‘For her I wish the same pangs
Sweet step-mother mine
For ah, ah! I am so ill, ah!’”
That grewsome story of Lamkin, with its dripping of blood in almost every stanza, gets half its curdling power from the slow torture of the sensibilities, as the babe is slain and then rocked in its cradle, and the mother, summoned by its cries, meets her own fate at the hands of the treacherous nurse and Lamkin, whose name is a piece of bald irony:—
“Then Lamkin’s ta’en a sharp knife
That hang down by his gaire,
And he has gi’en the bonny babe
A deep wound and a sair.
“Then Lamkin he rocked,
And the fause nourice sang