The Ingoldsby Legends :: :: University of Virginia Library

I remember I once heard my Grandfather say,
That some sixty years since he was going that way,
When they show'd him the spot
Where the gibbet—was—not—

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On which Matcham's corse had been hung up to rot;
It had fall'n down—but how long before, he'd forgot;
And they told him, I think, at the Bear in Devizes,
The town where the Sessions are held,—or the 'Sizes,
That Matcham confess'd, And made a clean breast
To the May'r; but that after he'd had a night's rest,
And the storm had subsided, he “pooh-pooh'd” his friend,
Swearing all was a lie from beginning to end;
Said “he'd only been drunk— That his spirits had sunk
At the thunder—the storm put him into a funk,—
That, in fact, he had nothing at all on his conscience,
And found out, in short, he'd been talking great nonsense.”—
But now one Mr. Jones Comes forth and depones
That fifteen years since, he had heard certain groans
On his way to Stonehenge (to examine the stones
Described in a work of the late Sir John Soane's,)
That he'd follow'd the moans, And, led by their tones,
Found a Raven a-picking a Drummer-boy's bones!—
—Then the Colonel wrote word
From the King's Forty-third,
That the story was certainly true which they'd heard,

For, that one of their drummers, and one Sergeant Matcham,
Had “brush'd with the dibs,” and they never could catch 'em.
So Justice was sure, though a long time she'd lagg'd,
And the Sergeant, in spite of his “Gammon,” got “scragg'd;”
And people averr'd That an ugly black bird,
The Raven, 'twas hinted, of whom we have heard,
Though the story, I own, appears rather absurd,
Was seen (Gervase Matcham not being interr'd),
To roost all that night on the murderer's gibbet;
An odd thing, if so, and it may be a fib—it,
However's a thing Nature's laws don't prohibit.
—Next morning they add, that “black gentleman” flies out
Having picked Matcham's nose off, and gobbled his eyes out!