Witches and highwaywomen
Made a little project that involved, separately but both, witches and highwaywomen. Took it along to my writing group tonight. I had been concerned it was not satirical enough, which was the prompt. But it went down well. I tried to write it in a seventeenth/eighteenth century style. Some archaic spelling. Had to fudge the long s on some fonts using an italicised f.
For funsies I made a little sampler of the fonts I looked at. They are on Canva and I presume most other places.
Also, satire is hard. Poe's Law means someone somewhere is taking anything, no matter how outrageous, seriously and nodding along eagerly. Very much a pre-internet thing. The racist seventies sitcom character that was supposed to be a joke but became a hero. And I'm still a bit boggled by Mark Twain honestly.
Anyway, here's some of the stuff I looked at.
Highwaywomen
Highwaywomen are thin on the ground in the historical record for obvious reasons. I'd heard of Katherine Ferrers and Jane Voss.
Merryn Allingham has four more in Women of the Road. Another post titled Women of the Road, by The History Girls, discusses Ferrers as well as Mary Frith, aka Moll Cutpurse. NPR has some excellent portraits and pamphlets of Frith. Just History Posts' Stand and Deliver is mostly about Katherine Ferrers but has some interesting stuff about legacy and pop culture.
Outlaws and Highwaymen based on Gillian Spraggs' book is a fantastic site with actual sources, images, and a big bibliography.
Rural Historia has interesting stuff on highwaymen, there is of course also always Wikipedia.
Captain Charles Johnson's book, A general history of the lives and adventures of the most famous highwaymen, murderers, street-robbers, &c., (also pyrates) is at the Internet Archive, 1734.
Witches
Rebellion, Activism, Imagination: Why We Need Witches More Than Ever
What if stories about witches aren’t just a form of spooky escapism? What if they’re providing a much-needed counterpoint to fascist thought — and even offering us a way to imagine what resistance could look like?
The witch is unruly, rebellious, and powerful. The witch is Baba Yaga from Slavic folklore: a frightening and ambivalent figure who lives on the fringe of society, capable of both healing and cursing.
There are loads of witch stories and more every day. These are some of my favourites.
- The Mercies, and The Dance Tree, both by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
- Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
- Sistersong by Lucy Holland
- Wicked by Gregory Maguire. Please, by the Unnamed God, the book
- The Worst Witch books by Jill Murphy. Mildred Hubble!
And stacks of nonfiction also.
Here are some Northamptonshire witches riding a pig. Which would be funny except, you know, they were murdered.
