"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,"
"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 down senseless, with his ghastly guide's words ringing in his ears--
"Shame on the coward who sounded a horn When he might have unsheathed a sword!"