"The Bad Old Woman in Black Ran Down the Street of the Ox-Butchers"

“The Bad Old Woman in Black Ran Down the Street of the Ox-Butchers” is an illustration made by Sidney Sime for the corresponding story “The Bad Old Woman in Black,” written by Lord Dunsany. This image may not seem particularly horrifying at first glance, which contrasts Dunsany’s tale quite dramatically. In the story, the old woman almost seems like an existential threat with warnings of the doom and evil she brings when she leaves her house, but “that the same calamity twice had never followed her goings” creates a sense of the unknown in the horror surrounding her (Dunsany 50). Interestingly enough, in Sime’s illustration, the eye is more drawn to the clouded hillside and rustic housing than to the miniscule old woman at the bottom of the page with an almost sublime effect. This may actually add to the horror of the old woman; instead of a horror being unimaginable or indescribable, somewhat like the old woman in Dunsany’s story, Sime’s depiction of her brings in a sense of reality, that these horrors can exist even in mundane places.

Works Cited

Dunsany, Edward, and Sidney Sime. “The Bad Old Woman in Black Ran Down the Street of the Ox-Butchers.” “The Bad Old Woman in Black,” The Last Book of Wonder, J.W. Luce and Company, 1916, pp. 48 – 52. Internet Archive, August 2007, https://archive.org/details/cu31924012972737/page/n67/mode/2up.