Tag / shropshire

Vintage sketch of a witch on her broomstick, with a black cat riding behind her.
by Carol J Forrester

Shropshire Women, Witches, And Myths – Writing Poems For Stone Tongued

When I started writing my second collection, I thought I was writing a pamphlet of poems about Shropshire folklore, and the way that water weaves through so much of it. That assumption made sense at the time, as the idea stemmed from my poem ‘Trickle Down’, but as I kept writing, different pieces of history and myth started to work their way into the manuscript. I realised I was working on something bigger than a pamphlet, and Shropshire was only part of the puzzle. The pamphlet that I’d been calling ‘Water, Witches, and Women’ started to become ‘Stone Tongued’.

The collection isn’t finished, but since it’s International Women’s History Month, I wanted to to talk about some of the Shropshire women (and women linked with Shropshire) that have inspired poems. The collection pulls from history and myth, so in places the line between those two gets a little blurred. There are stories I couldn’t have included if I was writing a traditional history, because I cannot reference the source material. Writing poems about these poem allows me to focus on finding their voices, rather than double checking my footnotes.

In this post I’m going to be going voice to five women (ten if you count carefully). Kathryn Garner who was tried for witchcraft, Placida who was a Roman woman living in Britain, Mary Jones who was a resident in the Oswestry House of Industry, Hafren an ancient British princess, and Ginny Greenteeth the water hag. I will hand you over to them:

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by Carol J Forrester

Home Unbound – Poem

There is so much sky in this county, it stretches from one horizon
to the other, and a string of clouds scattered like vertebra
arch, their edges pink, and hazy, the sun sitting low
beneath this smudged spine
and in response my own joints loosen, unlock,
lungs fill and grow
until they are as big as this county, as big as the sky
finally full, finally home.

The DVersePoetsPub logo. white text on the image of a bar, with a microphone imposed behind the text.

by Carol J Forrester

Shropshire Witches – Witchcraft In The Early Modern Era

Researching witchcraft in Shropshire is similar to panning for gold when the river has run dry. These days, there is a wealth of information regarding the ‘European Witch Crazes’ of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but Shropshire is rarely mentioned. Even when Shropshire does come up, it’s for no more than a sentence or two. This lack of history can perhaps be accredited to the narrowness of the field of study. Between 1563 and 1736, less than 500 executions were carried out for the crime of witchcraft in England.1 Europe on the other hand saw 100,000 individuals tried and less than 50,000 put to death.2 Accusations of witchcraft also rarely saw just one person implicated, resulting in numerous ‘suspects’ popping up once once the accused was questions. This resulted in localised pockets of witches being discovered in certain towns and villages, rather than nationwide witch hunts.

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by Carol J Forrester

Water Song – #DVersePoets

I want to sink bells into the pond.

Plant them just below the waterline,

where the ripples look like scales

lifting out of the shallows slowly

on the back of an endless snake.

Then at night when the moon lifts,

turns her face to watch,

I’ll slip out onto the decking,

strip down to my silver skin.

Drop like a stone or a witch

into the quiet cold of a place

not quite what I wish of it.

Wonder as the bells ring out

if anyone else may be listening.

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There’s a lot of Shropshire Folklore about women and water. The River Severn is often characterised as female, and there are tales of women (or women-like creatures) inhabiting lakes and ponds. Another image in Shropshire folk tales, is that of church bells falling into water and being lost forever, but the sound of their ringing being heard at night.

I’ve always been in love with myths and legends, but more often than not it was the classic Greek, Egyptian, and Norse myths that I turned to as a child. More recently I started to look into the tales from my native county, and one of the poems in my collection was inspired by this research. During the lockdown I’ve been trying to read more books to keep myself occupied. I ended up purchasing ‘Shropshire Folk Tales’ by Amy Douglas. The one off poem on Shropshire Folklore that I included in my collection now looks like it might grow into something more.

 

 

 

 

by Carol J Forrester

Bard On Blore Heath – #DVersePoetics

One paragraph for all the lost bodies,

somewhere still beneath dirt and grass

and the slow trundle of grazing cattle

meandering, one fence line to another.

 

Musket balls get plucked up on odd days,

rolled across a palm like a marble,

dropped into a Tupperware tub,

they outlasted the bones and flesh.

 

A field with five hundred years to forget

yet the calf gets sick with lead

loses its eyesight to a pellet

from a gun fired half a century before.

 

History reaches past its paragraph

of three thousand nameless men.

Another misery of litter

leftover once the war was done.

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Following tonight’s theme of smoke and mirrors, and feeling like the older you get, the less you actually know, I started thinking about how we learn about the history of warfare in schools. There’s a disconnect between the modern day and its wars, and battles such as the one at Bloor Heath* in Staffordshire where around three thousand men are thought to have died in the fighting.

It’s easy to look at these historic events and pick apart the motivations, and the mistakes that were made. However, when dealing with similar situations in more modern settings, the issue can often seem clouded.

I’m left to wonder what will be written five hundred years from now about the current wars being fought and the empires being built.

*The Battle of Blore Heath was part of the Wars of the Roses. I’ve been debating getting back into writing some historic posts so if you’d be interested in knowing more I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. Would it be odd to re-introduce history posts onto the site?