ay.

Dool and wae for the order sent our lads to the Border!
The English for ance by guile wan the day;
The Flowers of the Forest, that fought aye the foremost,
The prime of our land, are cauld in the clay.

We'll hear nae mair liltin' at our ewe-milkin';
Women and bairns are heartless and wae;
Sighing and moaning on ilka green loaning--
The Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away.

[Footnote 12: Bughts = sheep-pens.]
[Footnote 13: Leglin = milk-pail.]
[Footnote 14 Lyart = grizzled.]
[Footnote 15: Fleeching = coaxing.]

CHAPTER X.

TALES AND LEGENDS.

Northumberland, as might be guessed from its wild history, is rich in
tales of daring and stories of gallant deeds; there are true tales, as
well as legendary ones, which latter, after all, may be true in
substance though not in detail, in spirit and possibility though not in
a certain sequence of facts. Now-a-days we look upon dragons as fabulous
animals, and stories of the destruction they wrought, their fierceness
and their might are dismissed with a smile, and mentally relegated to a
place amongst the fairy tales that delighted our childhood's days, when
the idea of belief or disbelief simply did not enter the question. Yet
what are the dragon stories but faint memories of those gigantic and
fearsome beasts which roamed the earth in the "dim, red dawn of
man"--their names, as we read the labels on their skeletons in our
museums, being now the most fearsome things about them! No one can deny
that the ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, and all the rest of their tribe
did exist; and were they to be encountered in these days would spread
the same terror around, and find man almost as helpless before them as
did any fierce dragon of the fairy tales. That part of the legends,
therefore, has its foundation in fact; though from the nature of the
case, we certainly do not possess an authenticated account of any
particular contest between primitive man and one of these gigantic
creatures. That oldest Northumbrian poem, however, the "Beowulf,"
chants the praises of its hero's prowess in encounters of the kind; and
the north-country still has its legends of the Sockburn Worm, the
Lambton Worm, and the "Laidly" Worm of Spindleston Heugh, the two first
having their _venue_ in Durham, and the last in Northumberland. The
Spindlestone, a high crag not far from Bamburgh, and Bamburgh Castle
itself, form the scene of this well-known legend. The fair P