He
slew it after a fierce battle lasting over half a day throw the great
power of the Holy Seal being about his person. This worm did also infest
Sneaton Moor."
If we are to believe anything at all of this prodigious story we must
place it among those which have been handed down from the time of the
Danes and have become somewhat confused with later superstitions.
Coming back to the story of the beautiful spectre we find that in 1782 a
certain Thomas Botran wrote down all the information he could find out in
his time concerning the story of Sarkless Kitty, and Mr Blakeborough has
added to it everything else that he has discovered relating to it.
It seems that there lived near Lastingham towards the close of the
seventeenth century a girl named Kitty Coglan whose beauty was so
remarkable that "folk at divers times come much out of their way in the
pleasant hope of a chance for to look upon the sweetness of her face." She
was, however, extremely vain, and her mother seems to have heard stories
of her bad conduct, for she began to worry herself over her daughter's
behaviour. Having had a curious dream she asked Takky Burton, the wise man
of Lastingham, to tell her what it meant. He told her that the wonderful
gem of her dream was her daughter Kitty, who like the gem had blemishes
beneath the surface. Soon after this Kitty married the only son of a small
farmer, but after they had lived together about four months he
disappeared, and then Kitty seems to have gone from bad to worse.
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