_Source_.--Campbell, _Pop. Tales_, No. 4. I have omitted the births of
the animal comrades and transposed the carlin to the middle of the
tale. Mr. Batten has considerately idealised the Sea-Maiden in his
frontispiece. When she restores the husband to the wife in one of the
variants, she brings him out of her mouth! "So the sea-maiden put up
his head (_Who do you mean? Out of her mouth to be sure. She had
swallowed him_)."
_Parallels_.--The early part of the story occurs in No. xv., "Shee an
Gannon," and the last part in No. xix., "Fair, Brown, and Trembling"
(both from Curtin), Campbell's No. 1. "The Young King" is much like it;
also MacInnes' No. iv., "Herding of Cruachan" and No. viii., "Lod the
Farmer's Son." The third of Mr. Britten's Irish folk-tales in the
_Folk-Lore Journal_ is a Sea-Maiden story. The story is obviously a
favourite one among the Celts. Yet its main incidents occur with
frequency in Continental folk-tales. Prof. Köhler has collected a
number in his notes on Campbell's Tales in _Orient und Occident_, Bnd.
ii. 115-8. The trial of the sword occurs in the saga of Sigurd, yet it
is also frequent in Celtic saga and folk-tales (see Mr. Nutt's note,
MacInnes' _Tales_, 473, and add. Curtin, 320). The hideous carlin and
her three giant sons is also a common form in Celtic. The external soul
of the Sea-Maiden carried about in an egg, in a trout, in a hoodie, in
a hind, is a remarkable instance of a peculiarly savage conception
which has been studied by Major Temple, _Wide-awake Stories_, 404-5; by
Mr. E. Clodd, in the "Philosophy of Punchkin," in _Folk-Lore Journal_,
vol. ii., and by Mr. Frazer in his _Golden Bough_, vol. ii.
_Remarks_.--As both Prof. Rhys (_Hibbert Lect._, 464) and Mr. Nutt
(MacInnes' _Tales_, 477) have pointed out, practically the same story
(that of Perseus and Andromeda) is told of the Ultonian hero,
Cuchulain, in the _Wooing of Emer_, a tale which occurs in the Book of
Leinster, a MS. of the twelfth century, and was probably copied from
one of the eighth. Unfortunately it is not complete, and the Sea-Maiden
incident is only to be found in a British Museum MS. of about 1300. In
this Cuchulain finds that the daughter of Ruad is to be given as a
tribute to the Fomori, who, according to Prof. Rhys, _Folk-Lore_, ii.
293, have something of the night_mare_ about their etymology. Cuchulain
fights _three_ of them successively, has his wounds bound up by a strip
of the maiden's garment, and then departs. Thereafter many boasted of
having slain the Fomori, but the maiden believed them not till at last
by a stratagem she recognises Cuchulain. I may add to this that in Mr.
Curtin's _Myths_, 330, the threefold trial of the sword is told of
Cuchulain. This would seem to trace our story back to the seventh or
eighth century and certainly to the thirteenth. If so, it is likely
enough that it spread from Ireland through Europe with the Irish
missions (for the wide extent of which see map in Mrs. Bryant's _Celtic
Ireland_). The very letters that have spread through all Europe except
Russia, are to be traced to the script of these Irish monks: why not
certain folk-tales? There is a further question whether the story was
originally told of Cuchulain as a hero-tale and then became
departicularised as a folk-tale, or was the process _vice versa_.
Certainly in the form in which it appears in the _Tochmarc Emer_ it is
not complete, so that here, as elsewhere, we seem to have an instance
of a folk-tale applied to a well-known heroic name, and becoming a
hero-tale or saga.