“Oh yes, I saw your bonny lad,
     Upon the sea I spied him,
     His grave is green, but not wi’ grass,
     And you’ll never lie beside him.”

The tune to which she sang her lines was rather merry than otherwise, and sometimes she would dance to the measure.  The boys were kind to her, and she liked to enter a school-yard during play time, because the young people used to share their sweets with her.

Whenever the weather was very stormy she walked about the sands and tore at her hair.  If a ship stood into the bay to escape the northerly wind, she was violently excited; and, when vessels anchored a good mile out, she would scream warnings to the captains.

She had been a very fine girl in her time, and many of the fisher lads would have been glad to have married her.  The sailor-men too from the colliers’ port used to come after her.  But she went mad when she found the lad whom she liked best lying dead on the beach, and so she never married.

The story of her sweetheart’s death was one of the ugliest that ever was known on the shores of the bay.  He was a smart fellow, who went mate of a brig that ran to Middlesborough for iron-stone.  The brig was not much of a beauty, and, when she had to go round, the odds were always about two to one that she would “miss stays.”

In coming northward from Middlesborough, one bad winter’s day, she missed stays once too often, and when the captain found that she would not come round, he let go one anchor.  But the chain was of no more use than a straw rope:  it snapped, and the vessel came ashore, broadside on to the rocks.  It was about dusk when she struck, and nothing could be done to help the men.

Mad Mary’s sweetheart swam ashore, but it seemed that he must have been very much exhausted when he got to the sand, and somebody was waiting for him who had better never have seen him.

A man who stood under the cliffs while the poor struggling swimmer fought southward, had a bad reputation in every village from Spittal to Cullercoates.  He was a sulky fellow, and did not make his living by legitimate ways.  None of the men cared to associate with him, for he had once violated every instinct of kindness that the fishermen and sailors held dear.

He had found an abandoned vessel to the north of the Dogger Bank, and he boarded her.  Finding no one on deck, he determined to sail the vessel into port and get the salvage on her.  A retriever dog came floundering along the deck and fawned upon him.  Now the man had heard that if any living thing is on board a vessel no salvage-money can be claimed when the ship is picked up, and he believed the story, so he coaxed the dog, patted him until he got the chance of a fair hold, then put his arms round the poor beast, and pitched it overboard.