ller, and her eyes shone in the dark like burning
rubies; and she could sing songs that none of the others could sing, and
when she sang they all fell down on their faces and worshipped her. And
she could do what they called shib-show, which was a very wonderful
enchantment. She would tell the great lord, her father, that she wanted
to go into the woods to gather flowers, so he let her go, and she and
her maid went into the woods where nobody came, and the maid would keep
watch. Then the lady would lie down under the trees and begin to sing a
particular song, and she stretched out her arms, and from every part of
the wood great serpents would come, hissing and gliding in and out among
the trees, and shooting out their forked tongues as they crawled up to
the lady. And they all came to her, and twisted round her, round her
body, and her arms, and her neck, till she was covered with writhing
serpents, and there was only her head to be seen. And she whispered to
them, and she sang to them, and they writhed round and round, faster and
faster, till she told them to go. And they all went away directly, back
to their holes, and on the lady's breast there would be a most curious,
beautiful stone, shaped something like an egg, and coloured dark blue
and yellow, and red, and green, marked like a serpent's scales. It was
called a glame stone, and with it one could do all sorts of wonderful
things, and nurse said her great-grandmother had seen a glame stone with
her own eyes, and it was for all the world shiny and scaly like a snake.
And the lady could do a lot of other things as well, but she was quite
fixed that she would not be married. And there were a great many
gentlemen who wanted to marry her, but there were five of them who were
chief, and their names were Sir Simon, Sir John, Sir Oliver, Sir
Richard, and Sir Rowland. All the others believed she spoke the truth,
and that she would choose one of them to be her man when a year and a
day was done; it was only Sir Simon, who was very crafty, who thought
she was deceiving them all, and he vowed he would watch and try if he
could find out anything. And though he was very wise he was very young,
and he had a smooth, soft face like a girl's, and he pretended, as the
rest did, that he would not come to the castle for a year and a day, and
he said he was going away beyond the sea to foreign parts. But he
really only went a very little way, and came back dressed like a servant
girl, an