Crabbit Old Woman

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Crabbit Old Woman is a poem by Phyllis McCormack.

First published in 1973 in Chris Searle's (ed) anthology of poetry Elders, the poem was without title and also without attribution. Subsequently, a wealth of urban legend has sprung up surrounding this humble work. Most of the legend associated with this poem attributes it to a senile elderly woman in a Dundee nursing home, where a nurse found it while packing her belongings following her death.

According to an article from the Daily Mail on 12 March 1998, Phyllis McCormack's son claims that his mother wrote it while working at the Sunnyside Hospital in Montrose in the 1960s, where she submitted it anonymously to a small magazine intended just for Sunnyside with the title "Look Closer Nurse". It is also included in the Edexcel IGCSE poetry anthology.