On Witches, Fairies, Ghouls and Goblins
ON June 16th, 1816, Lord Byron opened a book titled Phantasmagoriana, which he and his house guests took turns reading from. From that night came Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and John Polidori’s The Vampyre, considered the first English vampire novel, and the precursor to Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Drawing from that idea, herein lies poems from Shakespeare, Yeats, Spenser, Kipling, Ben Johnson and others, set to music. Musical influences range from British folk and Irish traditional, to Black Sabbath, King Crimson and Jethro Tull.
From the fairies who ride wild in the moonlight, to the danse macabre, it’s a look back at a time when people weren’t so certain, weren’t so brave as to believe that what we see with our eyes is all there is. And told in the words of some of the greatest lyricists of their day.
