Page:A Selection of Original Songs, Scraps, Etc., by Ned Farmer (3rd ed.).djvu/123

 

If you turn to the right, and keep on half a mile,
Down the Bleeding Oak Lane, you will come to a stile,
Which, when you've got over (right easy to do),
A black and white half-timber*d house meets your view:
That is Clapperton Grange,
And 'twas there that a strange
And terrible spectre at night used to range.

Yes, here did a ghost walk, and always at night;
And always by moonlight, and always in white;
Besides, it walked lame, the which proved beyond doubt
'Twas the ghost of some person who died of the gout,
On which murmurers said,
With a shake of the head,
"Blair's gout pills were fine, but they'd not cure the dead."

The oldest inhabitant, nicknamed "Deaf Daniel,"
Remembered a man with his legs wrapped in flannel,
Who once lived at the Grange; and could further remember
That he died very rich, and he died in December.
It was he, that was plain,
And he'd come back again,
To look after some gold that he hid in a drain.

The Grange now stood empty, and had done for years;
Some deterr'd by high rental, and some by their fears;
Its last tenant. Job Spinks, long ago, it was said.
Saw the ghost, when at once in wild terror he fled;
And so anxious was he
From the ghost to get free.
That he ne'er paid his rent—but that's nothing to me.