Episode 2 - The City on a Hill

Witch Hunt - history told in music, sound, and story

Samuel Parris takes on the job as minister to Salem Village, a marginalized farming community split by rivalry and controversy. Salem Village is overshadowed by the larger and much more prosperous Salem Town, one of the two largest towns in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The colony is ruled by the Puritans, who have broken away from the Church of England and colonized New England in hopes of creating a model Christian society, a "City on a Hill”. Crisis evolves as newer generations lack the religious enthusiasm of the founders. Hardship presses down on the colony on many fronts: war with Native tribes, disease epidemics, religious controversy, political and economic crisis. The entry of Parris into the powder keg that is Salem Village sets off a firestorm of persecution and retribution.
All music written by Brian O'Connell, except "Second Meter - Psalm 119", adapted from The Bay Psalm Book, 1698.
Episode 2 Parts:

Part I - The Parsonage - Parris, with his family and Tituba, come to Salem Village

Part II - The City on the Hill - the story of the Puritans and New England (Second Meter - Psalm 119)

Part III - The Great Migration (w/ some lyrics borrowed from Michael Wigglesworth’s poem: “God’s Controversy with New England”, 1662)

Part IV - Village vs. Town

Part V - The Parsonage Reprise (w/ text taken from the sermon book of Samuel Parris, 1690-1691)

The Great Migration

We have crossed the ocean of rebirth

Planted seeds in this God given earth

Behold the pleasures of the fruitful fields

Flowing full of all good things that they yield

Realize his will

Let the world see the city on the hill

His word shall be fulfilled, his kingdom we shall build

*

Search your soul and pray for holy grace

Confess your sins let the tears baptize your face

Only a very few are chosen to be saved

The Devil takes the rest for his own to be enslaved

By searching deep within

You might find a clue and then begin

To see the holy truth, to realize your sin

*

We brought ourselves to plant on the western shore

Where none but beasts and warriors did swarm

One wave another follow and one disease begins

Before another cease because we turn not from our sins

Our fruitful seasons cast in doubt

Through great pain and dry and parching drought

Defenders in a route, our hopes are all dashed out

*

The clouds gather as if we finally will see rain

But for our sinfulness are scattered round again

We pray and fast as if to take a turn

But we turn not and our fields and fruits will burn

Oh sinful land don’t think it strange

If judgement comes down on you unless you change
The Devil in a rage, affairs must rearrange

Brian O'Connell - voice, bass guitar, fretless bass, 8-string bass, piccolo bass (solo on The Great Migration), 6 and 12-string acoustic guitars, keyboards, moog synthesizers, bass drum
Mike Harmon - drums, cymbals, percussion

Recorded at Studio Vinniechops and Wachusett Recording

Sources

"A Storm of Witchcraft - The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience“

by Emerson W. Baker, Oxford University Press, 2015

"Salem Possessed - The Social Origins of Witchcraft“

by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Harvard University Press, 1974

"The Puritans in America - Narrative Anthology”

edited by Alan Heimert and Andrew Delbanco, Harvard University Press, 1985

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