Sally Jane

Sally Jane hung out the clothes As her employer did upstairs doze It was the same every week Sally Jane's outlook was so bleak An orphan child found in the lane By the Reverend Parson Cane He brought her to the parsonage Her first job was to turn each bible's page Hidden from view below the pulpit Inside it's depths she would happily sit Her next job was when she was a bit older Carried milk pails slung across each shoulder She whooshed the laying hens and cocks And scaring crows as she ran about shaking the hems of her frocks When grown she had no permanent home She preferred to live outdoors and to roam As night fell a haystack, or in the winter a farmer's barn On stormy nights that wetted the land Sally Jane's cover was never planned She arrived soaked through at any random door They let her in and she slept on the floor Now in her fiftieth year Many village folk shed a tear She had spontaneously combusted in John's hayrick There had been no indication she had ever been sick Her funeral was yesterday Poor Sally Jane, it's a mystery.