Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/303

 281 CHAPTER VIII.

WORMS OR DRAGONS.

MONG the rich and varied Folk-Lore of the North of England and the Scottish Lowlands it is imposible not to remark how numerous and characteristic are the legends respecting dragons, or, as we locally call them, worms—a name taken from the Norse Ormr, a serpent or dragon. These tales are sometimes enshrined in ballads, sometimes bound up with the tenure of property, sometimes sculptured as part of church decorations; but all live yet upon the lips of the people, though of course we cannot presume to guess how long they will maintain their ground against the combined forces of railroads and collieries.

Sir Walter Scott, in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, accounts for these legends by suggesting that in bygone days, before our country was drained and cleared of wood, large serpents may have infested British woods or morasses, and taxed the prowess of British champions. I believe that Mr. Surtees held the same opinion, and Lord Lindsay, in his Sketches of Christian Art, writes as follows: “The dragons of early tradition, whether aquatic or terrestrial, are not perhaps wholly to be regarded as fabulous. In the case of the former, the race may be supposed to have been perpetuated till the marshes or inland seas left by the Deluge were dried up. Hence probably the legends of the Lernæan hydra, &c. As respects their terrestrial brethren (among whom the serpent, which checked the army of Regulus for three