es makes a safe graveyard all
along that bleak and rugged coast; but a horror--a crawling, shapeless,
loathsome thing--writhed itself along the pathway from cliff to village,
and sent the terror-striken peasants shrieking into their huts and
battering at the castle gates for sanctuary. The old ballad tells us
that:

"For seven miles east and seven miles west,
And seven miles north and south,
No blade of grass or corn could grow,
So venomous was her mouth."

Like an embodied plague, the bewitched Princess preyed on the people of
her father's kingdom, who daily brought to the cave, where she coiled
herself up at night to sleep, a terrified tribute of the milk of seven
cows. All over the North Country spread the dread of her name, but now
she was no longer the lovely Princess Margaret, but the Laidley Worm of
Spindleston-Heugh.

"Word went east, and word went west,
And word is gone over the sea,
That a Laidley Worm in Spindleston-Heughs
Would ruin the North Countrie."

Far over the sea, with his thirty-three bold men-at-arms, the Princess's
brother, "Childe Wynd," was carving a career for himself with his sword.
Nothing on earth did Childe Wynd fear, yet ever and again, when success
in battle had been his, he would have a heavy heart, dreading he knew
not what, and often he longed to see again the castle on the high rock
by the sea, and the fair little sister with whom so many happy days had
been spent amongst the blue grass and on the yellow sand of the dunes at
Bamborough. To his camp came rumour of the strange monster that was
devastating his father's lands, and down to the coast he hastened with
his men, a great home-sickness dragging at his heart--home-sickness, and
a terror that all was not well with Margaret. Some rough, brown-faced
mariners, whose boat had not long before nearly suffered wreck on the
rocks of the Northumbrian coast, were able to tell the Prince that
rumour spoke truth, and that a laidley worm was laying waste his
father's kingdom. Of the Princess they could give no tidings, but the
Prince needed no words from them to tell him that all was not well.

"We have no time now here to waste,
Hence quickly let us sail:
My only sister Margaret
Something, I fear, doth ail."

And so, with haste, they built a ship, a ship for a Prince of Faery, for
its masts were made of the rowan tree, against which no evil witchcraft
could prevail, and it