Wry!
'Now girls, you finish your rye and milk, '
Tituba said, the slave,
The girls had clattered around the house,
'You girls, you'd better behave! '
She'd laid the table with cheese on rye,
With tumblers full of milk,
'Now eat your bread like your father said,
Or the devil will make you sick! '
The winter weather was cold that year,
The crops were brought in damp,
The miller muttered but said no more,
He ground by the midnight lamp,
The baker quibbled him over the price,
They knew that it wasn't dry,
But a wink and a nod to the Money God
Said, '...use the tainted rye! '
The girls began to suffer fits,
They'd crawl around on the floor,
They frightened Tituba the slave to bits
With the blasphemies they swore,
They screamed, began to hallucinate
Saw spectres in the air,
'It's Sarah Good in a witch's hood, '
They screamed, 'but she's not there! '
Tituba baked up a witch's cake
Then fed the cake to a dog,
It leapt and staggered and threw it up
Then lay like a drunken log,
The girls would mutter of witchlike shapes
That flew in the winter mist,
Then fell to the floor by the kitchen door,
Convulsed, in a series of fits!
Tituba, she was arrested there
Along with two likely crones,
They searched for the witch's marks on them
On the poor old women's bones,
A taste of the Reverend Parris's whip
Saw his old slave confess,
That she'd met a hog, or a giant dog
And the Devil had done the rest.
The girls convulsed, and named the names
Of a score of women there,
They'd all been seen in their fevered dreams
Or as spectres, in the air,
The Judges took no time to Judge,
[...] Read more
poem by David Lewis Paget
Added by Poetry Lover
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