That night, as black as Coal hewer’s hands

 A sliver of moonlight edged the darkened cloud

A heavy fall of August rain fell onto the moor

That washed their faces, though heads were bowed

 

Her small cottage doubled as a village shop

High upon Northumberland’s, Elsden Moor, 

Mistress Crozier warmed by the heat of her fire. 

Heard a loud knock knock knocking, on the wooden door 

 

‘’Who can be out on such a night, so dire and mire?’’

With trepidation, she cautiously opened the door

There stood a silhouetted man of ill intent

William Winter kicked Mistress Margaret to the floor 

 

As she lay screaming, he exercised his boot.

Fractured her skull, then slit her throat

his accomplices the Clark girls ransacked the shop.

Finding barely anything, not even a groat

 

They divided their morsels of scavenged food 

Margaret had died for the meagreness of her pantry

There was nothing else of value to be found

In Mistress Crozier's earth floor ramshackle shanty

 

The alarm was raised by a young village lad

There was soon a hullabaloo, a local hue and cry

The three were soon captured, the law must be just

And quickly they were sentenced, all would die

 

The Clark sisters, both crying, fell to a shortened drop

William, born and hung, now dead, beyond vulgar Thorpes

But that didn’t conclude William’s story on the Moor

Rehung, gibbeted by the neck, now a rotting corpse