Can I have your voice? Please? Stunning.xx

In 1612, 12 were people accused of the murder of 10 people by witchcraft. They practised incantations and rituals in a tiny beggar’s cottage on the side of Pendle Hill. The key witness in the trial was 9 year-old Jennet Device, the youngest daughter of one of the families accused. Though she knew her whole family could be sentenced to death by hanging, including her own mother, she willingly gave a lengthy and chilling account of what went on in that dark house.

Her family were found guilty and hanged, leaving Jennet alone and an orphan. Years later, ever to be haunted by events of the trial, Jennet herself once again stood in front of a judge accused of witch craft. In the cruellest of irony, it was the evidence of a child that led Jennet to her own gruesome death.

The trial set a terrible precedent, causing an outbreak of mass hysteria surrounding women, the devil and witches! The suspicion and paranoia made its way through England and even to America spawning the famous Salem Witch Trials later in the century.

There was so much musical and programmatic potential in this terrible story. The area surrounding Pendle Hill has such an atmosphere of gloom and foreboding, music seemed to flow naturally from the silence of the hills. As you walk along the dark paths and up into the hills, you can almost hear a witch’s cackle with each step.


P. Ratcliff



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