le will have power to save her.
This is in effect the story told by Sir John Maundeville concerning the
daughter of Hippocrates, the renowned physician, who was said to have
been enchanted by Diana on the island of Cos, or (as he calls it) Lango,
and given with so much of Mr. William Morris' power in "The Earthly
Paradise."[174] "Then listen!" says the damsel in the ruined castle to
the seaman whom she meets--

"Then listen! when this day is overpast,
A fearful monster I shall be again,
And thou may'st be my saviour at the last,
Unless, once more, thy words are nought and vain;
If thou of love and sovereignty art fain,
Come thou next morn, and when thou seest here
A hideous dragon, have thereof no fear,

"But take the loathsome head up in thine hands,
And kiss it, and be master presently
Of twice the wealth that is in all the lands,
From Cathay to the head of Italy;
And master also, if it pleaseth thee,
Of all thou praisest as so fresh and bright,
Of what thou callest crown of all delight."

* * * * *

"Ah, me! to hold my child upon my knees,
After the weeping of unkindly tears,
And all the wrongs of these four hundred years."

But the horrible apparition of the dragon was too much for the
adventurer's courage:

"He cried out and wildly at her smote,
Shutting his eyes, and turned and from the place
Ran swiftly, with a white and ghastly face,"

to die within three days, a raving maniac. And

"Never any man again durst go
To seek her woman's form, and end her wo."

It would be too tedious to run through even a small proportion of the
examples of this tale, almost innumerable in Germany alone. Fortunately,
it will only be necessary to allude to a few of its chief features. When
the enchanted princess assumes a monstrous form, the usual ordeal of the
would-be deliverer is to kiss her. A toad or a snake is, perhaps, her
favourite form; but occasionally she is half woman, half toad, or half
woman, half snake. Further transformations now and then take place, as
from a snake into a fiery dog, or from a bear into a lion, from a lion
into a snake. Sometimes as a bear alone she threatens her deliverer. In
a Carinthian saga he is to cut three birch rods at the full of the moon,
and then wait at the appointed place. The damsel approaches in the guise
of a snake, with a bunch of