Eilandmagie

“… much of the literature on this topic has been written from ‘a woman-executing viewpoint’ that discredits the victims of the persecution by portraying them as social failures.”

— Silvia Federici, ‘Caliban and the Witch’

The Witches of Islandmagee

in the voice of Mary Dunbar 

The compass shook and the needle

spun, stopped cold on north but the ship

sailed south, howls of eastern winds

and no God to be praised. 

Where the bible’s a millstone 

to drag a child and the devil

teaches boys to read the curse

I set out to loosen the knots 

and find a bonnet, bewitched 

in Ann’s apron. Faces from fire 

and pox scars haunt my nights, 

spears fly through the windows 

with stones; turf sticks to walls. 

There’s a woman with a dirty biggy

who threatens to kill me, but I pray

to Christ to give her a reward. 

Another one with a swarthy face 

and a large rolling eye, very thick

lips, and lame of a foot, of a low

stature with a daughter of the same—

I believe the devil’s in the lasses, say

from whence they own this strange tongue? 

I’ve known by the pricking of my thumbs, 

something wicked from Islandmagee comes. 

Family Chant I 

[ELIZABETH SELLOR]
When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain

to summon the spirits to ease the pain?

[JANET LISTON]
When the hurly-burly’s done,
when the battle’s lost and won

and the ghost to bed has gone.

[WILLIAM SELLOR]
That will be ere the set of sun.

[ELIZABETH SELLOR]
But where the place?

[JANET LISTON]
Upon the heath, where the fairies

dance and milk the dairy cows.

[WILLIAM SELLOR]
There to meet with Spear,

she should lend us an ear.

The Janet Coven

MARY DUNBAR is bed-ridden and her eyes new moons.

She feels her tormentor clawing at the walls of the house.

JANET CARSON limped like a witch to the haunted house:

If the devil has taken the health from that lass, the devil

give her health again, and the devil be with you altogether!

MARY DUNBAR is out of bed, flailing her skirt and plaits:

She’d seal my lips with fire, she said in my sleep!

JANET LISTON begs God to send the girl health, but she cannot 

repeat the Lord’s prayer with ease, and so she must be a witch. 

MARY DUNBAR saw the Main witch crouched on her bedside,

who put her dirty hands in her mouth and locked her jaw.

JANET MAIN is ill coloured, with very little eyes, short

nosed, out mouthed, scarred with the smallpox, long

visaged, with a mark upon her breast.

MARY DUNBAR has soiled bedsheets with blood 

and sick is stuck in her throat so she cannot speak.

JANET LATIMER is a tall woman, with an ill fame,

and she throws the shadow of the witch.  

MARY DUNBAR jumps in her bed and bends 

her spine, her belly upturned and pumpkin-round. 

JANET MILLAR is a little woman, she has one eye sunk 

in her head, with the side of her face drawn together,

and fingers crooked at the ends, by failing in the fire. 

She smokes a pipe of tobacco and curses like a witch. 

CONSTABLE BRYCE finds a ball of hair under Millar’s pillow.

MARY DUNBAR has her tongue trapped in the bed of her throat. 

Eavesdropping on Catherine McCalmond and Margaret Mitchell 

I don’t believe in witches, the devil or God. I believe in bread and cows and knives.

My reddish hair gets me the trouble, I believe in the devil’s power to tease. 

Did I throw pins and hair down her throat? Did I threaten to cut her tongue? 

You did not, but you would’ve liked it. Your ill fame reeks seven miles against the wind.

Damn the word of the Popish priest, I would squeeze the girl’s neck if I could. 

My good head-dress and manteau in the colours of night and day couldn’t hide my blush.

I’ll give them a wind! The books are full of ghostly hands, and the girl has eyes to read. 

Fair is foul and foul is fair. They’ll have us pilloried and rip out our eyes.

I dreamed last night of my seven weird sisters. 

Every woman blind of an eye has been brought to the haunted house. 

Every woman lame of a leg or untamed of the tongue or with a crooked nose has been dragged down the street. 

I was always wary of strangers. But a girl in the hands of a priest. 

A girl with the mouth of a beast. 

Family Chant II

[ELIZABETH SELLOR]
Where shall we three meet again?
In freedom, gaol, or when

the Reaper cuts our vein?

[JANET LISTON]
When the Poltergeist is gone,
we’ll be free again and run.

I promise you, my darling sun.

[WILLIAM SELLOR]
I hear the sound of a gun.

[ELIZABETH SELLOR]
Oh father, where the place?

[JANET LISTON]
From the haunted house’s roof,

where the devil sharpens his hoof.

[WILLIAM SELLOR]
The girl speaks haughty and aloof,

she shall have no solid proof. 

Judgement Day

in the voice of Judge Upton 

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, 

the instruments of darkness tell us truths, 

win us with honest trifles, to betray us

in deepest consequence. The girl’s visionary

images from preternatural storms, diabolical 

twisting of the tongue, place this puzzle

in front of the jury, but these faithful 

women have withstood temptation 

in divine services as seen by the public

of Islandmagee. The witches have fled. 

Poltergeist Boy

I dance without music so I can hear better. Singing—

I jump on the stairs of oak, sleep shall neither night nor day

hang upon this pent-house lid, my black bonnet rises dust.

In the garden, eyeing her bed, I dig Ann’s grave with shovel-

fists, shoot curses and slip as a spider through blocked doorways.

The girl sews psalms of salt into my blanket, half-torn with—

in the teeth of gale. I run with it. Her master’s dog sniffs

me out. I bark back at her bible and turn into a bird, fly

away over the hedge. I cross the Popish priest—

drop a poo on his inkle, his book, and land on a cliff,

take off my plumage. Above the sea gathers an eagle’s eye

in quickening gusts— 

Last Verdict

in the voice of Justice McCartney 

I dreamed last night of the poor bewitched:

to me they have show’d some truth. These extraordinary

facts, proved upon oath, do not betray us. Not soluble

by human reason these preternatural operations

must be diabolical of nature, and my Whig shudders

white powder and stains the Queen’s Bench, so afflicted

is the poor girl, and tormented in innocence. I do think

of prophet Job, and all that’s white is not pure. Magic runs

in the water pooled around Islandmagee, and I say

to all remaining witches— flee. 

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Note: The Islandmagee witch trials were two criminal trials in Carrickfergus in 1711 for alleged witchcraft at Islandmagee. Several lines and images in the poems of this sequence are sourced from ‘Documents from the Trial of the “Islandmagee Witches” at Carrickfergus Assizes, County Antrim, Ireland, 1711’, Andrew Sneddon, Shannon Devlin (eds). The poems also incorporate lines or allude to lines from Shakepeare’s Macbeth.