crone

Unlike Eugène Delacroix’s 1830 image of a beautiful and bare-breasted personification of French freedom, Kollwitz’s crone is shown from the back, her sinewy arms raised and hands clenched urgently, practically launching herself into the crowd.

True enough; and I’m happy to report that there is no resemblance whatsoever between these patchwork crones and the artist.

“One of them said, ‘This old crone is proud of you.’”

A housesitter must reckon with a pair of crones — or are they maidens?

Here’s the appropriately macabre opening of Coleridge’s “The Crime of the Urchin Mary”: “It was an ancient crone who wrote / Silly rhymes for tots / Was stopped by a maid in a pinafore / With blood-red polkadots.”