Work Text:
They found her in the wishing well, her face beneath her skirt,
She bent and went and fell to Hell, her crown set in the dirt.
A noose around her ankles and a single heavy heave,
The fellers who had found her found they had no grief to grieve.
The sawbone swore she was no more and took her for a Doe,
A blanket laid atop the maid, her body trailed in tow.
The people came, but none could name the woman from the well.
Without a name to claim the dame, they wouldn’t sound the bell.
The parish priest was quite a beast, his patience wearing thin.
Forbidden from the church’s graves, they wouldn’t bear her sin.
They brought her to a potter’s field and put her in a hole,
No knells, nor prayers, nor wails were heard, no crying to console.
Her body laid, her cradle swayed, the maiden turned to mire.
Her soul, they say, had sunken too, her sin aset afire.
Though none had known her name or throne, the mud would never tell.
And thus, the story ended for the woman in the well.