She was not native there, for she belonged Out Milford way, or Swansea; no one knew. She had the piteous look of someone wronged, ’Anna,’ her name, a widow, last of Triw. She had lived at Plaister’s End a year or two; At Callow’s cottage, renting half an acre; She was a hen-wife and a perfume-maker.
Secret she was; she lived in reputation; But secret unseen threads went floating out: Her smile, her voice, her face, were all temptation, All subtle flies to trouble man the trout; Man to entice, entrap, entangle, flout... To take and spoil, and then to cast aside: Gain without giving was the craft she plied.
And she complained, poor lonely widowed soul, How no one cared, and men were rutters all; While true love is an ever-burning goal Burning the brighter as the shadows fall. And all love’s dogs went hunting at the call, Married or not she took them by the brain, Sucked at their hearts and tossed them back again.
Like the straw fires lit on Saint John’s Eve, She burned and dwindled in her fickle heart; For if she wept when Harry took his leave, Her tears were lures to beckon Bob to start. And if, while loving Bob, a tinker’s cart Came by, she opened window with a smile And gave the tinker hints to wait a while.
She passed for pure; but, years before, in Wales, Living at Mountain Ash with different men, Her less discretion had inspired tales Of certain things she did, and how, and when. Those seven years of youth; we are frantic then. She had been frantic in her years of youth, The tales were not more evil than the truth.
She had two children as the fruits of trade Though she drank bitter herbs to kill the curse, Both of them sons, and one she overlaid, The other one the parish had to nurse. Now she grew plump with money in her purse, Passing for pure a hundred miles, I guess, From where her little son wore workhouse dress.
There with the Union boys he came and went, A parish bastard fed on bread and tea, Wearing a bright tin badge in furthest Gwent, And no one knowing who his folk could be. His mother never knew his new name: she,-- She touched the lust of those who served her turn, And chief among her men was Shepherd Ern.
A moody, treacherous man of bawdy mind, Married to that mild girl from Ercall Hill, Whose gentle goodness made him more inclined To hotter sauces sharper on the bill. The new lust gives the lecher the new thrill, The new wine scratches as it slips the throat, The new flag is so bright by the old boat.