Chapter XIX: Canto XVII

Lo, a valley like a street!
'Tis the Hollow Way of Ghosts:
Dizzily the cloven crags
Tower up on every side.

There upon the sheerest slope
Hangs Uraka's little shack
Like some outpost over chaos--
Thither fared her son and I.

In a secret dumb-show speech
He took counsel with his dam,
How great Atta Troll might best
Be ensnared and safely slain.

We had found his mighty spoor.
Never more canst thou escape
From our hands! thine earthly days
All are numbered--Atta Troll!

Never could I well determine
If Uraka, ancient hag,
Was in truth a potent witch,
As within these Pyrenees

It was rumoured. But I know
That in truth her very looks
Were suspicious. Most suspicious
Were her red and running eyes.

Evil is her look and slant.
It is said whene'er she stares
At some hapless cow, its milk
Dries, its udder withers straight.

It is said that stroking with
Her thin fingers, many a kid
She had slaughtered, many a huge
Ox had stricken unto death.

Oft within the local court
For such crimes arraigned she stood,
But the Justice of the Peace
Was a true Voltairean.

Quite a modern worldling he,
Shallow and devoid of faith,--
So the plaintiffs he dismissed
Both in mockery and scorn.

The alleged official trade
Of Uraka's honest quite,
For she deals in mountain-herbs
And in birds that she has stuffed.

Her entire hut was crammed
With such relics. Horrible
Was the smell of cuckoo-flowers,
Fungi, henbane, elder-blooms.

There a fine array of hawks
To advantage was displayed,
All with pinions stretching wide
And with grim enormous bills.

Was it but the breath of these
Maddening plants that turned my brain?
Still the vision of these birds
Filled me with the strangest thoughts.

These perchance are mortal wights,
Bound by sorcery in this
Miserable state as birds
Stuffed and most disconsolate.

Sad, pathetic is their stare,
Yet it hath impatience too,
And, methinks at times they cast
Sidelong glances at the witch.

She, Uraka, ancient, grim,
Crouches low beside her son,
Mute Lascaro near the fire
Where the twain are casting slugs.

Casting that same fateful ball
Whereby Atta Troll was slain.
How the lurching firelight flares
O'er the witch's features gaunt!

Ceaselessly, yet silently
Move her thin and quivering lips.
Are those magic spells she murmurs
That the balls may travel true?

Now and then she nods and titters
To her son. But he is deep
In the business of the casts
And sits silently as Death.

Overcome by fevered fears,
Yearning for the cooler air,
To the window then I strode
And looked down the gulches dim.

All that in that midnight hour
I beheld, all that will I
Faithfully and featly tell
In the canto that shall follow.