here is yours," and again she offered the keys. One of the king's
knights who had escorted the new queen, cried out in admiration:
"Surely this northern Princess is the loveliest of her kind." At that
the new queen flushed up and cried out: "At least your courtesy might
have excepted me," and then she muttered below her breath: "I'll soon
put an end to her beauty."

That same night the queen, who was a noted witch, stole down to a
lonely dungeon wherein she did her magic and with spells three times
three, and with passes nine times nine she cast Princess Margaret
under her spell. And this was her spell:

I weird ye to be a Laidly Worm,
And borrowed shall ye never be,
Until Childe Wynd, the King's own son
Come to the Heugh and thrice kiss thee;
Until the world comes to an end,
Borrowed shall ye never be.

So Lady Margaret went to bed a beauteous maiden, and rose up a Laidly
Worm. And when her maidens came in to dress her in the morning they
found coiled up on the bed a dreadful dragon, which uncoiled itself
and came towards them. But they ran away shrieking, and the Laidly
Worm crawled and crept, and crept and crawled till it reached the
Heugh or rock of the Spindlestone, round which it coiled itself, and
lay there basking with its terrible snout in the air.

Soon the country round about had reason to know of the Laidly Worm of
Spindleston Heugh. For hunger drove the monster out from its cave and
it used to devour everything it could come across. So at last they