What shall I do if I am made pregnant by you? I shall be dishonoured and lost.

Béatrice de Planissoles was being questioned by the Inquisitor in 1320 about her affair, twenty years previously, with a priest. She speaks quite openly about the contraceptive pessary that he would bring to their bed, though she could not say which plant it was that the pessary contained. A Certain Herb is an investigation into the identification of that plant.

Three questions motivate the research. Which plant or plants was in the pessary that Béatrice’s lover brought to their bed? Who might have prepared the pessary and held this contraceptive knowledge? Was this knowledge to be shared?

The project proceeds in different ways. There are two forms of DIALOGUES:

The first is An Ear to Ethnobiologists in which these questions are aired through individual conversations with twenty ethnobiologists.

The seconds are the Teas with Trixie. These gatherings will be hosted by Trixie herself, at which the story-so-far is both told and made, at which guides are invoked, researchers are welcomed, roles are assigned, costumes are worn, and quantities of tea-cake are consumed. Between a salon and a séance, Teas with Trixie performs and informs – and quite possibly reforms – the questions motivating the investigation.  

Following the DIALOGUES is the creation of two Works: A Parade of Pessaries for Pyrene and A Song Cycle for Trixie.

A Parade of Pessaries for Pyrene is to be an ambulation of embroidered banners along a mountain footpath from Prades to Montaillou. Accompanied by Trixie and her Guides: Shepherdess, Midwife, Ausi, the Jewish-healer-since-baptised, Itinerant Hawker of Foreign Cures, Company of Sex Workers, Rootcutter, Unlicensed Female Practitioner, as well as Rixatrix, Garulatrix, Litigatrix and Objurgatrix, the Scolds. The parade is led by Pyrene.

Song Cycle for Trixie is a cycle of songs performed at the ruined keep on the hill at Montaillou in which Trixie casts the question of what was in the contraceptive pessary to the accompanying Guides. In a polyvocal work of sung and spoken parts, the Guides and Plants-of-the-Mountain respond to Trixie’s questions. The work will have grown out of the DIALOGUES and archival research.

P L A N

An Ear to Ethnobiologists and Teas with Trixie will run from May 2024 (the Congress of Ethnobiology Marrakech) until June 2025. Following that will be a period of composition, production and recording leading to the Parade of Pessaries and the Song Cycle for Trixie in the Pyrenees in the summer of 2026, and an audiobook going to print in the Fall of 2026.