Curious Chapbooks & Hysterical Histories

TIME TO GATHER 'ROUND as the witches spin their tales. This amazing poem cycle by Sebastian Sams is lavishly illustrated with drawings from famed Victorian-era illustrator Aubrey Beardsley. Read an excerpt below.

Spade the dell
And delve the ditches
Call the vixen, tabs and bitches
'Round the night fire
As it twitches
To the campfire of the witches!
Gray eyes, bright feet, dark hair, fair faces,
Aged brows, iced smiles, old airs and graces,
Old rags, tortoise-shelled combs and laces,
Many colored skins and races
From forests, swamps, shores and ancient places
All to where the screech owl traces.
Come, first sister to the right,
'Round the campfire hot and bright,
Your eyes brighten darkest night --
Tell us now your tale.

Sable Witch's Tale
I tarry not in ways of men
Unless these ways be deep and dark,
A chimney well has often been
Where I have left my mark.
I dance the nights in robes of black
In hearths to stir the cinders back,
I dance the fires to stir the flame
And kick the crackling, shooting spark.
On one excursion of this kind
When all the household lay asleep,
I spied a coil of rope unwind
While hoisting down a chimney-sweep.
His name was Bruno, dark and brown,
Once an apprentice, now a thief,
Who breaking in came climbing down
The tower of my secret fief.
He fell in my arms' smoky embrace,
Wrapped in a cobweb's canopy,
And burned the night without a trace
Because he dared to lie with me.
He trysted but could not keep trust
And so my Bruno turned to dust.
And all that's left is his golden ring,
Wound 'round my neck on a cobweb string,
I kept -- for 'tis a pretty thing.

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