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lyrics

They had trials for the women
Someone thought to have cursed the stock
Killed the infant in the cradle
Brought the drought that had wrecked the crop
And the learned argued from criteria
From the factors everyone knew
To decide if the scaffold should rise
If the medicine was a witches’ brew

It was not the mob. It was systemic
It was an accepted part of life
There were lawyers, the brightest minds
Doing what they thought was right/Doing what they genuinely believed was right
Protecting the community
With a moral compass. Sensitive and stern
Pouring over pertinent historical cases
To discover what they might learn

On the table lie the documents
Beautifully scribed with the neatest of hands
Decisions made all could agree on
On the basis of what each could understand
They had trials for the women
For those accused of killing the stock
Thank God we’re rid of all that superstition
Now the brightest minds science have got.

In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the leaders were elected by the freemen of the colony.
In the Bury St Edmunds trials, eminent thinker and Lord Chief Justice of England, Sir Matthew Hale drew on supportive evidence (i.e. to conviction) from philosopher and scientist Thomas Browne (1605-82) who, in turn, was influenced by the work of Bacon. Hale himself was one of the most influential authors of the 17th Century. His legal writings became a critical source even years after his death. One of the two Lowestoft women convicted at Bury St Edmunds, Rose Cullener, was condemned in part due to empirical evidence in court that she was able to open children’s clenched hands (which was seen as a sign of daemonic impact) through simple touch, while others could not through any means, and that she could do this even when the children’s heads were covered with an apron so all to make all ‘touchers’ ostensibly anonymous.
[Quaker, Thomas Maule, commented upon the trials: ‘It were better that 100 witches should live than one person be put to death for a witch, which is not a witch’. Maule was imprisoned for twelve months before a trial found him not guilty].
‘By the end of the sixteenth century most educated Europeans believed that witches, in addition to practising harmful magic, engaged in a variety of diabolical activities’
‘Now it is important to note at the outset that these witch-beliefs, all of which concern the relationship between witches and the Devil, were mainly the property of the literate and ruling classes and not the common people’
‘The great European witch-hunt could not have taken place until the members of the ruling elites of European countries, especially those men who controlled the operation of the judicial machinery, subscribed to the various beliefs concerning the diabolical activities of witches…’
(All: The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe’, Levack, 1995 (2nd Edition))

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from What was left, released March 31, 2023

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Jon Airdrie and the Enablers Newport, UK

The Enablers is a band/project having the central notion of bringing a core number of people together to fashion a collection of songs, and then to record these songs, capturing the mood of the time - the mood both of the compositions themselves and of the band for the project's duration. To date, there have been eight Enablers. ... more

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