An alternative mix of "No Witness under the moon", featuring male and female vocals and deeper production is available from the song page.
Elizabeth Avent’s story is a particularly sad glimpse into the life of a young woman in Wembury two centuries ago. In September 1824, while returning home from her employment, Elizabeth alleged that William Dunn seized her near Gabble Bridge, dragged her into a field, gagged her and threatened to kill her.
When the case eventually reached court in 1825, much turned not simply on what Elizabeth said had happened, but on what she had done afterwards. She had remained silent for several weeks before making her complaint. To a modern reader, fear, shock, shame or uncertainty might all seem possible reasons for such a delay. In the courtroom of 1825, however, that silence counted heavily against her. The judge drew the jury’s attention to it and William Dunn was acquitted.
We cannot now know exactly what happened in that field, and an acquittal must not be rewritten two hundred years later as proof of guilt. What the surviving case does show, though, is how difficult it could be for a young woman such as Elizabeth to bring an allegation of sexual violence before the courts, and how assumptions about how a victim was expected to behave could determine whether she was believed.
That makes Elizabeth’s story important beyond Wembury. She was not famous or powerful. She was an ordinary young working woman whose name survives largely because something terrible was alleged to have happened to her. Two hundred years later, the record still gives her a voice — however faintly.
This alternative version of the song uses both male and female voices and a deeper, darker arrangement, reflecting both sides of the historical record while placing Elizabeth’s story at its heart.