Witch Stone

At Forres is a large round stone,
A relic of the days by gone;
For here there were two witches burned,
Underneath their ashes urned.

A man with veneration small
Broke stone and built it in his wall,
But the authorities of town
Made him full quickly pull them down.

Replace each piece, and it environ
With large bars of good Scottish iron;
May fine old town thrive and adorn
The beauteous banks of the Findhorn.

Where this text comes from

First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L12.

Cite this poem

James McIntyre (1828?–1906). “Witch Stone.” First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-mcintyre/witch-stone/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

More by James McIntyre