This print, after a design that Rossetti created as an illustration to a ballad by William Allingham, was engraved by the famous Dalziel brothers. The ballad concerns a village where three female apparitions come every night to sing and spin. They always disappear when the clock strikes eleven. A lovesick young man tries to make them stay longer and tricks them by turning back the village clock. The apparitions do indeed sing and spin for longer than usual that night, but they are never seen again. The ballad concludes with the young man pining and dying of a broken heart. Rossetti's characteristic use of tight framing, and the shallow pictorial space, help to create an intense mystical atmosphere.