'Aboot the dead hour o' the night
She heard the bridles ring;
And Janet was as glad o' that
As any earthly thing.

And first gaed by the black, black steed,
And then gaed by the brown,
But fast she gripped the milk-white steed
And pu'ed the rider down';

and holding her lover fast, through all his gruesome changes of form,
she 'borrowed' him from the 'seely court,' and saved him from becoming
the tribute paid every seven years to the powers that held fairydom in
vassalage.

Another series of transmutations, familiar in ballad and folklore, is
that in which the powers of White and Black Magic strive for the
mastery, generally to the discomfiture of the latter, after the manner
of the Hunting of Paupukewis in _Hiawatha_. The baffled magician or
witch--often the mother-in-law or stepmother, the stock villain of the
piece in these old tales--alters her shape rapidly to living creature or
inanimate thing; but fast as she changes the avenger also changes,
pursues, and at length destroys. In the ballad of _The Twa Magicians_,
given in Buchan's collection, it is virtue that flees, and wrong, in the
shape of a Smith, of Weyland's mystic kin, that follows and overcomes.

But, as a rule, the transformations that are made the subject of the
Scottish ballads are of a more lasting kind; the prince or princess,
tempted by a kiss, or at the touch of enchanted wand or ring, is doomed
for a time to crawl in the loathly shape of snake or dragon about a
tree, or swim the waters as mermaid or other monstrous brood of the seas
of romance, until the appointed time when the deliverer comes, and by
like magic art, or by the pure force of courage and love, looses the
spell. _Kempion_ is a type of a class of story that runs, in many
variations, through the romances of chivalry, and from these may have
been passed down to the ballad-singer, although ruder forms of it are
common to nearly all folk-mythology. The hero is one of those kings'
sons, who, along with kings' daughters, people the literature of ballad
and _maerchen_; and he has heard of the 'heavy weird' that has been laid
upon a lady to haunt the flood around the Estmere Crags as a 'fiery
beast.' He is dared to lean over the cliff and kiss this hideous
creature; and at the third kiss she turns into

'The loveliest ladye e'er could be.'

The rescuer asks--

'O, was it wehrwolf in the wood,
Or was it mermaid in the sea?