Mary’s prophecy echoes through women’s music of the ages. From the mystical compositions of the 12th Century polymath Hildegard of Bingen to the rallying songs of the Suffragettes; from Billie Holiday pausing for prayer before closing her shows with Strange Fruit to the women of Greenham Common and those at #MeToo vigils uniting across the years in renditions of We Shall Overcome, this song of a girl in Nazareth continues to convey the power for everyday women to envision a different, better world, and in the very act of envisioning it, to begin to bring it about. The lives and testimonies of working-class women have been largely obscured in history mostly by being ignored or condescended to, or in Mary’s case, by being elevated to the other-worldly, the Queen of Heaven, not a normal human. But Mary’s prophecy sings out in defiance of all that.

The talk concludes with a recording Canticle of the Turning, a ‘vigorous paraphrase of the Magnificat which presents Mary as a country girl who is more than a meek maiden’ a paraphrase of Luke 1 by Rory Cooney, tune: Star of the County Down, Irish traditional, performed by Rory Cooney, Gary Daigle & Theresa Donohoo from ‘Safety Harbor’, 1990.

A talk for The Fourth Sunday of Advent, 19 December 2021.

Find the text to this and all my talks at bit.ly/johndavies-talks