he crept intill the hole a worm,
And came out a fayre ladie."

The knight clasped his lovely sister in his arms, and, casting around
her his crimson cloak, led her back to her home, where the trembling
queen awaited them. Her doom was spoken by the Childe Wynde--

"Woe be to thee, thou wicked witch;
An ill death mayst thou dee!
As thou hast likened my sister dear,
So likened shalt thou be"

and he turned her into the likeness of an ugly toad, in which hateful
shape she remained to her dying day, wandering around the castle and the
green fields, an object of hatred to all who saw her. The
"Spindlestone," a tall crag on which the young knight hung his bridle,
when he went further on to seek the worm in the "heugh," is still to be
seen, but the huge trough from which the worm was said to drink has been
destroyed.

There are two legends somewhat similar to each other which are told of a
company held in the spell of a magic sleep, to be awakened by certain
devices, in which the blowing of a horn and the drawing of a sword are
prominent. One is the story of "Sir Guy the Seeker," and is told of
Dunstanborough Castle. Sir Guy sought refuge in the Castle from a storm;
and while within the walls a spectre form with flaming hair addressed
him,

"Sir knight, Sir knight, if your heart be right,
And your nerves be firm and true,"

(fancy "nerves" in a ballad!)--

"Sir knight, Sir knight, a beauty bright
In durance waits for you."

The ballad, written by M.G. Lewis, now describes in a painfully
commonplace manner the knight's further adventures. He and his guide
wandered round and round and high and low in the maze of chambers within
the castle, until at last a door of brass, whose bolt was a venomous
snake, gave them entrance to a gloomy hall, draped in black, which the
"hundred lights" failed to brighten. In the hall a hundred knights of
"marble white" lay sleeping by their steeds of "marble black as the
raven's back." At the end of the hall, guarded by two huge skeleton
forms, the imprisoned lady was seen in tears within a crystal tomb. One
skeleton held in his bony fingers a horn, the other a "falchion bright,"
and the knight was told to choose between them, and the fate of himself
and the lady would depend upon his choice. Sir Guy, after long
hesitation, blew a shrill blast upon the horn; at the sound the hundred
steeds stamped their hoofs, the hundred knights sprang up, and the
unlucky knight fell