Men of Pendle, you called Alice Nutter a witch You hung her from a tree across the fell And now you folk full of chatter call me a bitch Though you knew after thrashing with a switch No witch could she be and could cast no spell Men of Pendle, you called Alice Nutter a witch You cause my ears to itch and nose to twitch As you chatter at my dress and rebel yell And now you folk full of chatter call me a bitch You cut her hair and dragged her thru the ditch Stripped whipped you tried to drown her in a well Men of Pendle, you called Alice Nutter a witch All based on gossip and lies from Rose Smith – snitch We die, we curse you, from the earth we now dwell Men of Pendle, you called Alice Nutter a witch And now you folk full of chatter call me a bitch
- I wrote this poem as an exercise in the form ‘villanelle’. It one of the few poems of mine that rhymes, I don’t usually like the conformity of form. Alice was one of the people accused and tried for witchcraft in the Pendle area. She died in 1612 at the gallows. In the 1980’s a young punky anarchist from the Pendle area took the name and has used it ever since, she still lives and writes.
I write about Stuff 