And borrowed shall ye never be
Until Childe Wynd, the King's own son
Comes to the Heugh and thrice kiss thee,
Until the world comes to an end,
Borrowed shall ye never be.
The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh is a Fairy Tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in English Fairy Tales. The story originates from Northumbria, a region that is now partly England and partly Scotland.
The story begins with two royal siblings, Childe Wynd and Margaret. While the prince is out seeking his fortune, the king takes a new wife, a beautiful but evil sorceress. In her envy of Princess Margaret's beauty, the witch-queen changes the princess into a loathsome dragon (the "laidly worm" of the title). In her monstrous form, Margaret is chased out of the castle to Spindleston Heugh.
Consulting a wizard, the locals feed the dragon seven cows per day until they contact Childe Wynd. With 33 of this best men, Wynd vows to rescue his sister and punish the evil queen, sailing home on a boat of rowan wood. The queen sends her henchman to sabotage the voyage, but they find that magic has no affect on rowan wood. So she deploys the navy to fight them, and uses her magic to send Margaret on the rampage.
Childe Wynd and his men out-maneuver the soldiers and dragon, and once the spell subsides, Childe Wynd approaches the dragon. He hears his sister's own voice from within the beast:
And give me kisses three;
For though I am a poisonous worm,
No harm I'll do to thee.
O, quit your sword, unbend your bow,
And give me kisses three;
If I'm not won ere set of sun,
Won never shall I be.
He gives the monster three kisses and she changes back into Princess Margaret. Armed with a branch of a rowan tree, the siblings return to the castle. With one touch of the branch, the witch queen shrivels up and turns into a hideous toad. She hops away, allowing Childe Wynd to take his place as king.
The tale can be found online here
and here.
"The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh" contains examples of:
- Beauty to Beast: Both transformations befall beautiful women in conflict over the always-contentious "Fairest of Them All" title. The queen transforms Margaret into a monstrous serpent, and is at the end herself transformed into a hideous toad.
- Bewitched Amphibians: The Vain Sorceress gets her comeuppance at the end when she is turned into a laidly toad.
- Curse Escape Clause When the Vain Sorceress turns Princess Margaret into a monster, she specifies that Margaret will never be herself again "until Childe Wynd, the King's own son, comes to the Heugh and thrice kiss thee".
- Damsel in Distress: Princess Margaret's is transformed and controlled by the stepmother's magic, and it is up to Margaret's brother, Childe Wynd, to save her.
- Fairest of Them All: Much like the stepmother queen in "Snow White", the villainess hates her stepchild because the younger woman's beauty exceeds her own.
- Forced Transformation: Margaret becomes a dragon, and the stepmother queen becomes a toad.
- Good Princess, Evil Queen: The new queen is a witch who is envious of her stepdaughter's beauty and casts a spell to turn the princess into the titular dragon.
- Magic Kiss: Three kisses from her bother are needed to break the witch-queen's curse and turn Margaret back into herself.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Margaret is transformed into a "laidly worm", a colossal monstrous serpent that lurks in a cave and terrorizes the countryside.
- Our Imps Are Different: When she catches news that Childe Wynd and his companions are returning home, the queen sends out her imp familiars to sink or wreck their ship, although they can do nothing against the rowan wood making it up.
- Rule of Three: Three kisses disenchant Margaret, but multiples of three also appear throughout. Childe Wynd brings thirty-three soldiers with him on his quest back home, and this spell-casting is described as being repeated in multiples of three.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.
- True Love's Kiss: A rare example of this occurring in a medieval story, instead of a modern retelling, and with the twist that the love is fraternal — in order for her curse to be broken, Margaret needs three kisses form her brother.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Rowan wood counters magic. A rowan boat cannot be affected by magic, and the touch of rowan defeats the witch at the end.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The protagonists' father drops out of the story completely after marrying the Wicked Stepmother.
- Wicked Stepmother: After the king remarries, the new queen, out of jealousy at her beauty, turns her stepdaughter into a dragon.
