Where black roads cross in the white of the moon,

Dig her grave, to the stout old tune …

Hammer the pointed white-ash stick

Into her heart – Now there's the trick.

Earl Daniels, ‘Crossroads Burial’ (1937)

No rest she had in the old town church,

No grave by the lake so sweet,

They buried her in unholy ground,

Where the four cross-roads do meet.

Dora Mary Shorter, ‘The Fetch’ (1899)

With downward face, now mark him well.

As if to view his native hell!

Nail’d fast with knotty stakes: –

Where cross the roads they dug his grave;

There howls his ghost! – unlucky knave.

Taliesin Williams, ‘Doom of Colyn Dolphyn’ (1837)

A dozen men sat on his corpse

To find out why he died

And they buried Ben in four cross-roads

With a stake in his inside.

Thomas Hood, ‘Faithless Nelly Gray’ (1828)

’Tis here three cross-roads meet –

Observe that stake! ‘Twas in the midway plac’d …

To draw the glance abhorrent, and the scoff

From vulgar passengers. It marks the grave

Of one self-slaughter’d! Miserable wretch!

William Dimond, ‘Fragment in Blank Verse’ (1800)