Name: Elliot On JKR Transphobia by Harry Potter and the Sacred Text
Duration: 2 min 33 s
Description: The Harry Potter & the Sacred Text listener community share their responses to J.K. Rowling's recent transphobia and grapple with how to continue reading her books as sacred.

One Day

The oldest song written in Britain with words and music both on the same page. From St Godric of 1150-ish. He heard it in a dream, woke and remembered it, and so the lineage began. And so today it continues.

We sang this in a tiny church just outside Oxford where we slept for a couple of nights while taking part in a conference in New College. Outside the church is the ancient Holy Well, from which we filtered and drank, and sang to, and which legend says first sprang when St Frideswide (pronounced Frithuswither) had her head cut off by a frustrated suitor. Typical Anglo-Saxon princess-saint stuff. It was really good to carry this water back to the shrine in Oxford's Christchurch cathedral, where her shrine is. Frideswide is, after all, the patron saint of Oxford and the entire county. 

We struggled in this little church to decide if this was too masculine a song - being dedicated to St Nicholas, when the church is to Margaret of Antioch and Frideswide - but we figured Nicholas' symbol is three golden balls, to symbolise the gifts he threw anonymously through the window of three maidens without a dowry and therefore unable to marry, and who would have been forced to become prostitutes go survive without husbands. So Nicholas was an active proto-feminist, we figure. 

Sung by William Parsons and Guy Hayward

Saint Nicholas (live in Binsey Church)

The Harry Potter & the Sacred Text listener community share their responses to J.K. Rowling's recent transphobia and grapple with how to continue reading her books as sacred.

Elliot On JKR Transphobia

Harry Potter and the Sacred Text is a new podcast hosted by Casper ter Kuile and Vanessa Zoltan. Every week, we treat a new chapter of Harry Potter as sacred.

Elliot On JKR Transphobia

Harry Potter and the Sacred Text

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