The Witch of Steen

Just twelve, I swear, I must have been

The day they took the Witch of Steen

And put a halter round her neck

To teach her magic some respect.

The women in the village square

Tore off her clothes, and pulled her hair

Then called their menfolk out to view

Who crossed them there, what they would do.

They tied her hands behind her back

The rope around her neck was slack,

But tied to Jethro’s stubborn mule

They led her naked, like some fool.

And all her secrets lay out there

Uncovered, in the open air,

She looked quite beautiful to me

Her naked form, such artistry.

The mule dragged her, painful and slow

Along the lanes where they would go

As gusts of breeze blew out her hair,

Revealed what she was hiding there.

And I, I followed, just a lad

Whose eyes were full of her, by god,

Whose breasts were pert and firm back then

Whose thighs held secrets, hid from men.

I saw that tiny tuft of hair

That hid her womanhood in there,

That plagued me since, for every night

I’d think of it in dread delight.

But still they led her, lane and field

No place that she was not revealed,

They took her to the ducking pond

Where life or death would lie beyond.

And when they laid the ducking stool

With her aboard, across the pool,

Her voice rang out, this buxom maid

With words the villagers dismayed.

‘For all that you come judging me,

Look to yourselves, your pedigree,

What sons and daughters sprang at night

From phantom fathers, bred in spite.’

‘When husbands were out tending fields

And wives would wait, temptation yields.

What shadows stood by window ledge

Gained entry to some marriage bed?’

The women quaked before her spell

And screamed, then ducked the witch to hell

And would have left her there to drown

Had not the menfolk brought her round.

In mercy then, they set her free

And she had screamed, ‘A curse on thee!

‘Your cattle will roam free and late

Your catch won’t hold the cattle gate.’

‘Your crops will flatten in the fields

When hail and sleet destroy their yields,

And mud will fill your village hall,

Your church collapse, your roofs will fall.’

She left there with a final shout

The things she cursed, they came about,

But I was left a lifetime dream,

That naked witch, the Witch of Steen.

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Lady Lola]

Excellent poem, as usual!
It's funny, I was just reading up on the inquisition and their gruesome methods (quite the pastime, I know) and here you write this captivating piece about a beautiful witch being humiliated and almost drowned by the villagers. I like how she (inadvertently?) cast quite a different kind of spell on the young narrator.
Great work!