Smokestack Books: The Seer Sung Husband

The Seer Sung Husband: Bob Beagrie

1536. England appears to be on the edge of civil war. On one side are Henry VIII and the modern, centralising Tudor state. On the other are a thousand years of tradition, custom and belief. In the North a rebel army seizes York, demanding an end to the dissolution of the monasteries and the erosion of religious freedoms. Within a few weeks the government is forced to negotiate with an insurgent army forty thousand strong. But when the rebels are persuaded to disperse, the leaders are arrested and executed. Northern England is placed under martial law.

The Seer Sung Husband tells the story of the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Northern rebellion that briefly defied the authority of Church and State. Tobias Shipton, carpenter and husband of the Yorkshire witch and soothsayer Old Mother Shipton, weaves a wyrd tale of love and loyalty, rebellion and royal retribution. The Seer Sung Husband is a book about folklore and myth, imagination and belief. It's a portrait of England at a time of radical social, religious and political crisis. It's a magical realist verse-epic set against the violent upheavals of 16th Century England. It's a book about witchcraft and statecraft, religious faith and political betrayal.

"An antidote to the plague of anecdotes wishing they were poems."

Sean O'Brien

"Bob Beagrie gives a convincing voice to the common man unwillingly caught up in uncommon times. Excavating the hairline divide between the everyday and the uncanny, Beagrie has produced a work of remarkable insight and invention."

Oz Hardwick

"Tobias the carpenter crafts his story as carefully as he would a timbered structure. Bob Beagrie's lyrical poetry conveys historical events in a moving narrative that shifts easily between realities. The story is engrossing, the voice convincing and the historical period is vividly evoked."

Kathleen Jones

Bob Beagrie teaches at the University of Teesside. His previous collections include: Gothic Horror (1996), Masque: The Art of the Vampyre (2000), Huginn & Munnin (2002), Endeavour: Newfound Notes (2004), The Isle of St Hild (2004), Perkele (with Kalle Niinikangas, 2006) and Yoik (2008). He lives in Middlesbrough.