The legend similar to this in many respects is that of King Arthur and his court at Sewingshields, to which allusion has already been made in the chapter on the Roman Wall. I cannot do better than give this in the words of Mr. Hodgson, who tells the story in his History of Northumberland. “Immemorial tradition has asserted that King Arthur, his queen Guenever, his court of lords and ladies, and his hounds were enchanted in some cave of the crags, or in a hall below the castle of Sewingshields, and would continue entranced there until someone should first blow a bugle-horn that lay on a table near the entrance of the hall, and then with the ‘sword of the stone’ (was this Excalibur?) cut a garter, also placed there beside it. But none had ever heard where the entrance to this enchanted hall was, till the farmer at Sewingshields, about fifty years since, was sitting knitting on the ruins of the castle, and his clew fell, and ran downwards through a rush of briars and nettles, as he supposed, into a subterraneous passage. Full in the faith that the entrance to King Arthur’s hall had now been discovered, he cleared the briary portal of its weeds and rubbish, and entering a vaulted passage, followed in his darkling way the thread of his clew. The floor was infested with toads and lizards; and the dark wings of bats, disturbed by his unhallowed intrusion, flitted fearfully around him. At length his sinking courage was strengthened by a dim, distant light, which as he advanced grew gradually brighter, till all at once he entered a vast and vaulted hall, in the centre of which a fire without fuel, from a broad crevice in the floor blazed with a high and lambent flame, that showed all the carved walls and fretted roof, and the monarch and his queen and court reposing around, in a theatre of thrones and costly couches. On the floor beyond the fire lay the faithful and deep-toned pack of thirty couple of hounds; and on a table before it the spell-dissolving horn, sword, and garter. The shepherd reverently, but firmly, grasped the sword, and as he drew it leisurely from its rusty scabbard, the eyes of the monarch and his courtiers began to open, and they rose till they sat upright. He cut the garter; and as the sword was being slowly sheathed the spell assumed its ancient power, and they all gradually sank to rest; but not before the monarch had lifted up his eyes and hands, and exclaimed— “O woe betide that evil day On which this witless wight was born, Who drew the sword, the garter cut. But never blew the bugle horn!” Terror brought on loss of memory, and the shepherd was unable to give any correct account of his adventure, or to find again the entrance to the enchanted hall.