The Town Witch

Crab-Faced, crab-tongued, with deep-set eyes that glared, Unfriendly and unfriended lived the crone Upon the common in her hut, alone, Past which but seldom any villager fared. Some said she was a witch and rode, wild-haired, To devils' revels: on her hearth's rough stone A fiend sat ever with gaunt eyes that shone A shaggy hound whose fangs at all were bared. So one day, when a neighbour's cow had died And some one's infant sickened, good men shut The crone in prison: dragged to court and tried: Then hung her for a witch and burnt her hut. Days after, on her grave, all skin and bones They found the dog, and him they killed with stones.