A Discoverie of Witches

Abstract

Lancaster Assizes, 1612. Ten people from Pendle in Lancashire were hanged, pronounced guilty of the crime of witchcraft. The poems in this collection give voice to characters involved in the trials: from the accused to the accusers, from a child who bore witness against her own mother to the hangman who carried out his job loyally and efficiently, yet not without stirrings of compassion. Also included are several poems set in the Pennine countryside where Blake grew up, as well as the controversial tour-de-force ‘The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper’