The Idiot and the Child

There was a house where an old dame

Lived with a son, his child and wife;

And with a son of fifty years,

An idiot all his life.

When others wept this idiot laughed,

When others laughed he then would weep;

The married pair took oath his eyes

Did never close in sleep.

Death came that way, and which think you

Fell under that old tyrant’s spell?

He breathed upon that little child,

Who loved her life so well.

This made the idiot chuckle hard:

The old dame looked at that child dead

And him she loved—“Ah, well; thank God

It is no worse!” she said.