The book of British ballads . reed that nochief of his family should die in his bed for nine generations. Popular tradition continues, to point out the scene of the encounter. Stories of men and women trans-formed into monsters are sufficiently numerous, and have been found among everypeople. Many such exist in England, in Scotland, and in Ireland; in the lattercountry they are invariably supposed to occupy lakes of unfathomed depth, out ofwhich they occasionally arise and make excursions among adjacent mountainsbearing with them to their palaces beneath the waters, the cattle of some unhappy.
The book of British ballads . reed that nochief of his family should die in his bed for nine generations. Popular tradition continues, to point out the scene of the encounter. Stories of men and women trans-formed into monsters are sufficiently numerous, and have been found among everypeople. Many such exist in England, in Scotland, and in Ireland; in the lattercountry they are invariably supposed to occupy lakes of unfathomed depth, out ofwhich they occasionally arise and make excursions among adjacent mountainsbearing with them to their palaces beneath the waters, the cattle of some , and not unfrequently the neighbour himself. The origin of the superstition is believed to have been Danish. The traditions of Denmark are full of suchromances ; and it is more than probable, that it may have been introduced, by itssea-kings, into these islands. The ballad of Kempion, writes Sir Walter Scott, seems, from the names ofthe personages and the nature of the adventure, to have been an old metrical romance. degraded into a ballad by the lapse of time and the corruption of reciters. The allusion to the arblast bow would seemto affix the composition to a remote date.*Two ballads which relate to a similar in-cident have been preserved; one entitled Kemp Owyne, by Mr. Motherwell, andanother The Laidly Worm of Spindle-ston-Heugh, affirmed to have been com-posed, in 1270, by Duncan Frazier, livingon Cheviot, but supposed to have been, at least re-written, by Mr. Robert Lambe,vicar of Norham. In » Kemp Owyne, dove Isabel, is transformed into a monsterby her step-mother, and doomed to retain her savage form-Till Kemp Owyne come ower the seaAnd borrow her with kisses three kisses are of course given ; when, instead of the beast « whose breath wasStrang, whose hair was lang,— Her breath was sweet, her hair grew short, And twisted nane about the tree;And, smilingly, she came about,As fair a woman as fair could ballad of the Laidley (loathsome) Worm
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