'It was a Dark and Stormy Night...'

Two horses on the moor that day
and one was purest white,
the other was as black as ink,
both tethered for the night.

A scarlet shawl, from shoulders soft,
slipped, silent, to the ground,
as two lips met that spoke of love
yet uttered not a sound.

A gust of wind picked up that shawl
and wrapped it round a post,
whilst high above two tardy crows
flew swiftly home to roost.

All out of sight a couple lay
a-wrangling by the hedge,
as darkness fell the moon it set
‘neath tree-tops in the west.

A poacher, poaching on the moor
at dawn’s first early light,
espied two horses by a tree –
one black, the other white;

it seemed no one was thereabouts,
as his gun-dog caught a scent,
so he followed as it led him to
a red shawl on a fence.

He walked the horses off the moor
to a village down a track;
one horse black – the other white,
with a red shawl on its back.

The locals told the poacher
that as sure as bulls’ got balls,
‘twas Nell, the barmaid’s, old, white nag
and hers – the scarlet shawl.

The bloke what rode the coal black steed –
weren’t no secret he were gay...
‘A man of many parts’, indeed...
seems the vicar swung both ways!