The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #80704   Message #2628687
Posted By: Jim Dixon
10-May-09 - 11:30 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Three Witches ... at Chelmsford (1589)
Subject: RE: lyrics from 1589 witch trial
From Elizabeth I and Tudor England by Miriam Greenblatt (New York: Benchmark Books, 2001).


A NEW BALLAD OF THE LIFE AND DEATHS OF THREE WITCHES
ARRAIGNED AND EXECUTED AT CHELMSFORD
5 JULY 1589

List Christians all unto my Song
'Twill move your Hearts to Grace.
That Dreadful Witchcraft hath been done,
Of late about this place;
But Three that cried the Devil's Name
With those who did them follow,
Now to Justice are brought home
To swing upon our Gallow....

As to the Story now to tell
The Truth I will Declare,
It was the Witches Children small
That they did not Beware;
For God into these infants' Hearts
Did pour the Light of Reason,
And all against their Mothers spoke
Of Witchcraft and of Treason.

So listen Christians to my Song
The Hangman's swung his rope,
And on these Gallows hat been done
An end to Satan's Hope;
Give the News from Chelmsford Town
To all the world be spread,
A crew of Evil Witches have gone Down
Hang'd by the neck, all three are Dead.


*
The above book was written for "elementary and junior high school" students, and as such, its sources are apparently not as well documented as we might like.

Google Books indicates that the same song is also given in the following books, but they do not provide a complete image of the relevant pages:

Harris, Anthony. Night's Black Agents: Witchcraft and Magic in Seventeenth-Century English Drama. Manchester [Eng.]: Manchester University Press, 1980.

Haining, Peter. The Witchcraft Papers: Contemporary Records of the Witchcraft Hysteria in Essex, 1560-1700. Secaucus, N.J.: University Books, 1974.