FOOTNOTES:
[296] The incident of a woman trying to move a man who all the while is in a deep sleep, and of his servant reporting what has been going on, can hardly have belonged to this ballad from the beginning. It is exceedingly common in popular tales: see 'The Red Bull of Norroway,' in Chambers's Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 3d ed., p. 99; Grimms, 'Das singende springende Löweneckerchen,' No 88, 'Der Eisenhofen,' No 127, and the notes in vol. iii; Leskien u. Brugman, Litanische V. l. u. Märchen, 'Vom weissen Wolf,' No 23, p. 438, and Wollner's note, p. 571.
[297] But not in Mme Villeneuve's or in Mme de Beaumont's 'La Belle et la Bête.'
[298] Lanzelet is cited by J. Grimm; Brandimarte by Walter Scott; Carduino by G. Paris; Espertius by Dunlop; Amadis d'Astra by Valentin Schmidt. Dunlop refers to a similar story in the sixth tale of the Contes Amoureux de Jean Flore, written towards the end of the fifteenth century.
[299] "The Childe of Wane, as a protector of disconsolate damsels, is still remembered by young girls at school in the neighborhood of Bamborough, who apply the title to any boy who protects them from the assaults of their school-fellows." (Kinloch.)
[APPENDIX]
THE LAIDLEY WORM OF SPINDLESTON HEUGHS.
A View of Northumberland, by W. Hutchinson, Anno 1776, Newcastle, 1778, II, 162-64. Communicated by the Rev. Mr Lamb, of Norham.
Kinloch's account of the tradition in relation to the queen, as it maintains itself in Berwickshire, is quite in accord with German sagen about enchanted ladies, innocent or guilty, and as such may be worth giving: Kinloch MSS, I, 187.
"Though the ballad mentions that the queen was transformed into 'a spiteful toad of monstrous size,' and was doomed in that form to wend on the earth until the end of the world, yet the tradition of the country gives another account of the endurance of her enchantment. It is said that in form of a toad as big as a 'clockin hen' she is doomed to expiate her guilt by confinement in a cavern in Bamborough castle, in which she is to remain in her enchanted shape until some one shall have the hardihood to break the spell by penetrating the cavern, whose 'invisible' door only opens every seven years, on Christmas eve. The adventurer, after entering the cavern, must take the sword and horn of the Childe of Wane, which hang on the wall, and having unsheathed and resheathed the sword thrice, and wound three blasts on the horn, he must kiss the toad three times; upon which the enchantment will be dissolved, and the queen will recover her human form.