The Witch Of Brandwood. Poem by Samuel Bamford

A beldame came to lofty Scout,
What time the old year dwindled out;
She was the last of all that race
Whose deeds our Northern stories grace;
And in her youth had join'd the crew
Which Walsden Clough and Wuerdale knew,
Much to the good folks' dread and woe,
Some threescore years and ten ago.

The night was dark, the wind was high;
There was a tumult in the sky;
As if amid the ærial space
Some mighty change was taking place.
O'er wintry Holcomb, t'wards the west,
The elements were ill at rest,
And, mingled with the troubled air,
Were sounds of lamentation there;
And mournful, over hill and dell,
Were heard the words, 'Farewell! farewell!'

Then flash'd athwart th' abyss of night,
Through startled heaven, a stream of light;
And winds were heard with fearful howl,
T'wards Rooly Moor, and cheerless Knowl;
And darkness for a while gave -way
Before that ghast and lurid ray!

The beldame's cloak of seam and shred
Flew back, and to the wind was spread;
The hood her face was muffled round,
Her brow with striped kerchief bound;
Nor did the wind her bosom spare-
One wither'd pap hung cold and bare:
Her outstretch'd arms were long and thin,
The great veins crept beneath her skin.

Like worms that had begun to glide
Around her carcase, ere it died:
And thus, with unaverted eye,
She gaz'd towards that howling sky,
And with storm-piercing shriek she cried,
'New year, I hail thine early tide,
And hither come I to demand,
What weal or woe for Spodden-land?'