The Mad Poet
Of Cumberstone's many dark imaginings, the Speaking Glass stands as one of his most mysterious, and gruesome.
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Scholars of such dark things maintain it is
a warning, prescribing caution against
the invasion of the supernatural, with
some suggesting the personification of
the mirror implicates the poem's subject
for a demon or other fell spirit, one
which casts no reflection in the glass...
Little is known of the reclusive and enigmatic poet Lord Cumberstone, though if his visceral verses are any indication, he must a truly touched individual be. Or perhaps it is only a pseudonym, passed down through some secretive anonymous order, a collective of poets writing under the title for their own grim amusement. For 300 years after all, the name has been signed to any number of grisly rhymes, surreptitiously copied down and later printed, to be tucked under pillows, stashed below floorboards or locked away, to emerge only by close and guarded candlelight, to be read in the small hours, before disapproving daylight leads one to think better of it.
What more fun than to immortalize the tragic tale of Long Mary Wretch, a poor girl living in the warrens of 16th century London, though her real name is long forgotten. She was made sport of for her unnatural height, until spurned and rejected by her family's shame she was left to starve, wasting to her end one night in the callous winter of her 18th year . . . or so the story goes. But the sight of her did not end there, and it is said that in the dead of night, in the harshest cold, she might still be found shuffling in the dark, moaning for bread, until the scent of the living catches her notice . . .
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The poem of her miserable mortal coil, of its end, and of her return, was contrived by Lord Cumberstone for the collection of children's tales put to his name- Dark Down Totter Town.