One of my favourite songs when I was at school was *The hag’s astride* from Robert Herrick, an English poet who lived from 1591 to 1674. While I was making the Halloween tags, the melody was going round in my head, a fitting background for spooky pictures. The tag has been cut from some cardboard packaging, distressed with TH inks in blue, grey, yellow and green tones, and stamped with some flowery scrolls. The haunted house is a Sizzix die-cut, as are the bats and the skeleton. The other decorations were bought from a local stationery shop last year; the skull badge was on my sneakers and the other skull part of a bracelet. The frog prince has been sitting on my desk waiting to be used for a long time. BTW, I never tried to kiss him, I don’t believe in fairy tales….
The Hag.
THe Hag is astride,
This night for to ride;
The Devill and shee together:
Through thick, and through thin,
Now out, and then in,
Though ne'r so foule be the weather.
2. A Thorn or a Burr
She takes for a Spurre:
With a lash of a Bramble she rides now,
Through Brakes and through Bryars,
O're Ditches, and Mires,
She followes the Spirit that guides now.
3. No Beast, for his food,
Dares now range the wood;
But husht in his laire he lies lurking:
While mischeifs, by these,
On Land and on Seas,
At noone of Night are working,
4. The storme will arise,
And trouble the skies;
This night, and more for the wonder,
The ghost from the Tomb
Affrighted shall come,
Cal'd out by the clap of the Thunder.
