In Wordsworth's "The Thorn," the narrator retells a story about a woman who lost her baby, though the details vary as the narrator is victim to the gossip mill of the community. Similarly, the narrator goes to great lengths in the description of the thorn and its location on the mountain top, but not where that mountain is. After a lofty account of the thorn ("No leaves it has, no prickly points/ It is a mass of knotted joints") and its surroundings ("Not five yards from the mountain path/ This Thorn you on your left espy/And to the left, three yards beyond/You see a little muddy pond"), the narrator introduces the phrase, "an infant's grave" that begins the supernatural element of the ballad.
Not just an ancient, gnarled Thorn and scenic pond, the narrator's description turns eerie as he begins to outline the women in a scarlet cloak who cries over her lost child. Her howls of "Oh misery!" and "Oh woe is me!" indiciate a ghoulish presence that infects the natural scene and twists it into a supernatural site. After repeating the gossip surrounding the women's despairing tale, the narrator reveals he does not know much about the place, only watches from a distance "with my telescope/ To view the ocean wide and bright." Thus, the speaker merely builds up a ghostly story from the community rumors and his own distance observation. Despite continually saying, "I cannot tell how this may be," the speaker tells the haunted tale as he believes it to be true. By focusing on detail he can embellish instead of explaining concretely the linear order of events he creates a narrative that is based on myth and superstition rather than reality.
