Part 3
When the bird’s song was over it flew away;
Gone too were the handkerchief and the boy
And pretty Margery smiled with joy.
It landed on the roof of a goldsmith’s house,
Singing: ‘My mother killed her little son;
My father thought me lost and gone;
But sister Margery pitied me
And laid me under the juniper tree.’
The goldsmith was fashioning a golden chain
And he asked the bird to sing again
In return for the chain, which it took in its claw
And into the sky the little bird soared,
Until it came to the shoemaker’s house.
Again the little bird sang its song
So sweetly the shoemaker sang along,
Rewarding the bird with a pair of red shoes.
The little bird flew to a nearby mill,
Where the sails turned clipper clapper.
It sang its song not one time but two
In return for a millstone, then off it flew
To Margery and her family,
Where it sat on top of the juniper tree
And sang: ‘My mother killed her little son;
My father thought me lost and gone;
But sister Margery pitied me
And laid me under the juniper tree.’
The father ran into the garden to marvel at the bird,
That dropped the chain around his neck without a single word.
The red shoes it dropped at Margery’s feet;
She put them on and danced in the street.
It dropped the millstone
On the mothers head
And she fell down dead.
The juniper tree burst into flame,
The little boy appeared again,
And they lived together happily
In the shade of the juniper tree.
© Kim M. Russell, 2016
writing in north norfolk 