Damnable Practises: Witches, Dangerous Women, and Music in Seventeenth-Century English Broadside Ballads by Sarah F. Williams (review)

This book explores the unusual topic of English broadside ballads in seventeenth-century England and their representation of female domestic crimes and the Tudor-Stuart witch craze. Although scholarly study of the theatrical representation of witchcraft and female malfeasance is extensive, very little exists on how broadside ballads and their music, texts, and performances present these women and their crimes. Broadside ballads—single-sheet publications sold in the streets of English cities—related current news and gossip cheaply to the masses while set to various folk tunes, melodies, and verses. Often, various performers would sing these texts and tunes, so that they became a normal part of the soundscape of seventeenth-century English life and culture. These broadsides with their ballads were similar to modern-day gossip newspapers sold in grocery and convenience stores, fanning both real and outrageous stories on the rich and famous. As such, they crossed the boundaries of oral and literate cultures as well as the print and performance mediums.

Representations of unruly women, witchcraft, and female malfeasance in the English broadside ballad come across musically through acoustic disorder. Because witchcraft is seen as an inversion of order, musical dissonance and din are often incorporated into theatrical performances where the portrayal of witches constitutes part of the drama. Since harmonious and concordant music were considered normal, any music that incorporated dissonance, noise, or the representation of madness and screeching fed on the widespread fear of witches and demons.

Williams’s first chapter investigates this linking of the female and discordant music through a variety of sources and approaches, including an examination of seventeenth-century literature and the mistrust of music by Puritan apologists. In this chapter, she demonstrates an analytical approach that includes evidence from misogynist teachings, pamphlets, folklore and superstition, and Catholic propaganda, all in the context of the well-known widespread beliefs among seventeenth-century English society regarding connections among femininity, witchcraft, magic, allurement, and music. Williams limits the scope of her book geographically to London, since it was England’s publishing center, and she examines how London’s broadside publishers created and controlled the musico-acoustic stereotype of female transgression during this period. She includes discussion of religious, social, and political constraints on domestic relationships as well as legal penalties for both men and women accused of homicide and, more specifically, of murder. Williams details several characteristics of female malfeasance, especially scolding and nagging: these deviant forms of speech were considered a threat to the marriage contract, civil discourse, and social hierarchies, and as such, they became linked to the devil and witchcraft. The representation of witches having the ability to out-curse the devil was well known in literature and art, and broadside ballads took advantage of such fearful stereotypes. Other sources for the ballad trade included pamphlets and trial accounts of women witches, documents that were often biased by media and religious hype. Such mass-produced accounts were often further exploited into theatrical productions. Moreover, pagan practices as well as the disdain and fear of Catholics and their veneration of the pope and the saints put anyone who even remotely identified with pagans or Catholics at risk for being identified as demonic and a threat to society. Fear of witches’ animal familiars such as cats, toads, and rats meant that older women who owned such animals had to be very careful about how they interacted with or presented themselves to neighbors.

After providing this extensive and useful background, in her second chapter Williams explores a number of specific popular tunes on broadsides that are linked to female domestic crimes and witchcraft. Citing previous research in literary, theatrical, and musical studies, she demonstrates how song and balladry made connections between witchcraft and other types of womanly transgressions. Williams closely analyzes specific tunes, their texts, their song genres, their association with the broadside trade, and their...