They drew the naughty shipwrights up, with the kettles in their hands, And bound them round the forecastle to wait the King’s commands. But ‘Since ye have made your beds,’ said the King, ‘ye needs must lie thereon. For the sake of your wives and little ones--felawes, get you gone!’ When they had beaten Slingawai, out of his own lips, Our King appointed Brygandyne to be Clerk of all his ships. ‘Nay, never lift up thy hands to me--there’s no clean hands in the trade. But steal in measure,’ said Harry our King. ‘There’s measure in all things made!’ God speed the ‘Mary of the Tower,’ the ‘Sovereign’ and ‘Grace Dieu,’ The ‘Sweepstakes’ and the ‘Mary Fortune,’ and the ‘Henry of Bristol’ too! All tall ships that sail on the sea, or in our harbours stand, That they may keep measure with Harry our King and peace in Engeland! MARKLAKE WITCHES The Way Through the Woods They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago. Weather and rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once a road through the woods Before they planted the trees. It is underneath the coppice and heath, And the thin anemones. Only the keeper sees That, where the ring-dove broods, And the badgers roll at ease, There was once a road through the woods. Yet, if you enter the woods Of a summer evening late, When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools Where the otter whistles his mate (They fear not men in the woods Because they see so few), You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet And the swish of a skirt in the dew, Steadily cantering through The misty solitudes, As though they perfectly knew The old lost road through the woods... But there is no road through the woods! Marklake Witches When Dan took up boat-building, Una coaxed Mrs Vincey, the farmer’s wife at Little Lindens, to teach her to milk. Mrs Vincey milks in the pasture in summer, which is different from milking in the shed, because the cows are not tied up, and until they know you they will not stand still. After three weeks Una could milk Red Cow or Kitty Shorthorn quite dry, without her wrists aching, and then she allowed Dan to look. But milking did not amuse him, and it was pleasanter for Una to be alone in the quiet pastures with quiet-spoken Mrs Vincey. So, evening after evening, she slipped across to Little Lindens, took her stool from the fern-clump beside the fallen oak, and went to work, her pail between her knees, and her head pressed hard into the cow’s flank. As often as not, Mrs Vincey would be milking cross Pansy at the other end of the pasture, and would not come near till it was time to strain and pour off. Once, in the middle of a milking, Kitty Shorthorn boxed Una’s ear with her tail. ‘You old pig!’ said Una, nearly crying, for a cow’s tail can hurt.