In the foaming full moon tides of Storm Austen, the clocks dialled back today, late sunrises and early sunsets splashing colour across wintery skies. Mourning the restricted access to green spaces during shorter days, I sometimes dare myself to run-walk through the park at twilight, phone light blazing and heart beating. Often I catch another woman doing the same in a moment of defiance before night’s curtain falls.
Given that 9 out of 10 women in the UK report feeling unsafe walking in the dark, flying by broomstick offers an attractive alternative. Today UN Women UK launch their annual campaign Right to Move inviting women to complete the sentence “If I felt safe after dark, I would…” Their powerful Bystander film, urges men to step in and address harrassment and sign an open letter.
In Newcastle, women have taken matters into their own hands. Following the murders of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa, in 2021 a group of female friends started patrolling the streets with backpacks full of supplies to help women get home safe at weekends. Based on the idea “if the system won’t keep women safe at night, we’ll do it ourselves,” Women’s Street Watch UK now has over 50 volunteers working across two cities.
"... for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so terrible for you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs."
~ Middlemarch, written in 1871 by English Writer George Eliot/ Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880)
As we approach Halloween/ All Saints/ Samhain/ Day of the Dead, I’m aware that the battles and sacrifices of my female ancestors paved the way for my life today.
Women on both sides of my family, led tough London working-class lives in the streets where I now live and work. A scourge of TB, due to poor living conditions, killed my paternal great-great grandmother, and five of her ten children, including Florence, a music hall singer. During WWII, my paternal grandmother excelled as a plotter in the ATS (Auxilliary Territorial Service), and became a sergeant, but as a working-class woman could not attain a higher rank. My sister, now a Detective Superintendent, secured a ground-breaking domestic abuse conviction of the partner of a young mother who committed suicide as a result of his coercive control.
My mother defied a scanty education in marriageable home-making skills, carving out a fulfilling career for herself as an Occupational Therapist. Mum inherited her determination from her notoriously fierce grandmother who made the headlines when she won a battle to choose appropriate education for her deaf daughter (my Nan). These are just a few known stories, many unknown tales linger in the ancestral shadows, humming in my DNA.
Notes on Witches
Pip McGough
When I was small
I believed witches lived alone.
Then I met one
in a kitchen full of relatives.
She was slicing bread while the others argued.
Every time she laid a hand on someone’s back
the argument slowed
the way a river does
when it widens.
A woodcut of the North Berwick Witch Trials from Newes from Scotland (1591) source Wiki
In 1590, the boat transporting Scots King James VI and his Danish bride was buffeted by high winds. Anne of Denmark had been driven back by storms the previous summer, so the King had traversed tempests to fetch her himself, spending winter in Denmark before making the turbulent May voyage to Leith. The King became convinced that the source of all this wild weather was none other than witchcraft.
Whilst the royal couple were attempting their voyages in 1589, a young maidservant had been undergoing horrific torture at the hands of her employer David Seton, a bailie (officer) of Lady Seton, friend of Anne of Denmark. Geillis Duncan’s crime was wander off in the night and “to help all such as were troubled or grieved with any kind of sickness or infirmity, and in short space did perform many matters most miraculous... made her master and others to be in great admiration, and wondered there at.” (Newes in Scotland 1591) Her eventual ‘confession,’ which she later tried to retract, named a host of participants in a Halloween rave led by the devil himself, designed to stir up the storm against the royal bridal boat. Whilst under torture Agnes Simpson described Geillis playing mouth harp and singing a Witches Reel which she was forced to perform infront of the King as part of the trial. Geillis and 70 others who were executed received an official pardon in 2004.
My track Witches Reel, for the compilation Weirdlore (Folk Police 2012)
Eight years after Geillis received justice, I was invited to contribute a track to a folk compilation called Weirdlore. I wove her Witches Reel around a pagan chant and an excerpt from The Lament Of The Cailleach (Old Woman) Of Beare. One reviewer described it as “highly singular,” and it fascinates me how the words sing, singe, single and singular run sonic rings around each other. Singing solo often carries a primal fear of getting singed by the burning flames of social judgement. Yet interestingly, one possible word root of single, is sem, which means both one: as one and together with, indicating that we discover our singular selves in togetherness.
In misogynist mythology, women who wander at night, with singular talents including healing and singing, were branded whores or witches. The threat of male violence and social ostracisation kept women in their place at home looking after their families. Witches were often called solitaries and solo women, whose singularity offers a slipstream out of the nuclear family, are still viewed with suspicion, dislike and pity. What this fails to recognise, as Pip Coulston’s poem points out, is the vital role ‘single’ women play in their communities. Throughout my life I’ve witnessed singular women transforming the lives of individuals, communities and the whole social landscape for generations to come.
This witchy season, I celebrate the womens’ voices that sing on in mine. May we all wander fear-free under the moon at night.
