Winnie's Penance

Winnie, Winnie,
Tall and skinny,
Never married, never wed.

Loved John Raymond,
Tried to save him,
Sent him to his grave instead.

It was our version of Lizzie Borden, the story of Winnie McWilliams and John Raymond Stanton, starcrossed lovers who had scandalized the village when my grandmother was just a young girl.  Winnie had discovered John Raymond and an unfortunate waitress from the mainland in the hayloft - in what was then called a compromising position - and she had promptly gotten her daddy's shotgun, taken aim, and without a second's hesitation, fired a single shot.  The waitress died instantly, people said, but John Raymond, who had chosen to make a run for it, tripped and fell to his almost death in a horse stall.  He lingered for nearly a week while Winnie took to her bed, incoherent and grief stricken at what she had done, then died quietly, two days before his 16th birthday.  Inconsolable, Winnie retreated to the ramshackle old farmhouse and there - so the story was told - she remained until the day she died, mourning John Raymond and seeing no one but the Sullivan boy who delivered groceries once a week.  She had, most of the village believed, gone mad with guilt and loneliness, a deadly combination in a fifteen year old girl.  At eighty something years, she fed the horses and chickens, milked the cows for the final time, then fashioned a noose and hung herself from a rafter.

Sin, Nana told me as we stood at the grave, always catches up with you.  In all these years, she never had a day of happiness, not a single day.

She took two lives, Alice, Aunt Pearl said with a shake of her head,

Ayuh, my grandmother said sadly, And she paid for 'em, I reckon.

Mebbe more'n they was worth, Aunt Vi added with a sigh.

Island memories being what they were, the funeral had not been well attended - the waitress had been more or less insignificant as no one had actually known her - besides, she was generally thought culpable for the tragic drama in the hayloft, but John Raymond had come from a typically prodigious family and they were short on forgiveness that overcast August day.  Winnie was laid to rest with only a handful of mourners on hand, even Miss Clara, thought to be a distant cousin of the Stantons, had refused to come and despite Nana's insistent pleas, it was the following summer before she was willing to tend Winnie's modest grave.

Where there's sin, there's blame, Nana reminded us more often than we needed,  And there's always more enough of both to go 'round.

Winnie, Winnie,
Tall and skinny,
Lived alone for all her years.

No one mourned her,
No one loved her,
No one came to dry her tears.