Jenni Fagan

During the sixteenth century witch trials, over a hundred women were accused of summoning up a storm to destroy the ship carrying the future Scottish Queen across the sea from Denmark. Starting on the day of her execution, Gillis Duncan recounts the circumstances of her arrest, torture, confession and trial, in a powerful and gripping journey into a space where myth, religion and reality combine with deadly consequences. Offering a visceral depiction of a culture of fear and superstition, Fagan explores the lingering connections between womanhood and the occult, and the obsessive mania of a king who saw the threat of demons and witches all around him. Devils, ghouls, cauldrons, ectoplasm, physic powers and black magic combine in a haunting tale by one of Scotland's most exciting and innovative writers.

Laura Dobie

A woman's voice is a hex. She must learn to exalt men always. If she doesn't do that, then she is a threat. A demon whore, a witch so says everyone and the law. So say the King and his guards. So say the witch-pricker and his sadistic friends. So say the husbands, the haters, the wives, the daughters, the God-fearing - demons are always trying to kill them, so they know. So says the hangman who sleeps with Bible in hand. 

Bring upon a woman only shame. Make sure there is nothing she can say that could be taken as truth! Take the only thing she owns - her voice, her mind. Take it. Grind it into something pestilent. Line her up as dust and imbibe. What a way to get high! Absorb her. Destroy what brought you here. Power is not something women are allowed to own easily or - often - at all, let alone learn to wield. Not by law! The church says no. Education does not teach what should be taught. Girls learn to shine in secret.

I will not let him make me the way he is: that kind of malevolence belongs to him, and I return it to him threefold – he will not spoil me bitter like the cream. There is mostly just good in me. His toxic bile does not belong in my throat to make my gut acidic and corrode my body as well as mind and soul. I am a healer. I was born like this. I am a pure one. I cannot choose to live, but I can decide to leave this world with men's hatred as the strongest mark on me.

Hex quotes

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