“And tell me what is greener
Than the grass on yonder hill
And tell me what it crueller
Than a wicked woman’s will. . . .

I know a deadly poison, greener
Than the grass on yonder hill;
And a foul fiend is crueller
Than a wicked woman’s will.”

—Riddles Wisely Expounded, published in Maine in 1937, The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World, edited by Albert B. Friedman, 1956.