An ancient if none too respectful image of elderly and slightly sinister women. However, their manifest suffering from sea-sickness removes any hint of witchery in the use of the word ‘crone’.
‘Yet among the wheat sacks the dolorous face of many a black-coiffed crone spelt sea-sickness.’
Source: Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, introduction by Michael Gorra, New York: New York Review of Books, 2006 (1958), p. 52
