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We have the well-known legend of the 'Worm Well' of Lambton Castle, and that of the 'Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh' near Bamborough. In both these legends the 'worm' was a monster of vast size and power a veritable dragon or serpent, such as legend attributes to vast fens or quags where there was illimitable room for expansion.
They went off, and came back from the deep shadows of the trees with glittering swords and more strident music, and louder beating on gongs, and harsher notes on chanters, and a loud booming sound on a narrow, six-foot-six drum with bell-shaped mouth; and the figures danced quickly, going backwards, in circles, and breaking into groups, the swords whirling and flickering beautifully in the moonlight, and the audience clapped hands gently in time, and there was an occasional heugh! as used to be the way in our Highland Reel, before the invention of the lowlander, the screaming "eightsome."
At this moment the Doctor himself entered, his cloak and hat dripping. "Heugh! heugh!" he exclaimed, in a voice of disgust, as his wife helped him out of his covering; "what weather!" He went towards the fire, and spread out his hands to catch the heat of the glowing embers, on which sat a saucepan. "Horrid weather! The wind played the very mischief with us last night!"
Thinks I to myself, `There's something in that doctor's stuff, there's no doubt about that, though whether its worth a shilling a bottle is another matter. Just then I felt more queer than ever. `Heugh! heugh! There was a rattling and a kicking, and such commotion in my inside, and up came what I soon knew was the smoke-worms right out of my mouth, and overboard they went as I put my head over the gunwale.
The name I am about to give you was the name of one of our sisters who has long since passed away from our midst, and it is our wish that her name should be retained among us. "Heugh! Heugh! Heugh!" again sounded through the room, and then the Indians one and all pressed forward to have a shake of the hand with their new brother and sister.
Heugh!" sounded from all sides, that being the Indian mode of expressing approval when anything is said or done. Mrs. Wilson then rose and received her name in the same manner. The Chief, addressing her, said: "It is with great pleasure that I bestow also on you, the wife of the missionary, an Ojebway name.
Hugh Heugh" has a description of an interview which a deputation of Scotch dissenters had some years ago with Lord Brougham. The Scotsman adds, from its private knowledge, some odd incidents of the affair.
"But ye maun listen to it, my bonnie lassie," said Ochiltree, "for a' our lives depend on it besides, when ye get on the tap o' the heugh yonder, ye can gie them a round guess o' what's ganging on in this Patmos o' ours and Sir Arthur's far by that, as I'm thinking."
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.
That oldest Northumbrian poem, however, the "Beowulf," chants the praises of its hero's prowess in encounters of the kind; and the north-country still has its legends of the Sockburn Worm, the Lambton Worm, and the "Laidly" Worm of Spindleston Heugh, the two first having their venue in Durham, and the last in Northumberland.
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