There was an old woman lived under the hill,
And if she's not gone, she lives there still;
Baked apples she sold and cranberry pies,
And she's the old woman who never told lies.
A queer little body, all shrivelled and brown,
In her earth-colour'd mantle and rain-colour'd gown,
Incessantly fumbling strange grasses and weeds,
Like a rickety cricket, a-saying its beads.
In winter or summer, come shine or come rain,
When the bustles and beams into twilight wane,
To the top of her hill, one can see her climb,
To sit out her watch through the long night-time.
The neighbourhood gossips have strange tales to tell—
As they sit at their knitting and tongues waggle well
Of the queer little crone who lived under the hill
When the grannies among them were hoppy-thumbs still.
She was once, they say, a young lassie, as fair
As white-wing'd hawthorn in April air,
When under the hill—one fine evening—she met
A stranger, the strangest maid ever saw yet:
From his crown to his heels he was clad all in red,
And his hair like a flame on his shoulders was shed;
Not a word spake he, but clutching her hand,
Led her off through the darkness to Shadowland.
What befell her there no mortal can tell,
But it must have been things indescribable,
For when she returned, at last, alone,
Her beauty was dead, and her youth was gone.
They gather'd about her: she shook her head
—She had been through Hell—that was all she said
In answer to whens, and hows, and whys;
So they took her word, for she never told lies.
And now, they say, when the sun goes down
This queer little woman, all shrivell'd and brown
Turns into a beautiful lass, once more,
With gold-stranded hair and soft eyes of yore,
And out of the hills in the stills and the gloams
Her beautiful fabulous lover comes,
In scarlet doublet and red silken hose,
To woo her again—till the Chanticleer crows.