Five of six Fantasy novels done, being WistÞistle, and I’m busy editing the second novel. I’m hoping to start the final novel by November but want to fully edit the first five novels. I ordered and received the three volume collection of JRR Tolkien’s poetry, which I plan to review, and as I was thumbing through the books, I ran into extracts from his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Night—written in Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse. I rather like this verse form. Though it doesn’t permit me the same scope for imagery, the verse remains an enjoyable challenge, forcing me to be creative with language in ways that are similar to rhyme. After reading the Tolkien I started absent-mindedly sketching out an alliterative poem, and then one thing led to another and I ended up spending the last week writing a full blown Anglo Saxon narrative poem for Halloween. My progress editing has paid the price. Anyway, I wanted to share it while the poem is timely. I took some limited liberties with the verse form while also trying to remain faithful to the fundamental structure. I tried to write what I thought a 9th century Anglo Saxon poet might have written a few centuries later and with a much changed English language. Unlike my first alliterative poem, I didn’t try to reproduce kennings. Called the “Saxon Witch” because the poem is written in Anglo Saxon meter and because Saxon Hill is real place in Vermont and I’m a Vermonter. For an explanation regarding the rules of Anglo Saxon alliterative meter, you can go here. Tomorrow, I’ll add a reading of the poem.
The Saxon Witch
So late in the year
the yawling of coyotes
puts awful notions
in autumn’s ear.
They’re almost human
in how they squabble;
and not just coyotes
but a netherworld of bedlam:
the barnyard howl,
the bat and the screech owl,
the creaking of the crossbeams
come the cold nights.
I’ve certain neighbors
as swear a coven
of witches danced in their fields.
“You find the apples!”
they say, “you go see’em,
“how they’re scotched and withered
“in the troubled tree.
“As true a sign
“of witches as ever was!”
I wouldn’t know.
For sure and certain
they’ll sour more
than milk and marriage
who meddle in their affairs,
and so I don’t—
except that once
when Althea summoned me
to Saxon Hill.
She lived out there alone
outlasting her husband
some dozen years.
None dared to think
she ever would.
He was as cruel
and murderous a man
as ever married a woman;
but she was just
as jealous and short-tempered
(and a witch for certain).
The story is this:
On a late October’s night
and near to midnight
he comes bursting through the back door
in a bout of whiskey
and says to her—
he says, “I’ll hang you!
“I’ve had enough
“of all the hearsay and rumor
“about you, your ilk
“and to what uses you put yourselves:
“your travelled tongues;
“your trampling of the mow;
“your pendulous hips
“as whorish as the weathercock
“that wends whichever way
“the wind would blow;
“and the rampant goat
“that revels amongst you
“rutting in the furrows
“of your ribald incantations!
“Detestable frolics!
“Filth,” says he. “Filth!”
“I mean to be done with you
“and the devil take you.”
He had his rope at the ready.
He’d ring her throat.
The stake stood in the barnyard
and straw to set her aflame.
Says she, “I’ve danced!
“I’ve done so under the moon.
“I danced at daybreak
“With dew at my feet,
“And made merry under the milky way
“With a mincing conceit.
“I’ve skipped and was scandalous,
“Skirt above my hips
“When the winter has nibbled
“And nipped at my tits.
“There’s worse that I’ve done
“(you dare not ask),
“than dance in the dooryard
“with a dozen of my kin.
“I’ve gamboled at the graves
“of the grim and the righteous
“summoned from their sleep,
“(obscenities of bone).
“They skipped and shimmied
“as shameless as the living;
“and I will show you
“how to shuffle just the same!”
And so she did,
seducing him besides,
with every trick of her trade.
she teased him as they danced
She flit barefooted
and flaunted her hips;
She toyed and she tempted
until she was naked;
and he just as vigorously
cavorted beside her;
but cursed were the clothes
he cast aside
for with them came the flesh
all flung in a heap,
Till the bones were the man.
His mistress let go
and he teetered and he tottered
and toppled to earth.
And then she said,
as she sorted his bones,
“Accused and accosted,
“accursed is the witch—
“A shame but I’ll allow
“you surely understand me now.”
It wasn’t but a year or so
when, at wit’s end,
She invited me (being less worried
than vexed), saying, “The wedding ring!
“That scarecrow trails straw
“from sundown to dawn;
“and I’ve looked and labored
“and little it’s done me.”
I saw the scarecrow
out standing by the corn rows
and a trail bestrewn
with straw as though
the tatterdemalion
had trailed the chaff
(and that near unnerved me).
I knew Althea
and was wary of her weird ways
(and witchery besides).
I’d about abandoned her
when just by my foot
the gold was gleaming
under the ghostly moon.
I question why i called to her.
I could have saved myself
the horror of knowing;
but now I wonder
If i wasn’t bewitched,
for when she asked me:
Wouldn’t I be willing
to walk the ring out to it?
“Sew it,” she says,
“or stick it with a pin!”
“I want none of your witchcraft!”
I wish I’d said,
but out I went instead
to stitch if need be.
I went out through the pumpkins,
all prolix and pot-bellied,
and caused the crows
to cackle and spook
before I finally
had found my way;
And when I stood before the scarecrow,
(to settle my nerves)
I decided on a smoke.
I struck a match
and then all hell broke loose.
That hood of tatters
and dry silage struck the match
straight from my fingers
and next back-handed me hard
Hobbling me good.
I lay on my back
As it loomed above me;
(and how it unreeled itself from the rope
raveling it to the stake
I hadn’t sense to know).
It had knocked me witless.
By rights it should have skewered me—
a stake straight through me!—
but shoved its hand toward
and shook it angrily.
I quick dug into my dungarees
(I damned near lost it)
then felt for his finger.
I found instead
the bones she’d bound
in billets of straw
so neat and so well knitted
the knots were almost
like the flourishing of flesh
enfolding bone—
a skeleton beneath the sweepings
of straw and ragwort,
of rags turned almost to rot
by rain and the years.
Yet soon as it had the ring
the scarecrow stood
as though hung from the cross,
the self-same stake
once meant for murder;
and the moldering straw
the same as what he’d piled
to set aflame.
I thanked Althea
to think of somebody else
should the ring go missing twice!
yet mad as I was,
she was just as apologetic
and jinxed me all the same.
No helping those bewitched
by a woman’s ways,
so they say.
October 16th 2026 | by me, Patrick Gillespie
