No matter how long the rain might fail
There was always enough for can and pail--
Enough for them and enough to lend
To the dried-out rivals of Cragwell End.
An army might have been sent to raise
Enough for a thousand washing days
Crowded and crammed together in one day,
One vast soap-sudded and wash-tubbed Monday,
And, however fast they might wind the winch,
The water wouldn't have sunk an inch.
For the legend runs that Crag the Saint,
At the high noon-tide of a summer's day,
Thirsty, spent with his toil and faint,
To the site of the well once made his way,
And there he saw a delightful rill
And sat beside it and drank his fill,
Drank of the rill and found it good,
Sitting at ease on a block of wood,
And blessed the place, and thenceforth never
The waters have ceased but they run for ever.
They burnt St. Crag, so the stories say,
And his ashes cast on the winds away,
But the well survives, and the block of wood
Stands--nay, stood where it always stood,
And still was the village's pride and glory
On the day of which I shall tell my story.
Gnarled and knotty and weather-stained,
Battered and cracked, it still remained;
And thither came,
Footsore and lame,
On an autumn evening a year ago
The wandering pedlar, Gipsy Joe.
Beside the block he stood and set
His table out on the well-stones wet.
"Who'll buy? Who'll buy?" was the call he cried
As the folk came flocking from every side;
For they knew their Gipsy Joe of old,
His free wild words and his laughter bold:
So high and low all gathered together
By the village well in the autumn weather,
Lured by the gipsy's bargain-chatter
And the reckless lilt of his hare-brained patter.
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