In the woods was woodman striding,
Bright his eyes and voice a-singing,
On the road beside the river.
No-one answers, nothing present
Cares to hear him, wrapped in silence.
Day soon wears away to evening;
Down he sets him, on an oak-stump
Resting feet and limbs grown weary.
Waybread, wafer, is his supper;
Not afar is journey’s ending.
Down the trail comes boy of sixteen,
Bright and ruddy is his forehead,
Full of lively, gabbing chatter.
‘Mister, mister!’ comes the greeting,
‘Won’t you share with me your supper?’
Smiling he eats meal together
With this strange and brazen laddie,
Swapping many tales and rumours
Ere repast is fully ended.
‘Thank you for the time, good fellow!’
Then with sudden eyes of silver
Weeps the boy and like a roe deer
Into woods does leap and vanish,
Leaving in amaze the woodman
Staring after him but vainly.
Afterward another footstep:
Now it is a crone slow hobbling,
Leaning on a staff as knobbly.
Day is ending, light is blinking,
So he offers to support her
On her way at pace of snails.
‘Sara’s thanks you have, kind stranger!’
Then she takes a fork while laughing;
Maybe she is crying also.
All about him dusk approaching
Makes deep shadows in the forest.
Then he hurries on his trail
Till the sound of huge man sniffling
Catches up to his ears slowly.
In the shifting, darkling twilight
Seeming pallid, fully hopeless,
‘Fever, fever, breaking never
Death of daughter mine is bringing!
Pity’s sake, I beg you, woodman,
Take me to whatever herbals
You might know for fever burning!’
Thus he speaks, the man despairing.
Back he flies past shadowed bramble,
Thinking of the stand of willows
That he passed before in darkness.
Soon it finds him by the wayside,
Gnarled and cracked yet swaying gently,
Bending boughs and bowing branches.
Had he eyes of whiskered wildcat,
Then among that growth of withies
Might he see a youngest sapling
Near an elder, brushing waters
With her drooping hair, and lastly
Of them all in girth the greatest,
Many rings encircling widely,
Chief of all those trees so baleful.
Heedless hand he reaches out to
Touch the trunk, make sure his guessing.
Round him then comes wood embracing:
Limb ‘gainst limb and arm ‘gainst branches,
Flesh and blood with cold wood wrestles
Till no sign of him remains there.
Yet his presence, wild and vengeful,
Stalks for many years the forest;
Even till today, some say that
In the woods is wood-wight writhing,
Blind his eyes and voice a-screaming,
In the grove beside the river.
