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‘The Ballad of Charlotte Dymond’ by Charles Causley
It was a Sunday evening
And in the April rain
That Charlotte went from our house
And never came home again.
*
Her shawl of diamond redcloth,
She wore a yellow gown,
She carried the green gauze handkerchief
She bought in Bodmin town.
*
About her throat her necklace
And in her purse her pay:
The four silver shillings
She had at Lady Day.
*
In her purse four shillings
And in her purse her pride
As she walked out one evening
Her lover at her side.
*
Out beyond the marshes
Where the cattle stand,
With her crippled lover
Limping at her hand.
*
Charlotte walked with Matthew
Through the Sunday mist,
Never saw the razor
Waiting at his wrist.
*
Charlotte she was gentle
But they found her in the flood
Her Sunday beads among the reeds
Beaming with her blood.
*
Matthew, where is Charlotte,
And wherefore has she flown?
For you walked out together
And now are come alone.
*
Why do you not answer,
Stand silent as a tree,
Your Sunday worsted stockings
All muddied to the knee?
*
Why do you mend your breast-pleat
With a rusty needle’s thread
And fall with fears and silent tears
Upon your single bed?
*
Why do you sit so sadly
Your face the colour of clay
And with a green gauze handkerchief
Wipe the sour sweat away?
*
Has she gone to Blisland
To seek an easier place,
And is that why your eye won’t dry
And blinds your bleaching face?
*
Take me home! cried Charlotte,
‘I lie here in the pit!
A red rock rests upon my breasts
And my naked neck is split!’
*
Her skin was soft as sable,
Her eyes were wide as day,
Her hair was blacker than the bog
That licked her life away;
*
Her cheeks were made out of honey,
Her throat was made of flame
Where all around the razor
Had written its red name.
*
As Matthew turned at Plymouth
About the tilting Hoe,
The cold and cunning constable
Up to him did go:
*
‘I’ve come to take you, Matthew,
Unto the magistrate’s door.
Come quiet now, you pretty poor boy,
And you must know what for.’
*
‘She is as pure,’ cried Matthew,
‘As is the early dew,
Her only stain it is the pain
That round her neck I drew!
*
‘She is as guiltless as the day
She sprang forth from her mother.
The only sin upon her skin
Is that she loved another.’
*
They took him off to Bodmin,
They pulled the prison bell,
They sent him smartly up to heaven
And dropped him down to hell.
*
All through the granite kingdom
And on its travelling airs
Ask which of these two lovers
The most deserves your prayers.
*
And your steel heart search, Stranger,
That you may pause and pray
For lovers who come not to bed
Upon their wedding day,
*
But lie upon the moorland
Where stands the sacred snow
Above the breathing river,
And the salt sea-winds go.
Originally posted here last year.
Read more about the poet here. If you’re ever in Bodmin in Cornwall, there is a memorial to Charlotte near the spot where her body was found and a courtroom re-enactment of Matthew’s trial at Bodmin’s Shire Hall
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