Trails

I mentioned in passing, yesterday, a song about witch-burnings in the medieval and early modern periods

Because the performer was Irish, I mistakenly thought it was rooted in Irish history. Not so; the song is The Burning Times, and has been recorded (three times, he says) by Irish folk superstar Christy Moore, so it is probably well-known in folk-music circles, just not to me

Moore says he was alerted to the existence of the song by his sister, who heard about it from a friend who attended a performance by Roy Bailey, a longtime legend of the English folk scene, and left-wing activist, who also made a recording of it (topically Bailey returned his MBE in 2006 in protest against the British government's foreign policy with regard to Lebanon and the Palestinian territories) 

But Bailey did not write the song. It originates from a California singer-songwriter called Charlie Murphy - a man who gave up a career in youth mental health services to devote himself to social change through music, after he realised that he was trying to "help ... young people to adjust to a world in turmoil rather than to empower them to take an active role in making things better"

Moore rightly makes the point that the song comes alive in performance rather than as words on a page, but I've copied the final verse below anyway, along with its chorus/incantation of pagan and classical goddesses, inclusing Diana, moon-goddess. The first verse of the song paints a vivid picture of witches as repositories of folk wisdom, healers, teachers, spiritual guides, purveyors of ritual. The second verse covers the coming of the Catholic church and the persecution of such women across Europe - a wave of nine million killings

Finally, the song broadens its perspective to the present day, using the persecution of witches as a metaphor for the violence against the earth in our own time. In his notes on the song, Christy Moore says "We are destroying that which sustains us, as sure as the sun has gone down this night. It feels to me like we are past the point of no return so let us sing and dance as if there were no tomorrow". This resonates with some wise words written by blipper Mima a couple of days ago. Like the life of a song, everything is connected

ISIS-ASTARTE-DIANA-HECATI-DEMETER-KALI-INANNA

Now the Earth is a witch, we still burn her, stripping her down with mining and the poison of our wars.

Still to us the Earth is still a healer a teacher and a Mother a weaver of a web that keeps us all alive.

She gives us the wisdom to see through the chaos, she gives us the courage it is our will to survive.

ISIS-ASTARTE-DIANA-HECATI-DEMETER-KALI-INNANNA.