The hag held a lock of her hair in her hand,
And it was soft and fair:
It must have been a lovely child,
To have had such lovely hair.
And she said the father in his arms
He held his sickly son,
And his dying throes they fast arose,
His pains were nearly done.
And she throttled the youth with her sinewy hands,
And his face grew deadly blue;
And the father he tore his thin gray hair,
And kiss'd the livid hue.
And then she told how she bored a hole
In the bark, and it fill'd away:
And 'twas rare to hear how some did swear,
And some did vow and pray.
The man and woman they soon were dead,
The sailors their strength did urge;
But the billows that beat were their winding-sheet,
And the winds sung their funeral dirge.
She threw the infant's hair in the fire,
The red flame flamed high,
And round about the cauldron stout
They danced right merrily.
The second begun: She said she had done
The task that Queen Hecate had set her,
And that the devil, the father of evil,
Had never accomplished a better.
She said, there was an aged woman,
And she had a daughter fair,
Whose evil habits fill'd her heart
With misery and care.
The daughter had a paramour,
A wicked man was he,
And oft the woman him against
Did murmur grievously.
And the hag had work'd the daughter up
To murder her old mother,
That then she might seize on all her goods,
And wanton with her lover.