Damn you, woman – Waking the Witch

Horror moments, Kate Bush Edition

‘Horror Moments’ is a weekly series examining horror-inflected scenes and themes in unexpected places. The ‘moments’ are published weekly on Thursdays, and I share articles on the history of magic, theatre, storytelling, and more on Monday afternoons – don’t forget to subscribe. Catch up with the Kate Bush series here.

We’ve started to leap around a little bit in Kate Bush’s discography, and we’re now jumping back to her 1985 album Hounds of Love for a song inspired by witch trials.

‘Waking the Witch’ is the third track of the Ninth Wave suite, the second side of Hounds of Love which functions as a concept album of its own. The Ninth Wave is about someone who has been washed over the side of a ship and is all alone in the water in a life jacket with nothing but their imagination to keep them company, sometimes conjuring up seductively comforting images (‘And Dream of Sheep’) and sometimes succumbing to stifling fears (‘Under Ice,’). Hanging over them always is the danger of them falling asleep and slipping under the water forever.

This is why ‘Waking the Witch’ starts with a collage of different voices telling the protagonist to wake up. There are the sweet words of loving parents and close friends, a teacher tells her off ‘wake up child, pay attention!’ They are all calling out to her to return from the brink of oblivion. Eventually, a fragmented, jittering, frightening track begins where Bush’s nursery rhyme about ‘red red roses’ is undercut by a growling, snarling voice. It is ravenous and inhuman, it sounds like the devil — specifically the devil in Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) if you’re familiar — which is ironic because it speaks the words of an inquisitor compelling a heretic to confess.

You won't burn (red, red roses)
You won't bleed (pinks and posies)
Confess to me, girl (red, red roses, go down)

There is chanted Latin, the sound of church bells that seem to clang discordantly. The accuser is distorting her words and ignoring her cries so she imagines herself turning into a blackbird (the blackbird being Bush’s favourite singer, as she once told a bemused interviewer):

I question your innocence
She's a witch (help this blackbird, there's a stone around my leg)
Ha, damn you, woman
(Help this blackbird, there's a stone around my leg)
What say you, good people (guilty, guilty, guilty)
Well, are you responsible for your actions? (This blackbird)
Not guilty (help this blackbird)
Wake up the witch

The song ends with the sound of a rescue helicopter and a cry to ‘get out of the water.’ A witch trial is not an obvious place for the drowning protagonist’s thoughts to have taken them, perhaps the woman half-remembers a story of witch ducking and has imagined herself in the victim’s place as the water seems to bear down on her with the fury of persecution. Identifying with an accused witch also brings a particularly female sensibility to this musical story, Bush said:

I think it’s very interesting the whole concept of witch-hunting and the fear of women’s power. In a way it’s very sexist behaviour, and I feel that female intuition and instincts are very strong, and are still put down, really. And in this song, this women is being persecuted by the witch-hunter and the whole jury, although she’s committed no crime, and they’re trying to push her under the water to see if she’ll sink or float. (Interview with Richard Skinner, 1992).

I think of the women of Afghanistan singing in defiance of the Taliban’s femicidal death cult, punished for doing what blackbirds can do freely. This feels like a song for anyone who is drowning, but I also think it’s worth noting that the violent imagery here brings with it the will to stay awake. Unlike the gentle suicide suggested by ‘And Dream of Sheep,’ a sinister song masquerading as a lullaby, this song pricks our drowning woman awake and lights a fire of determination underneath her. It’s at the climax of her persecution that rescue suddenly arrives. This also subverts the title of the song: ‘Waking the Witch’ was the name for the practice of sleep deprivation used as torture for securing a confession. Here, staying awake will save the woman’s life.

If you’re interested in the real history of witch trials and stories of defiance, make sure to read Marion Gibson’s Witchcraft, A History in 13 trials which I reviewed here. I wrote about whether or not we still find witches scary back in my Macbeth entry in ‘Horror Moments: Shakespeare Edition’ which you can read here.

ANNOUNCEMENT

I’ve written an opera! Well, I’ve written the words for an opera, the ‘libretto’ or ‘little book’ that a composer sets to music . It’s 15 minutes long and will be performed alongside three other short operas at the Royal Academy of Music in London this March.

I was asked to write this opera by the Academy after a play of mine was set to music and staged there in early 2024. This time around, I’ve not just written words to be accompanied by music, I’ve written them to be sung (which has been a fascinating challenge.) It’s part of their ‘Opera Makers’ course which trains young composers in this style.

The theme myself and my composer, Dawn Erridge, have picked is one inspired by some of my recent articles on the history of witchcraft, including the research I did on ‘Waking the Witch.’ Our opera dramatizes the interrogation of a suspected witch and the way her sleep-deprived mind invents what the witchfinder wants to hear, drawing on her memories of lost loved ones to create ‘familiar’ spirits. It’s based on the trial of Elizabeth Clarke who was executed in 1645.

If you are in London on 13th March and would like to come, please message me. Tickets are free but will be limited so I can reserve some for you.

Thanks everyone!

Rx

Horror moments are posted every Thursday and a wide variety of articles exploring the history of magic, theatre, storytelling, and more are published on Monday afternoons.