folk song. It first appears in print in 1828 in two sources, Peter Buchan's Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland and John Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae #40.

Mammy Redd

jbrand30 — 2024-02-02 23:00:23 UTC

In 1692, Wilmot Redd died on the gallows because her neighbors didn’t like her. Redd (or Reed/Read, by some accounts) was the only victim of the Salem witch trials who lived in Marblehead, Mass., Salem’s neighbor to the south. Townspeople singled her out for persecution because she had made a bad impression on many of them.

Lookie there

jbrand30 — 2024-02-02 23:01:55 UTC

Witches Reel

jbrand30 — 2024-02-02 23:08:45 UTC

In 1591, a Scottish witches' dance (with explicit widdershins directions) came to prominence in the form of "The Witches' Reel" during The North Berwick witch trials. This was the first major witchcraft persecution in Scotland, and began with a sensational case involving the royal houses of Denmark and Scotland.