The Castle in the Marsh
The Castle out in the marshes ruled
The serfs with an iron rod,
The yeomen, hidden in cottages,
Were careful where they trod,
The soldiers poured from the Castle walls
And rode the peasants down,
They stole the women they caught abroad
And returned to the Castle grounds.
There was only a single causeway that
Was guarded, night and day,
Many a father came to grief
When crossing the moat, to pay,
To save his daughter from certain shame,
A fate that, worse than death,
Was tearing the heart from Amber Vale
As the mothers mourned, distressed.
The Baron, Ralph Fitzherbert held
His acres from the King,
(That William, known as Rufus, who
Would hunt most anything) ,
He was known as ‘Baron Slaughter'
For he murdered them at will,
He burdened them all with taxes,
Raped and pillaged, and then he'd kill.
The women held in the Castle Keep
Were set to work, and raped,
They scrubbed in the kitchen galley, cooked
The food, and cleaned the grate,
Two of their number were trusted to
Go out in the misty marsh,
Collecting the herbs and mushrooms for
The Captain of the Guard.
But Aethelflaed had been pregnant with
Fitzherbert's only son,
She came to term in the August and
She hated everyone:
‘The boy's as good as a Norman, I'm
The wife of a Saxon squire, '
She wept, and then she had strangled it,
Throwing it in the fire!
Fitzherbert ranted all day long,
Lamenting what she'd done,
‘I should have known that a Saxon whore's
Not fit to bear my son! '
He stripped and flayed ‘til the flesh had peeled,
[...] Read more
poem by David Lewis Paget
Added by Poetry Lover
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