"There's a poor girl lies buried here, Beneath this very place,

The earth upon her corpse is prest,

The stake is driven into her breast,
And a stone is on her face."

The soldier had but just leant back,
And now he half rose up.

"There's sure no harm in dining here,

My friend? and yet, to be sincere,
I should not like to sup."

"God rest her! she is still enough Who sleeps beneath my feet!" The old man cried. "No harm I trow

She ever did herself, though now

She lies where four roads meet.

"I have past by about that hour
When men are not most brave;
It did not make my courage fail,
And I have heard the nightingale
Sing sweetly on her grave.

"I have past by about that hour
When Ghosts their freedom have;
But there was here no ghastly sight,
And quietly the glow-worm's light
Was shining on her grave.

"There's one who like a Christian lies

Beneath the church-tree's shade;

I'd rather go a long mile round

Than pass at evening through the ground Wherein that man is laid.

"There's one who in the church-yard lies

For whom the bell did toll;

He lies in consecrated ground,

But for all the wealth in Bristol town

I would not be with his soul !

"Did'st see a house below the hill

Which the winds and the rains destroy?

'Twas then a farm where he did dwell,

And I remember it full well

When I was a growing boy.

"And she was a poor parish girl
Who came up from the west:
From service hard she ran away,
And at that house in evil day

Was taken in to rest.

"The man he was a wicked man,

And an evil life he led ;

Rage made his face grow deadly white,

And his grey eyes were large and light, And in anger they grew red!

"The man was bad, the mother worse,

Bad fruit of evil stem;

"Twould make your

hair to stand on end

If I should tell to you, my friend,

The things that were told of them!

"Did'st see an out-house standing by?

The walls alone remain;

It was a stable then, but now

Its mossy roof has fallen through

All rotted by the rain.

"The poor girl she had served with them

Some half-a-year or more,

When she was found hung up one day,

Stiff as a corpse and cold as clay,

Behind that stable door!

"It is a wild and lonesome place,

No hut or house is near;

Should one meet a murderer there alone

"Twere vain to scream, and the dying groan

Would never reach mortal ear.

"And there were strange reports about;

But still the Coroner found

That she by her own hand had died,
And should buried be by the way side,

And not in Christian ground.