CHAPTER XI.

SWAN-MAIDENS (_continued_).

The incident of the recovery of the bride not found in all the

stories--New Zealand sagas--Andrianòro--Mother-right--The father

represented under a forbidding aspect--Tasks imposed on the

hero--The Buddhist theory of the Grateful Animals--The

feather-robe a symbol of bride's superhuman character--Mode of

capture--The Taboo--Dislike of fairies for iron--Utterance of

name forbidden--Other prohibitions--Fulfilment of fate--The taboo

a mark of progress in civilization--The divine ancestress--Totems

and Banshees--Re-appearance of mother to her children--The lady

of the Van Pool an archaic deity.

I hope I have made clear in the last chapter the connection between the

various types of the Swan-maiden group of folk-tales. The one idea

running through them all is that of a man wedding a supernatural maiden

and unable to retain her. She must return to her own country and her own

kin; and if he desire to recover her he must pursue her thither and

conquer his right to her by undergoing superhuman penance or performing

superhuman tasks,--neither of which it is given to ordinary men to do.

It follows that only when the story is told of men who can be conceived

as released from the limitations we have been gradually learning during

the progress of civilization to regard as essential to humanity--only

when the reins are laid upon the neck of invention,--is it possible to

relate the narrative of the recovery of the bride. These conditions are

twice fulfilled in the history of a folk-tale. They are fulfilled,

first, when men are in that early stage of thought in which the

limitations of man's nature are unknown, when speculations of the kind

touched upon in our second chapter, and illustrated repeatedly in the

course of this work, are received as undisputed opinions. They are

fulfilled again when the relics of these opinions, and the memories of

the mythical events believed in accordance with such opinions, are still

operative in the mind, though no longer with the vividness of primitive

times; when some of them still hold together, but for the most part they

are decaying and falling to pieces, and are only like the faded rags of

a once splendid robe which a child may gather round its puny form and

make believe for the moment that it is a king. To the genuine credulity

of the South-Sea Islander, and to the conscious make-believe of the Arab

story-teller and the peasant who repeats the modern _märchen_, all

things are possible. But to the same peasant when relating the

traditional histories of his neighbours, and to the grave mediæval

chronicler, only some things are possible, though many more things than

are possible to us. The slow and partial advance of knowledge destroys

some superstitions sooner, others later. Some branches of the tree of

marvel flourish with apparently unimpaired life long after others have

withered, and others again have only begun to fade. Hence, where the

adventures of Tawhaki, the mythical New Zealander, are incredible, the

legend of the origin of the Physicians of Myddfai from the Lady of the

Lake may still be gravely accepted. Gervase of Tilbury would probably

have treated the wild story of Hasan's adventures in the islands of Wák

as what it is; but he tells us he has seen and conversed with women who

had been captives to the Dracs beneath the waters of the Rhone, while a

relative of his own had married a genuine descendant of the serpent-lady

of that castle in the valley of Trets.

Accordingly, the episode of the recovery of the bride is scarcely ever

found in the sagas of modern Europe, or indeed of any nation that has

progressed beyond a certain mark in civilization. But it is common in

their _märchen_, as well as in the sagas of more backward nations. In

the sagas of the advanced races, with rare exceptions, the most we get

is what looks like a reminiscence of the episode in the occasional

reappearance of the supernatural wife to her children, or as a Banshee.

Putting this reminiscence, if it be one, aside for the present, we will

first discuss some aspects of the bride's recovery. In doing so, though

the natural order may seem to be inverted, we shall in effect clear the

ground for the proper understanding of the main features of the myth.

Many variants of the legend of Tawhaki are current among the Maories.

According to that adopted by Sir George Grey, he was a hero renowned for

his courage, whose fame had reached to heaven. There Tango-tango, a

maiden of heavenly race, fell in love with him from report; and one

night she descended to the earth and lay down by his side. She continued

to do this nightly, stealing away again before dawn to her home. But

when she found herself likely to become a mother she remained with him

openly; and when her daughter was born she gave her to her husband to

wash. Evidently he did not like the work, for while carrying out his

wife's instructions, Tawhaki made a very rude remark about the child.

Hearing this, Tango-tango began to sob bitterly, and at last rose up

from her place with the child and took flight to the sky. Her husband

determined to seek her. He found his way to the place where a creeper

hung down from heaven and struck its roots into the earth. It was

guarded there by a blind old ancestress of his, whom he restored to

sight, and from whom he obtained directions how to climb the plant.

Arrived in heaven, he disguised himself and had to undergo the

indignity--he, a mighty chieftain--of being enslaved by his wife's

relatives, for whom he was compelled to perform menial work. At length,

however, he manifested himself to his wife and was reconciled to her.

He is still in heaven, and is worshipped as a god. Another version

represents a cloud swooping upon the wife and taking her away. Tawhaki

endeavoured in vain to follow her by mounting on a kite. A third version

simply relates that the lady returned to her friends. Her husband, on

arriving at the _pa_, or settlement, where she dwelt, found among the

children his own son, by whom he sent his wife a love-token she had

formerly given him. This led to recognition, and she eventually returned

with him to his home. A more interesting variant tells us that the fame

of the nobleness of Tini-rau was heard by Hine-te-iwaiwa, who determined

to set her cap (or whatever might be its equivalent in her scanty

costume) at him. She obtained an interview with him, by a device

recalling the conduct of the ladies in The Land East of the Sun, for she

broke and destroyed some bathing-pools belonging to the hero. A quest of

the intruder naturally followed, with the result that Tini-rau took her

to live with him. She made short work of her rivals, his elder wives;

and all went smoothly until Hine, one unlucky day, asked her husband to

perform an operation upon her head as necessary as familiar in some

strata of civilization. In doing this he made disrespectful observations

about her, when lo! a mist settled down upon them, from the midst of

which her elder brother came and took his sister away. Tini-rau, unable

to endure her absence, determined to go after his wife, accompanied by a

flight of birds, by whose cries he was informed, as he passed one

settlement after another, whether or not his wife was there. At length

he discovered her whereabouts, and made himself known to her sister by a

token which Hine understood. Then he came to her, and she announced his

arrival to all the people, who assembled and welcomed him. He abode

there; and when his wife's relatives complained that he did not go and

get food, he obtained it in abundance by the exercise of magical

powers; and so they lived happy ever after.[202]

Now let us turn to the Malagasy tale of the way in which Andrianòro

obtained a wife from heaven. There three sisters, whose dwelling-place

is in heaven, frequent a lake in the crystal waters whereof they swim,

taking flight at once on the approach of any human being. By a diviner's

advice the hero changes into three lemons, which the youngest sister

desires to take; but the others, fearing a snare, persuade her to fly

away with them. Foiled thus, the hero changes into bluish water in the

midst of the lake, then into the seed of a vegetable growing by the

waterside, and ultimately into an ant. He is at length successful in

seizing the youngest maiden, who consents to be his wife in spite of the

difference of race; for, while her captor is a man living on the earth,

her father dwells in heaven, whence the thunderbolt darts forth if he

speak, and she herself drinks no spirits, "for if spirits even touch my

mouth I die." After some time, during his absence, his father and mother

force _tòaka_, or rum, into the lady's mouth, and she dies; but on his

return he insists on opening her grave, and, to his joy, finds her alive

again. But she will not now stay on earth: she must return to her father

and mother in the sky. They are grieving for her, and the thunder is a

sign of their grief. Finding himself unable to prevail upon her to stay,

he obtains permission to accompany her. She warns him, however, of the

dangers he will have to encounter,--the thunderbolt when her father

speaks, and the tasks her father will lay upon him. Before he goes he

accordingly calls the beasts and the birds together; he slays oxen to

feed them; he tells them the tests he is about to undergo, and takes

promises from them to accomplish the things that trouble him. Obedient

to his wife, he displays great humility to his father-in-law; and by

the aid of the lower animals he comes triumphant out of every trial. The

beasts with their tusks plough up the spacious fields of heaven; the

beasts and birds uproot the giant trees; from the Crocodile Lake the

crocodiles themselves bring the thousand spades; between cattle which

are exactly alike the cattle-fly distinguishes the cows from the calves;

and the little fly, settling on the nose of the heroine's mother,

enables the hero to point her out among her daughters. The wife's father

is astonished, and gives his daughter anew to the hero to be his wife,

dismissing them with a dower of oxen, slaves and money.[203]

It will be observed that the adventures undergone by Andrianòro in

heaven are very different from those of the Maori heroes. Tawhaki and

Tini-rau have certainly to submit to hardships and indignities before

they can be reunited to their wives; and they perform actions of

superhuman power. But these actions are not performed as the condition

of reunion; nor are the tasks and the indignities laid upon them by any

parental ogre. In fact the parental ogre is as conspicuous by his

absence from the New Zealand stories as he is by his presence in those

of Andrianòro and the Marquis of the Sun. How is this to be explained?

The reason seems to lie in the different organization of society under

which the tale attained its present form in either case. At an early

period of civilization, kinship is reckoned exclusively through the

mother: even the father is in no way related to his children. This is a

stage hardly ever found complete in all its consequences, but of which

the traces remain in the customs and in the lore of many nations who

have long since passed from it, becoming, as we might expect, fainter

and fewer as it recedes into the distance. Such traces are abundant in

Maori tradition; and they point to a comparatively recent emergence

from female kinship. Among these traces is the omission of the heavy

father from the stories before us. Tango-tango and Hine-te-iwaiwa were

both maidens of more than mortal race; and presumably their parents

would be conceived of as still alive. But they are not so much as

alluded to--a sure sign that there was no paternal authority to which

these ladies would be accountable. Indeed, if accountable at all, they

are so to the whole circle of their relatives, or to their tribe in

general. It is their brothers who assist them in time of need. Tawhaki

becomes the slave of his brothers-in-law. To her "people" Hine announces

her husband's arrival: she simply announces it; nor does it appear that

any consent on their part is required. Tini-rau takes his place at once

as a tribesman, and is expected to contribute by his labour and skill to

the sustenance of the whole brotherhood.

One of the consequences of reckoning descent only through females, which

may be noticed here, is that the children belong to the mother and the

mother's family. A trace of this lingers about the story of Tawhaki in

the affront to Tango-tango caused by her husband's offensive remark upon

their little one. In a society where the offspring are the father's, or

even where, as in modern civilized life, they are treated as belonging

to both parents and partaking of the nature of both, no such offence

could be taken. Another consequence is that in the organization of

society the wife still continues after marriage to reside with, and to

be part of, the community to which she belongs by birth. The man leaves

his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife. Hence it would be

natural for her to return home to her own kindred, and for him to seek

her and dwell with her there. This is illustrated not only in the Maori

legends just cited, but also in the Arawàk story given in the last

chapter, where the husband is received into the vulture race until he

desires to visit his mother. He is then discarded as if he had

committed some unpardonable breach of custom; and he cannot be restored

to his former privileges. Although the Greeks had before the dawn of

history ceased to practise mother-right, a trace of it lingers in a

modern folk-tale from Epirus. There a man had by the ordinary device

obtained an elf as a wife; and she bore him a child. After this her own

kinsmen came and begged her to return to them; but she refused on the

ground that she had a husband and child. "Then bring them with you,"

they replied. Accordingly, she took her husband and child, and went back

with them to dwell among the elves. It seems, however, to be felt that

this was an unusual proceeding; otherwise it would have been needless to

plead with the lady to return, and to extend a special invitation to

those whom she would not abandon: an indication, this, that the story

has been adapted to a higher plane of civilization, in which it was no

longer the custom for the husband to go and dwell among his wife's

people.[204]

On the other hand, Andrianòro's wife lives under patriarchal government.

The Malagasy have advanced further on the path of civilization than the

Maories; and at the stage of progress they have reached, the father is

much more like an absolute monarch. In the story referred to, the lady

had married without her father's consent. Accordingly her marriage is

ignored, and her lover has to perform a number of services for his

father-in-law, and so purchase formal consent to their union. Nor will

it escape the reader that when the wielder of the thunderbolt at last

gives his daughter to her husband, he dismisses them back to the home of

the latter. Hasan, too, it will be remembered, returns to Bagdad with

his wife and children, though we probably have a survival of an older

form of the story in his relations with her redoubtable sister. This

lady holds a position impossible in an Arab kingdom. Her father is a

mere shadow, hardly mentioned but to save appearances; so much more

substantial is her power and her opposition to the match. The variants

of the Marquis of the Sun are found chiefly among European nations,[205]

whose history, institutions, and habits of thought lead them to attach

great value to paternal authority. In the tasks performed in _märchen_

of this type, and the precipitate flight which usually takes place on

the wedding night from the ogre's secret wrath, it would seem that we

have a reminiscence of the archaic institutions of marriage by purchase

and marriage by capture,--both alike incidents of the period when

mother-right (as the reckoning of descent solely through females is

called) has ceased to exist in a pure form, and society has passed, or

is passing, into the patriarchal stage. The Marquis of the Sun type is,

therefore, more recent than the other types of the Swan-maiden

tradition, none of which so uniformly in all their variants recognize

the father's supreme position.[206]

If the tasks and the flight be a reminiscence of purchase and capture,

we may find in that reminiscence a reason why nearly all the stories

concur in representing the father under a forbidding aspect. As his

daughter's vendor,--her unwilling vendor,--as her guardian from capture,

he would be the natural foe of her lover. He is not always so ready as

the Bird Simer to give up to another his rights over her; but perhaps

the Bird Simer's readiness may be partly explained by the husband's

having already performed the feat of rescuing the maiden from a giant,

beside slaying his own brother for her sake. Usually the father is a

frightful ogre or giant; not infrequently he is no less a personage than

the Devil himself. And the contrast between him and his lovely daughter

would be more and more strongly felt as purchase and capture ceased to

be serious methods of bride-winning. Hence, probably, the thought of

real relationship would be abandoned, and the maiden would often be

conceived of as enchanted and captive in the hands of a malevolent

being.

We will not now stop to discuss the tasks in detail: we can only afford

time to glance at one of them, namely, that of distinguishing the maid

from her sisters. There are three chief means by which the lover or

husband is enabled to identify the object of his devotion. Two of these

depend upon the lady herself: in the one she slily helps her lover; in

the other he recognizes an insignificant peculiarity of her person or

attire. The third means is an indication given by one of the lower

animals, which has better means of knowledge than the suitor, due

probably to its greater cleverness--a quality, as I have already pointed

out in Chapter II., universally credited in a certain stage of culture

to these creatures. We will deal first with the second means.

The most usual personal idiosyncrasy of the damsel is the want of a

finger, or some deformity in it, the result of her previous efforts to

aid the hero. Thus, in a Basque tale the lad is set to find a ring lost

by the ogre in a river. This is accomplished by cutting up the maiden

and throwing the pieces into the stream; but a part of the little finger

sticks in his shoe. When he afterwards has to choose between the ogre's

daughters with his eyes shut, he recognizes his love by the loss of her

little finger. The giant's daughter, in a West Highland tale, makes a

ladder with her fingers for her lover to climb a tree to fetch a

magpie's eggs; and, in the hurry, she leaves her little finger at the

top. This accident arises sometimes, as in the Marquis of the Sun, from

the dropping of a piece of flesh on the ground when the hero cuts up his

beloved; or, according to a story of the Italian Tirol, from spilling

some of her blood. In the latter case, three drops of blood fall into

the lake, instead of the bucket prepared to receive them, and thereby

almost cause the failure of his task. When the magician afterwards leads

the youth to his daughters and bids him choose, he takes the youngest by

the hand, and says: "I choose this one." We are not told that there was

any difference in the maidens' hands, but this is surely to be inferred.

In the Milanese story of the King of the Sun the hero also chooses his

wife blindfold from the king's three daughters by touching their hands;

and here, too, we must suppose previous help or concert, though it has

disappeared from the text. In a story from Lorraine, John has to take

the devil's daughter, Greenfeather, to pieces to find a spire for the

top of a castle that he is compelled to build; and in putting her

together again he sets one of her little fingers clumsily. With bandaged

eyes he has to find the lady who has assisted him; and he succeeds by

putting his hand on hers. The lad who falls into the strange gentleman's

hands in a Breton tale, forgets to put the little toe of the girl's left

foot into the caldron; and when she and her two sisters are led before

him veiled and clad in other than their ordinary garb, he knows her at

once by the loss of her toe. As it is told in Denmark the enchanted

princess agrees with the king's son to wind a red silken thread around

her little finger; and by this means he identifies her, though in the

form of a little grey-haired, long-eared she-ass, and again of a

wrinkled, toothless, palsied old woman, into which the sorceress, whose

captive she is, changes her. In a Swedish story the damsel informs her

lover that when the mermaid's daughters appear in various repulsive

forms she will be changed into a little cat with her side burnt and one

ear snipped. The Catalonian _märchen_ of Joanescas represents the

heroine as wanting a joint of her finger, from her lover having torn off

some of her feathers by accident when he stole her robe. "Monk" Lewis in

his "Journal of a West India Proprietor" gives an Ananci tale in which

the heroine and her two sisters are changed into black cats: the two

latter bore scarlet threads round their necks, the former a blue

thread.[207] According to the Carmarthenshire saga, the lady is

recognized by the strapping of her sandal.

In several of the stories just cited, and many of their congeners, the

maiden forewarns her suitor how she will be disguised, or by what marks

she will be known. Sometimes, however, she makes a sign to him on the

spot. The Lady of the Van Pool only thrusts her foot forward that he may

notice her shoe-tie; but Cekanka in a Bohemian tale is bold enough to

wink at him. In a Russian variant of the Marquis of the Sun, to which I

have already referred, the hero is in the power of the Water King. On

his way to that potentate's palace he had, by the advice of the Baba

Yaga, gone to the seashore and watched until twelve spoonbills alighted,

and, turning into maidens, had unrobed for the purpose of bathing. Then

he had stolen the eldest maiden's shift, to restore it only on her

promise to aid him against her father, the Water King. She redeems the

pledge by performing for him the usual tasks, the last of which is to

choose the same bride thrice among the king's twelve daughters. The

first time she secretly agrees with him that she will wave her

handkerchief; the second time she is to be arranging her dress; and the

third time he will see a fly above her head.[208]

Here we are led to the third means of recognition. The incident of help

rendered by one or more of the lower animals to man is a favourite one

in folk-tales; and it has furnished a large portion of the argumentative

stock-in-trade of those scholars who contend for their Indian origin. We

are assured that every tale which contains this incident must be

referred to a Buddhist source, or at least has been subjected to

Buddhist influence. This theory is supported by reference to the

doctrine of love for all living creatures which Buddha is said to have

promulgated. The command to overcome hatred by love, the precepts of

self-sacrifice and devotion to others' good were not limited in the

Buddha's discourses, if those discourses be correctly reported, to our

conduct towards our fellow-men: they included all creation. And they

were enforced by parables which represented good as done in turn to men

by all sorts of creatures, even the wildest and the most savage. Stories

of grateful beasts, of the type familiar to us in Androcles and the

Lion, became favourites among the disciples of the Light of Asia.

Scholars, therefore, have told us that wherever a grateful beast thrusts

his muzzle into the story, that story must have come from India, and

must have come since the rise of Buddhism. Nay, they go further. In

every instance where a beast appears as helping the hero, we are taught

to presume that the hero has first helped the beast, even though no

trace of such an incident be actually found. It must have been so,

otherwise the beast would have had no motive for helping the hero,--and,

it may be added, the theorist would have had no ground for claiming the

story as proceeding from a Buddhist source.

Now all this would have been seen at once to be very poor reasoning, but

for one fact. A number, sufficient to be called large, of parables, have

actually made their way from India to Europe in historic times, and

since the age of Gautama. The literary history of these parables can be

traced; and it must be acknowledged that, whatever their origin, they

have been adopted into Buddhist works and adapted to Buddhist doctrine.

Further, it seems demonstrated that some of them have descended into the

oral tradition of various nations in Europe, Asia, and even Africa. But

when so much as this is conceded, it still fails to account for the

spread of the story of the Grateful Beasts and, even more signally, for

the incident of the Beast-helpers where there is no gratitude in the

case. A very slight examination of the incident as it appears in the

group of legends now before us will convince us of this.

First of all, let it be admitted that in several of these tales the

service rendered by the brute is in requital for a good turn on the part

of the hero. Andrianòro, as we have seen, begins by making friends with

various animals by means of the mammon of unrighteousness in the shape

of a feast. Jagatalapratâpa, in the narrative already cited from the

Tamil book translated into English under the title of "The Dravidian

Nights Entertainments," pursuing one of Indra's four daughters, is

compelled by her father, after three other trials, to choose her out

from her sisters, who are all converted into one shape. He prays

assistance from a kind of grasshopper; and the little creature, in

return for a previous benefit, hops upon her foot. But it is somewhat

curious, if the theory be true, that even in stories told among peoples

distinctly under Buddhist influence the gratitude is by no means an

invariable point. Thus the princess in the Burmese drama is betrayed by

"the king of flies" to her husband, though the abstract we have of the

play gives us no hint of any previous transaction between the puny

monarch and the hero; and it is worthy of note that the Tibetan version

of the same plot given by Mr. Ralston from the Kah-Gyur knows nothing of

this entomological agency. There the hero is a Bodisat, who, if he does

not recognize his beloved among the thousand companions who surround

her, at least has a spell the utterance of which compels her to step out

from among them. It does not appear that Kasimbaha, the Bantik

patriarch, is required to undergo this particular test. But he is

indebted to a bird for indicating the lady's residence; a glow-worm

places itself at her chamber door; and a fly shows him which of a number

of dishes set before him he must not uncover. M. Cosquin, who is an

adherent of the Buddhist hypothesis, in relating this instance, is

compelled expressly to say that "one does not see why" these animals

should render such services. Neither, on M. Cosquin's principle, can one

see why, in the Arawàk story, the spiders should spin cords to help the

outcast husband down from heaven, or the birds take his part against the

vulture-folk to enable him to recover his wife.[209] The proof of

Buddhist influence must rest heavily on its advocates here, both on

account of the absence of motive for gratitude, and of the distance of

the Arawàk people from India and the utter disparity of civilizations.

The agency of recognition, when attributed to one of the lower animals,

is ordinarily an insect; but the reason is, as often as not, a prior

arrangement with the lady, as in the Russian story of the Water King.

The Polish _märchen_ of Prince Unexpected follows this line. In it, the

princess warns her lover that she will have a ladybird over her right

eye. When a thousand maidens all alike are produced to poor Hans in a

Bohemian tale, he has no difficulty in selecting the right one; for a

witch has bidden him "choose her on whom, from the roof of the chamber,

a spider descends."[210]

These considerations are sufficient to prove that the incident of the

Helpful Beasts, as found in the Swan-maiden group of stories, cannot be

attributed to a Buddhist origin.

We have now dealt with an episode of the mythical narrative, necessary,

indeed, to its completion, but found only under certain conditions which

I have pointed out. We have seen this episode in two distinct forms

whose respective sources we have assigned to two distinct stages of

culture. The form characteristic of the European _märchen_ is apparently

more barbarous in several respects than that yielded by the islanders of

the Southern Ocean; but the latter bears testimony to a state of society

more archaic than the other. Presumably, therefore, it represents more

nearly the primitive form of the story.

We turn next to the central incidents. In the previous chapter I have

taken pains to show the unmistakable relation between the different

types of the myth, in spite of the omission of the feather-robe, or

indeed of any substitute for it. The truth is that the feather-robe is

no more than a symbol of the wife's superhuman nature. From the more

archaic variants it is absent; but frequently the true form of the lady

is held to be that of a member of what we contemptuously call "the brute

creation." Men in savagery, as we have already seen, have quite

different feelings from those of contempt for brutes. On the contrary,

they entertain the highest respect and even awe for them. They trace

their descent from some of them; and a change of form from beast to man,

or from man to beast, while still preserving individual identity, would

not seem at all incredible, or even odd, to them. By and by, however,

the number of creatures having these astonishing powers would decrease,

as the circle of experience widened. But there would linger a belief in

remarkable instances, as at Shan-si, in China, where it is believed that

there is still a bird which can divest itself of its feathers and become

a woman. Not every swan would then be deemed capable of turning when it

pleased into a fair maiden; and when this change happened, it would be

attributed to enchantment, which had caused the maiden merely to assume

the appearance of a swan for a time and for a special purpose. This

often occurs, as we have seen, in _märchen_, where the contrast between

the heroine and her father, or, as it is then often put, her master, is

very strong. It occurs, too, in tales belonging to other types. A

_märchen_ told by Dr. Pitré relates that a man had a pet magpie, which

by enchantment had the power of casting its wings and becoming a woman.

She always practised this power in his absence; but he came home one day

and found her wings on the chair. He burnt them, and she remained

permanently a woman and married him. In a saga from Guiana a warlock's

daughter persuades her father to transform her into a dog that she may

venture near a hunter whom she loves. He accordingly gives her a skin,

which she draws over her shoulders, and thus becomes a hound. When the

hunter finds her in his hut as a maiden, the charmed skin hanging up and

revealing her secret, he flings the skin into the fire and weds

her.[211]

But enchantment is not the only explanation. The lady may, like Hasan's

bride, be held to belong to a superior race to men, though properly in

human form. In either case the peltry would be a mere veil hiding the

true individuality for a while. It would thus acquire a distinct magical

efficacy; so that when deprived of it, the maiden would be unable to

effect the change. A remarkable instance of this occurs in an Arab saga.

There a man, at Algiers, puts to death his three daughters, who

afterwards appear to a guitar-player and dance to his playing. As they

dance they throw him the rind of the oranges they hold in their hands;

and this rind is found the next day changed into gold pieces and into

jewels. The following year the maidens appear again to the

guitar-player. He manages to get hold of their shrouds, which he burns.

They thereupon come back to life, and he weds the youngest of them. This

is said to have happened no longer ago than sixty years before the

French conquest of Algiers.[212]

Nothing of the sort is found in the Maori tales. To the natives of New

Zealand no change seemed needful: the lady was of supernatural birth and

could fly as she pleased. The same may be said of Andrianòro's wife,

notwithstanding that the Malagasy variant, as a whole, bespeaks a higher

level of culture than the adventures of Tawhaki and Tini-rau. As little

do we find the magical robe in the Passamaquoddy story of the Partridge

and the Sheldrake Duck. The Dyaks of Borneo are unconscious of the need

of it in the saga of their ancestral fish, the _puttin_, which was

caught by a man, and when laid in his boat turned into a girl, whom he

gave to his son for a bride. The Chinese have endless tales about foxes

which assume human form; but the fox's skin plays no part in them. And

in a Japanese tale belonging to the group under consideration, the lady

changes into a fox and back again into a lady without any apparatus of

peltry.[213]

Again, in the nursery tales of the higher races, the dress when cast

seems simply an article of human clothing, often nothing but a girdle,

veil, or apron; and it is only when donned by the enchanted lady, or

elf, that it is found to be neither more nor less than a complete

plumage. Thence it easily passes into a mere instrument of power, like

the mermaid's belt and pouch in the Scottish story, or the book of

command in the _märchen_ of the Island of Happiness, and is on its way

to final disappearance.

The maiden's capture is effected in those types of the tale where the

enchanted garment is worn, by the theft of the garment. These cases will

not detain our attention: we will pass at once to the discussion of

those where there is no transformation to be effected or dreaded.

Perhaps the most interesting of all are the Welsh sagas; and of these

not the least remarkable is the suit by offerings of food. Andrianòro

tried this device in the Malagasy story; but it was unsuccessful. In a

Carnarvonshire analogue from Llanberis, the youth entices his beloved

into his grasp by means of an apple:[214] in the Van Pool variants the

offering assumes almost a sacramental character. Until the fairy maiden

has tasted earthly bread, or until her suitor has eaten of the food

which sustains her, he cannot be united to her. Here we are reminded on

the one hand of the elfin food considered in a former chapter, to

partake of which sealed the adventurer's fate and prevented him for ever

from returning to his human home; and on the other hand of the ceremony

of eating together which among so many nations has been part of the

marriage rites.

Walter Map relates a curious story of Llangorse Lake having affinities

for the Land East of the Sun, and still more with one of the Maori

sagas. Wastin of Wastiniog watched, the writer tells us, three clear

moonlit nights and saw bands of women in his oat-fields, and followed

them until they plunged into the pool, where he overheard them

conversing, and saying to one another: "If he did so and so, he would

catch one of us." Thus instructed, he of course succeeded in capturing

one. Here, as in many of the stories, the lady has obviously designs

upon the mortal of opposite sex, and deliberately throws herself in his

way. But she lays a taboo upon him, promising to serve him willingly and

with all obedient devotion, until that day he should strike her in anger

with his bridle. After the birth of several children he was unfortunate

enough on some occasion, the details of which Walter Map has forgotten,

to break the condition; whereupon she fled with all her offspring, of

whom her husband was barely able to save one before she plunged with the

rest into the lake. This one, whom he called Triunnis Nagelwch, grew up,

and entered the service of the King of North Wales. At his royal

master's command, Triunnis once led a marauding expedition into the

territory of the King of Brecknock. A battle ensued, when he was

defeated and his band cut to pieces. It is said that Triunnis himself

was saved by his mother, and thenceforth dwelt with her in the lake.

"But, indeed," adds the truth-loving Walter, "I think it is a lie,

because a delusion of this kind is so likely to account for his body not

having been found."[215]

In spite, however, of such unwonted incredulity, Map, having once begun

by telling this story, proceeds to tell another like it, which he seems

to have no difficulty in believing. The second tale concerns a hero of

the Welsh border, Wild Edric, of whose historic reality as one of the

English rebels against William the Conqueror there is ample proof. It

appears that Edric, returning from hunting, lost his way in the Forest

of Dean, and accompanied only by one boy, reached about midnight a large

house which turned out to be a drinking-shop, such as the English, Map

says, call a _guildhouse_. On approaching it he saw a light, and looking

in, he beheld a number of women dancing. They were beautiful in

countenance, bigger and taller than ordinary women. He noticed one among

them fairer than the rest, and (Walter, perhaps, had Fair Rosamund in

his mind when he says) more to be desired than all the darlings of

kings. Edric rushed round the house and, finding an entrance, dashed in

and with the help of his boy dragged her out, despite a furious

resistance in which the nails and teeth of her companions made

themselves felt. She brooded in sullen silence for three whole days; but

on the fourth day she exclaimed to her new master: "Bless you, my

dearest, and you will be blessed too, and enjoy health and prosperity

until you reproach me on account of my sisters, or the place, or the

grove whence you have snatched me away, or anything connected with it.

For the very day you do so your happiness will forsake you. I shall be

taken away; and you will suffer repeated misfortune, and long for your

own death." He pledged himself to fidelity; and to their splendid

nuptials nobles came from far and near. King William heard of the

wonder, and bade the newly wedded pair to London, where he was then

holding his court, that he might test the truth of the tale. They proved

it to him by many witnesses from their own country; but the chief

testimony was that of the lady's superhuman beauty; and he dismissed

them in admiration to their home. After many years of happiness Edric

returned one evening late from hunting, and could not find his wife. He

spent some time in vainly calling for her before she came. "Of course,"

he began, angrily, "you have not been detained so long by your sisters,

have you?" The rest of his wrath fell upon the empty air; for at the

mention of her sisters she vanished. And neither her husband's

self-reproaches, nor his tears, nor any search could ever find her

again.[216]

A point far more interesting than the actual mode of capture is the

taboo. The condition on which the heroine remains with her captor-spouse

is, in stories of the Hasan of Bassorah type, his preservation of the

feather-garb; in those of the Melusina type (with which we are now

dealing), his observance of the taboo. In the tales just cited from

Walter Map we have two important forms of the taboo, and in the legend

of Melusina herself we have a third. The latter is an example of the

ordinary objection on the part of supernatural beings to be seen

otherwise than just how and when they please, which we have dealt with

in a previous chapter; and little need be added to what I have already

said on the subject. The other two are, however, worth some

consideration.

In the account of Wastin of Wastiniog we are told that he was forbidden

to strike his wife with the bridle. Let us compare this prohibition with

that of the fairy of "the bottomless pool of Corwrion," in Upper

Arllechwedd, Carnarvonshire, who wedded the heir of the owner of

Corwrion. The marriage took place on two conditions--first, that the

husband was not to know his wife's name, though he might give her any

name he chose; and, second, that if she misbehaved towards him, he might

now and then beat her with a rod, but that he should not strike her with

iron, on pain of her leaving him at once. "This covenant," says

Professor Rhys in repeating the tale, "was kept for some years, so that

they lived happily together, and had four children, of whom the two

youngest were a boy and a girl. But one day, as they went to one of the

fields of Bryn Twrw, in the direction of Penardd Gron, to catch a pony,

the fairy wife, being so much nimbler than her husband, ran before him

and had her hand in the pony's mane in no time. She called out to her

husband to throw her a halter; but instead of that he threw towards her

a bridle with an iron bit, which, as bad luck would have it, struck her.

The wife at once flew through the air, and plunged headlong into

Corwrion Lake. The husband returned sighing and weeping towards Bryn

Twrw (Noise Hill), and when he reached it, the _twrw_ (noise) there was

greater than had ever been heard before, namely, that of weeping after

'Belene'; and it was then, after he had struck her with iron, that he

first learnt what his wife's name was."[217]

The perusal of this saga will raise a suspicion that the original form

of the taboo in Wastin's case was a prohibition against striking with

iron, and that the prohibition was eventually infringed by means of a

bridle. Whether the alteration was due to a blunder on Map's part in

relating the story is of no importance; but the suspicion will be raised

to a certainty by turning to some other sagas in Professor Rhys'

admirable collection. It is related at Waenfawr, near Carnarvon, that a

youth broke, like Wild Edric, into a dance of the fairies on the banks

of the Gwyrfai, near Cwellyn Lake, one moonlit night, and carried off a

maiden. She at first refused to wed him, but consented to remain his

servant. One evening, however, he overheard two of her kindred speaking

of her, and caught her name--Penelope. When she found that he had learnt

her name she gave way to grief: evidently she now knew that her fate was

sealed. On his importunity being renewed, she at length consented to

marry him, but on the condition that he should not strike her with iron.

Here again the taboo was broken by the flinging of a bridle while

chasing a horse. A similar tale was related in the vale of Beddgelert,

wherein the stolen lady would only consent to be the servant of her

ravisher if he could find out her name. When he had discovered it, she

asked in astonishment; "O mortal, who has betrayed my name to thee?"

Then, lifting up her tiny folded hands, she exclaimed: "Alas! my fate,

my fate!" Even then she would only marry him on condition that if ever

he should touch her with iron she would be free to leave him and return

to her family. Catastrophe, as before. In a variant the maiden, pressed

by her human lover, promises to marry, provided he can find out her

name. When he succeeds in doing this she faints away, but has to submit

to her doom. In doing so, she imposes one more proviso: he is not to

touch her with iron, nor is there to be a bolt of iron, or a lock, on

their door. The servant-girl, in another story cited in Chapter VII.,

who was rescued from Fairyland, could only stay, it will be remembered,

in her master's service so long afterward, as he forebore to strike her

with iron; and the fatal blow was struck accidentally with a bit.[218]

Mr. Andrew Lang has remarked, following Dr. Tylor, that in this taboo

the fairy mistress is "the representative of the stone age." This is so;

and the reason is, because she belongs to the realm of the supernatural.

When the use of metals was discovered, stone implements were discarded

in ordinary life; but for ages afterwards knives of stone were used for

religious purposes. There is evidence, for instance, that the Hebrews,

to seek no further, employed them in some of their sacred rites; an

altar of stone was forbidden to be hewn; and when King Solomon built the

temple, "there was neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard

in the house while it was in building." Although there may be no direct

evidence of such a practice among the Cymric Britons, they were probably

no exception to the rule, which seems to have been general throughout

the world; and the Druids' custom of cutting the mistletoe with a

golden, not with an iron, sickle, points in this direction. The

retention of stone instruments in religious worship was doubtless due

to the intense conservatism of religious feeling. The gods, having been

served with stone for so long, would be conceived of as naturally

objecting to change; and the implements whose use had continued through

so many revolutions in ordinary human utensils, would thereby have

acquired a divine character. Changes of religion, however, brought in

time changes even in these usages. Christianity was bound to no special

reverence for knives and arrowheads of flint; but they seem to have been

still vaguely associated with the discarded deities, or their allies,

the Nymphs and Oreads and Fairies of stream or wood or dell, and with

the supernatural generally. A familiar example of this is the name of

Elfbolts given by the country people in this and other lands to these

old-world objects, whenever turned up by the harrow or the spade. Now

the traditional preference on the part of supernatural beings for stone

instruments is only one side of the thought which would, as its reverse

side, show a distinct abhorrence by the same mythical personages for

metals, and chiefly (since we have long passed out of the bronze age)

for iron. Not only do witches and spirits object to the horseshoe; axes

and iron wedges are equally distasteful to them--at all events in

Denmark. So in Brittany, when men go to gather the _herbe d'or_, a

medicinal plant of extraordinary virtue, they go barefooted, in a white

robe and fasting, and no iron may be employed; and though all the

necessary ceremonies be performed, only holy men will be able to find

it. The magical properties of this plant, as well as the rites requisite

to obtain it, disclose its sacredness to the old divinities. It shines

at a distance like gold, and if one tread on it he will fall asleep, and

will come to understand the languages of birds, dogs, and wolves.[219]

In previous chapters we have already had occasion to note this dislike

for iron and steel. Hence the placing of scissors and fire-steel in an

unchristened babe's cradle. Hence the reason for the midwife's casting a

knife behind her when she left the troll's dwelling laden with his

gifts; and for the Islay father's taking the precaution of striking his

dirk into the threshold when he sought his son in the fairy hill. So,

too, in Sweden people who bathed in the sea were gravely advised to cast

into it close to them a fire-steel, a knife, or the like, to prevent any

monster from hurting them. The bolts and locks to which the fairy of

Beddgelert objected would have prevented her free passage into and out

of the house.

In the Pomeranian saga quoted in the last chapter, the enchanted

princess is unable to open the trunk which contains her magical shift:

she must wait for another to open it and give her the garment. In the

same way Hasan's bride could not herself go to the chest and get her

feather-dress. The key was committed to her mother-in-law's care, and

was forced from the old woman by Zubaydah, the Caliph's wife; nor did it

ever come into the fairy's hands, for her dress was fetched for her by

Masrur at Zubaydah's bidding. It is not unlikely that the reason for the

supernatural wife's difficulty in these and analogous cases is the metal

lock and key. But we must not forget that the robe is not always locked

up in a chest. Sometimes it is hidden in a hole in the wall, sometimes

in a stack of corn, sometimes beneath the main-post of the wooden hut in

which the wedded pair are dwelling. Moreover, we must not leave out of

account that in the Nightmare type the wife cannot herself take the

wooden stopper out of the hole through which she entered; but directly

it is removed by another she vanishes. These things go to show that such

supernatural beings cannot themselves undo charms expressly performed

against them. So evil spirits cannot penetrate a circle drawn around him

by one who invokes them. So, too, the sign of the cross is an efficient

protection against them; and it is therefore made upon churches and

altars at the time of consecration.

But the stipulation made by the lady of Corwrion was twofold. Not only

was her bridegroom to forbear striking her with iron, but he was not

even to know her name. It is so difficult for us to put ourselves into

the mental attitude of savages, that we do not understand the objection

they almost all entertain to the mention of their names. The objection

itself is, however, well known and widely spread; but it is not always

manifested in exactly the same form. In some cases a man only refuses to

utter his own name, while he will utter another's name readily enough.

Sometimes it is deemed an unpardonable thing to call another by name; he

must be addressed, or spoken of by an epithet. And frequently a man's

real name is a profound secret, known only to himself, all others

knowing him only by some epithet or title. Sometimes it is only

forbidden to relatives by marriage to speak one another's names. Thus in

various ways etiquette has prescribed a number of customs limiting the

utterance of names among savage and barbarous peoples all the world

over. The origin of these rules and customs seems to have been the dread

of sorcery. A personal name was held to be a part of its owner; and,

just as the possession of a lock of another's hair, or even a paring of

his nail, was believed to confer power over him, so was the knowledge of

his name. Similarly men in the lower culture have a great fear of having

their likenesses taken; and everybody is familiar with the belief that a

witch, who has made a waxen image and given it the name of any one whom

she wants to injure, can, by sticking pins in it, or melting it in a

flame, inflict pain, and even death, upon the person whom the doll

represents.[220]

Illustrations of this superstition might easily be multiplied from every

nation under heaven. But we need not go so far afield; for if we compare

the taboo in the story of Corwrion with the other stories I have cited

from the same county, we shall have no difficulty in satisfying

ourselves as to its meaning. It can only belong to the stage of thought

which looks with dread on the use that may be made of one's name by an

enemy,--a stage of thought in which the fairy might naturally fear for a

man of another race, albeit her husband, to become possessed of her real

name. What else can we infer from the evident terror and grief with

which the captive ladies hear their names from their suitors' lips? It

is clear that the knowledge of the fairy's name conferred power over her

which she was unable to resist. This is surely the interpretation also

of the Danish tale of a man from whom a Hill-troll had stolen no fewer

than three wives. Riding home late one night afterwards, he saw a great

crowd of Hill-folk dancing and making merry; and among them he

recognized his three wives. One of these was Kirsten, his best beloved,

and he called out to her and named her name. The troll, whose name was

Skynd, or Hurry, came up to him and asked him why he presumed to call

Kirsten. The man explained that she had been his favourite wife, and

begged him with tears to give her back to him. The troll at last

consented, but with the proviso that he should never hurry (_skynde_)

her. For a long time the condition was observed; but one day, as she was

delayed in fetching something for her husband from the loft, he cried

out to her: "Make haste (_skynde dig_), Kirsten!" And he had hardly

spoken the words when the woman was gone, compelled to return to the

troll's abode. Here we have the phenomenon in a double form; for not

only does the husband regain his wife from the troll by pronouncing her

name, but he loses her once more by inadvertently summoning her captor.

It is a German superstition that a mara, or nightmare, can be

effectually exorcised if the sufferer surmises who it is, and instantly

addresses it by name.[221] We can now understand how, in the

Carmarthenshire story mentioned in Chapter VII., the farmer was rescued

from the fairies under whose spell he had been for twelve months. A man

caught sight of him dancing on the mountain and broke the spell by

speaking to him. It must have been the utterance of his name that drew

him out of the enchanted circle.

Returning, however, to the legend of Wastin, we may observe how much

narrower and less likely to be infringed is the taboo imposed on him

than that imposed on the youth of Blaensawdde. Yet the lady of the Van

Pool, whatever her practice, had in theory some relics of old-fashioned

wifely duty. She did not object to the chastisement which the laws of

Wales allowed a husband to bestow. A husband was permitted to beat his

wife for three causes; and if on any other occasion he raised his hand

against her, she had her remedy in the shape of a _sarâd_, or fine, to

be paid to her for the disgrace. But a _sarâd_ would not satisfy this

proud lady; nothing less than a divorce would meet the case. The

Partridge's wife, as we have seen, was still more exacting: she declined

to be struck at all. In the same way the fish who had become a girl, in

the Dyak story, cautioned her husband to use her well; and when he

struck her she rushed back screaming into the water. In another Bornoese

tradition, which is quoted by Mr. Farrer, the heroine is taken up to the

sky because her husband had struck her, there having been no previous

prohibition.[222] A different sort of personal violence is resented in

the Bantik legend cited above. There the husband is forbidden to tear

out one white hair which adorns Outahagi, his wife's head. He disobeys

after she has given birth to a son; and she vanishes in a tempest and

returns to the sky, where her husband is forced to seek her again.

The stipulation made by Wild Edric's bride is still more arbitrary,

according to our notions, than these. Her husband was forbidden to

reproach her on account of her sisters, or the place from which he

snatched her away. In other words, he was forbidden to charge her with

her supernatural character. When Diarmaid, the daughter of King

Underwaves, comes in the form of a beggar to Fionn and insists on

sharing his couch, she becomes a beautiful girl, and consents to marry

him on condition that he does not say to her thrice how he found her. In

a variant, the hero, going out shooting, meets with a hare, which, when

hard pressed by the dogs, turns into a woman. She promises to wed him on

his entering into three vows, namely, not to ask his king to a feast

without first letting her know (a most housewifely proviso), not to cast

up to her in any company that he found her in the form of a hare, and

not to leave her in the company of only one man. Both these are West

Highland tales; and in the manner of the taboo they closely resemble

that given by Map. In an Illyrian story, a Vila is by a youth found one

morning sleeping in the grass. He is astonished at her beauty, and

plants a shade for her. When she wakes she is pleased, and asks what he

wants for such kindness. He asks nothing less than to take her to wife;

and she is content, but, avowing herself a Vila, forbids him to utter

that name, for if he should do so she must quit him at once. Keats has

glorified one of these stories by his touch; and it was a true instinct

that guided him to make Lamia's disappearance follow, not on Apollonius'

denunciation of her real character, but on the echo of the words "A

serpent!" by her astounded husband, Lycius. What matter that the

philosopher should make a charge against her? It was only when her lover

repeated the foul word that she forsook him. The nightmare-wife in one

of the stories mentioned in the last chapter vanishes, it will be

remembered, on being reproached with her origin, and in another on being

asked how she became a nightmare; and the lady in the Esthonian tale

warns her husband against calling her Mermaid. In this connection it is

obvious to refer to the euphemistic title Eumenides, bestowed by the

Greeks on the Furies, and to the parallel names, Good People and Fair

Family, for fays in this country. In all these cases the thought is

distinguishable from that of the Carnarvonshire sagas; for the offence

is not given by the utterance of a personal name, but by incautious use

of a generic appellation which conveys reproach, if not scorn.[223]

The heroine of a saga of the Gold Coast was really a fish, but was in

the form of a woman. Her husband had sworn to her that he would not

allude in any way to her home or her relatives; and, relying on this

promise, his wife had disclosed her true nature to him and taken him

down to her home. He was kindly received there, but was speared by some

fishermen, and only with difficulty rescued by his new relatives, who

enjoined him when he returned to earth with his wife to keep the

spearhead carefully concealed. It was, however, found and claimed by its

owner; and to escape the charge of theft the husband reluctantly

narrated the whole adventure. No evil consequences immediately ensued

from this breach of his vow. But he had lately taken a second wife; and

she one day quarrelled with the first wife and taunted her with being a

fish. Upbraiding her husband for having revealed the secret, the latter

plunged into the sea and resumed her former shape. So in the Pawnee

story of The Ghost Wife, a wife who had died is persuaded by her husband

to come back from the Spirit Land to dwell again with himself and her

child. All goes well until he takes a second wife, who turns out

ill-tempered and jealous of the first wife. Quarrelling with her one

day, she reproaches the latter with being nothing but a ghost. The next

morning when the husband awoke, his first wife was no longer by his

side. She had returned to the Spirit Land; and the following night both

he and the child died in their sleep--called by the first wife to

herself.[224] These sagas bring us back to that of Melusina, who

disappears, it will be recollected, not when the count, her husband,

breaks the taboo, but when, by calling her a serpent, he betrays his

guilty knowledge.

A name, indeed, is the cause of offence and disappearance in many other

of these stories. The chieftain of the Quins, who owned the Castle of

Inchiquin on the lake of that name, near the town of Ennis in Ireland,

found in one of the many caves of the neighbourhood a lady who consented

to become his bride, only stipulating that no one bearing the name of

O'Brien should be allowed to enter the castle gate. When this

prohibition was infringed she sprang through a window with her child

into the lake. The property has long since passed into the hands of the

O'Briens; and amid the ruins of the castle the fatal window is still

shown nearly as perfect as when the supernatural lady leaped through it

into the waters. It may be safely said that the primitive form of the

taboo has not come down to us in this tale, and that it owes its

present form to the fact that the O'Briens have acquired the estates

once owned by the Quins. Probably the utterance of some hateful name was

forbidden. But whatever name may have been able to disturb the

equanimity of the Lady of Inchiquin, we are now familiar enough with

these superstitions to understand why a holy name should be tabooed by

the goat-footed fairy wife of Don Diego Lopez in the Spanish tale

narrated by Sir Francis Palgrave. "Holy Mary!" exclaimed the Don, as he

witnessed an unexpected quarrel among his dogs, "who ever saw the like?"

His wife, without more ado, seized her daughter and glided through the

air to her native mountains. Nor did she ever return, though she

afterwards, at her son's request, supplied an enchanted horse to release

her husband when in captivity to the Moors. In two Norman variants the

lady forbids the utterance in her presence of the name of Death.[225]

These high-born heroines had, forsooth, highly developed sensibilities.

The wife of a Teton (the Tetons are a tribe of American natives)

deserted him, abandoned her infant to her younger brother's care, and

plunged into a stream, where she became what we call a mermaid,--and all

because her husband had scolded her. In another American tale, where the

wife was a snake, she deserted him from jealousy. A Tirolese saga speaks

of a man who had a wife of unknown extraction. She had bidden him,

whenever she baked bread, to pour water for her with his right hand. He

poured it once with the left, to see what would happen. He soon saw, to

his cost; for she flew out of the house. The Queen of Sheba, according

to a celebrated Arab writer, was the daughter of the King of China and a

Peri. Her birth came about on this wise. Her father, hunting, met two

snakes, a black one and a white, struggling together in deadly combat.

He killed the black one, and caused the white one to be carefully

carried to his palace and into his private apartment. On entering the

room the next day, he was surprised to find a lovely lady, who announced

herself as a Peri, and thanked him for delivering her the day before

from her enemy, the black snake. As a proof of her gratitude she offered

him her sister in marriage, subject, however, to the proviso that he

should never question her why she did this or that, else she would

vanish, never to be seen again. The king agreed, and had every reason to

be pleased with his beautiful bride. A son was born to them; but the

lady put it in the fire. The king wept and tore his beard, but said

nothing. Then a daughter of singular loveliness--afterwards Balkis,

Queen of Sheba--was born: a she-bear appeared at the door, and the

mother flung her babe into its jaws. The king tore out not only his

beard, but the hair of his head, in silence. A climax, however, came

when, in the course of a war, he and his army had to effect a seven

days' march across a certain desert. On the fifth day came the queen, a

large knife in her hand, and, slitting the provision-bags and the

waterskins, strewed the whole of the food upon the ground, and brought

the king and his army face to face with death. Her husband could no

longer restrain himself from questioning her. Then she told him that his

vizier, bribed by the enemy, had poisoned the food and water in order to

destroy him and his army, and that his son had a constitutional defect

which would have prevented him from living three days if she had not put

him in the fire. The she-bear, who was no other than a trusty old nurse,

brought back his daughter at her call; but the queen herself

disappeared, and he saw her no more. The Nereid in the Cretan tale

referred to in Chapter IX obstinately refused to speak, although her

lover had fairly conquered her. But after she bore him a son, the old

woman of whom he had previously taken counsel advised him to heat the

oven and threaten his mistress that if she would not speak he would

throw the boy into it. The Nereid seized the babe, and, crying out: "Let

go my child, dog!" tore it from his arms and vanished. It is related by

Apollodorus that Thetis, who was also a Nereid, wished to make her son

immortal. To this end she buried him in fire by night to burn out his

human elements, and anointed him with ambrosia by day. Peleus, her

husband, was not informed of the reason for this lively proceeding; and,

seeing his child in the fire, he called out. Thetis, thus thwarted,

abandoned both husband and child in disgust, and went back to her native

element. In the great Sanskrit epic of the Mahábhárata we are told that

King Sántanu, walking by a riverside one day, met and fell in love with

a beautiful girl, who told him that she was the river Ganges, and could

only marry him on condition that he never questioned her conduct. To

this he, with a truly royal gallantry, agreed; and she bore him several

children, all of whom she threw into the river as soon as they were

born. At last she bore him a boy, Bhíshma; and her husband begged her to

spare his life, whereupon she instantly changed into the river Ganges

and flowed away. Incompatibility of temper, as evidenced by three simple

disagreements, was a sufficient ground of divorce for the fairy of Llyn

Nelferch, in the parish of Ystradyfodwg, in Glamorganshire, from her

human husband. In a variant of the Maori sagas, to which I have more

than once referred, the lady quits her spouse in disgust because he

turns out _not_ to be a cannibal, as she had hoped from his truculent

name, Kai-tangata, or man-eater. Truly a heartrending instance of

misplaced confidence![226]

Many of these stories belong to the Star's Daughter type,--that is to

say, are wanting in the taboo. But in every variant of the Swan-maiden

group, to whatsoever type it may belong, the catastrophe is inevitable

from the beginning. Whether or not it depends on the breach of an

explicit taboo, it is equally the work of doom. A legend of the Loo-Choo

Islands expresses this feeling in its baldest form. A farmer sees a

bright light in his well, and, on drawing near, beholds a woman diving

and washing in the water. Her clothes, strange in shape and of a ruddy

sunset colour, are hanging on a pine-tree near at hand. He takes them,

and thus compels her to marry him. She lives with him for ten years,

bearing him a son and a daughter. At the end of that time her fate is

fulfilled; she ascends a tree during her husband's absence, and, having

bidden her children farewell, glides off on a cloud and disappears. Both

in its approximation to the Hasan of Bassorah type and in its

attributing the separation of husband and wife to fate, this tale agrees

remarkably with the Lay of Weyland Smith, where we are told: "From the

south through Mirkwood, to fulfil their fates, the young fairy maidens

flew. The southern ladies alighted to rest on the sea-strand, and fell

to spinning their goodly linen. First Allrune, Cear's fair daughter,

took Egil to her bright bosom. The second, Swanwhite, took Slagfin. But

Lathgund, her sister, clasped the white neck of Weyland. Seven winters

they stayed there in peace, but the eighth they began to pine, the ninth

they must needs part. The young fairy maidens hastened to Mirkwood to

fulfil their fates." A Vidyádhari, too, who, in the Kathá-sarit-ságara,

is caught in the orthodox manner, dwells with a certain ascetic until

she brings forth a child. She then calmly remarks to her holy paramour:

"My curse has been brought to an end by living with you. If you desire

to see any more of me, cook this child of mine with rice and eat it; you

will then be reunited to me!" Having said this, she vanished. The

ascetic followed her directions, and was thus enabled to fly after her.

In one of the New Zealand variants we are told that the time came for

Whai-tiri to return to her home. The same thing is indicated to the wife

in a Tirolese tale by means of a voice, which her husband hears as he

passes through the forest. The voice cried: "Tell Mao that Mamao is

dead." When he repeated this to his wife she disappeared; and he never

saw or heard of her after. In view of these narratives there can be

little doubt as to the meaning of the Arab tradition of the she-demon,

from whom one of the clans was descended. Her union with their human

father came suddenly to an end when she beheld a flash of

lightning.[227]

The Star's Daughter, however, returned to the sky because she was

homesick. Nor is she the only heroine of these tales who did so; but

homesick heroines are not very interesting, and I pass to one who had a

nobler reason for quitting her love. The saga is told at Rarotonga of a

girl of dazzling white complexion who came up out of a fountain and was

caught. She became the wife of a chief. It was the custom of the

inhabitants of the world from which she came to perform the Cæsarean

operation on females who were ready to give birth; so that the birth of

a child involved the mother's death. When she found on the earth, to her

surprise, that by allowing nature to take its course the mother as well

as the child was saved, she persuaded her husband to go with her to the

lower world to endeavour to put a stop to the cruel custom. He was ready

to accompany her; but after five several efforts to dive with her

through the fountain to the regions below he was obliged to abandon the

attempt. Sorrowfully embracing each other, the "peerless one" said: "I

alone will go to the spirit-world to teach what I have learnt from you."

At this she again dived down into the clear waters, and was never more

seen on earth.[228]

It will not have escaped the reader's attention, that among the more

backward races the taboo appears generally simpler in form, or is absent

altogether. Among most, if not all, of the peoples who tell stories

wherein this is the case, the marriage bonds are of the loosest

description; and there is, therefore, nothing very remarkable in the

supernatural bride's conduct. We might expect to find that as advances

are made in civilization, and marriage becomes more regarded, the reason

for separation would become more and more complex and cogent. Am I going

too far in suggesting that the resumption by the bride of her bird or

beast shape marks a stage in the development of the myth beyond the

Star's Daughter type; and the formal taboo, where the human figure is

not abandoned, a stage later still? In our view, indeed, the taboo is

not less irrational, as a means of putting an end to the marriage, than

the retrieved robe or skin. But we forget how recent in civilization is

the sanctity of the marriage-tie. Even among Christian nations divorce

was practised during the Middle Ages for very slight reasons, despite

the authority of popes and priests. In Eastern countries the husband has

always had little check on his liberty of putting away a wife for any

cause, or no cause at all; and, though unrecognized by the religious

books, which have enforced the husband's rights with so stern a

sanction, this liberty on his part may have been counter-balanced,

oftener than we think, by corresponding liberty on the wife's part.

Beyond doubt this has been so in India, where it is effected by means

of marriage settlements. In Bengal, for instance, a bridegroom is

sometimes compelled to execute a deed in which he stipulates never to

scold his wife, the penalty being a divorce; and deeds are not unknown

empowering the wife to get a divorce if her husband ever so much as

disagree with her.[229] This is incompatibility of temper with a

vengeance! Even the fairy of Llyn Nelferch was willing to put up with

two disagreements; and no taboo in story has gone, or could go, further.

Moreover, some of the taboos are such as the etiquette of various

peoples would entirely approve, though breaches of them might not be

visited so severely as in the tales. I have already pointed out that the

Lady of the Van Pool would have had a legal remedy for blows without

cause. The romance lies in the wide interpretation she gave to the

blows, and their disproportionate punishment. These transfer the

hearer's sympathies from the wife to the husband. Precisely parallel

seems to be the injunction laid upon Hohodemi, by Toyotamahime, daughter

of the Sea-god. I know not what may be the rule in Japan; but it is

probably not different from that which obtains in China. There, as we

learn from the Li Kì, one of the Confucian classics, a wife in

Toyotamahime's condition would, even among the poor, be placed in a

separate apartment; and her husband, though it would be his duty to send

twice a day to ask after her, would not see her, nor apparently enter

her room until the child was presented to him to be named. Curiously

enough the prohibition in the Japanese tale is identical with that

imposed by Pressina, herself a water-fay, the mother of Melusina,

according to the romance of Jean d'Arras written at the end of the

fourteenth century. Melusina and the Esthonian mermaid laid down another

rule: they demanded a recurring period during which they would be free

from marital intrusion. India is not Europe; but it cannot be thought

quite irrelevant to observe that much more than this is commonly secured

to a bride in many parts of India. For by the marriage settlement it is

expressly agreed that she is to go to her father's house as often as she

likes; and if her husband object, she is empowered in the deed to bring

an action against him for false imprisonment.[230]

Here we may leave the subject of the taboo. Something, however, must be

said on the Swan-maiden as divine ancestress. But first of all, let me

advert to one or two cases where divinity is ascribed without

progenitorship. The Maori heroine and her husband are worshipped. They

do not appear to be considered actual parents of any New Zealand clan;

but the husband at all events would be deemed one of the same blood.

Passing over to New Guinea, we find a remarkable saga concerning the

moon. The moon is a daughter of the earth, born by the assistance of a

native of the village of Keile, about twenty miles to the eastward of

Port Moresby. A long while ago, digging deeper than usual, he came upon

a round, smooth, silvery, shining object, which, after he had got it out

and lifted it up, grew rapidly larger and larger until it floated away.

He set out to search for it; nor did he desist until one day he came

upon a large pool in the river and found a beautiful woman bathing. On

the bank lay her grass petticoat where she had cast it off. He sat down

upon it; and when her attention was attracted to him by his dogs, they

recognized one another. She was the moon, and he was the man who had dug

her up out of the earth; and he claimed her as his wife. "If I marry

you," she replied, "you must die; but as you have touched my clothes you

must die in any case, and so for one day I will marry you, and then you

must go home to your village and prepare for death." Accordingly they

were married for one day; and the man then went home, made his funeral

feast and died. The moon in due course married the sun, as it was her

doom to do; but his intolerable jealousies rendered their union so

wretched that they at last agreed to see as little of one another as

possible. This accounts for their conduct ever since. An Annamite legend

relates that a woodcutter found some fairies bathing at a lovely

fountain. He took possession of the raiment of one, and hid it at the

bottom of his rice-barn. In this way he compelled its owner to become

his wife; and they lived together happily for some years. Their son was

three years old when, in her husband's absence, she sold their stock of

rice. On clearing out the barn her clothes were found. She bade farewell

to the child, left her comb stuck in his collar, donned her clothes and

flew away. When her husband returned and learned how matters stood, he

took his son and repaired to the fountain, where happily they fell in

with some of his wife's servants who were sent thither to draw water.

Engaging them in conversation, he caused his son to drop the comb into

one of the water-jars. By this means his wife recognized them, and sent

an enchanted handkerchief which enabled him to fly and follow her

servants to her home. After awhile she sent him and her son back to the

earth, promising to get permission in a short time to return and live

with them. By the carelessness of one of her servants, however, both

father and son were dropped into the sea and drowned. Apprised of the

catastrophe by ravens, the fairy transformed her servant, by way of

punishment, into--or according to a variant, became herself--the morning

star, while father and son became the evening star. And now the morning

star and the evening star perpetually seek one another, but never again

can they meet.[231]

Turning to the instances where ancestry is claimed, we find that the

chiefs of the Ati clan are descended from "the peerless one" of

Rarotonga. The Arawàk Indians of Guiana reckon descent in the female

line. One of their families takes its name from its foremother, the

warlock's daughter who was provided with the dogskin mentioned on a

previous page. Another family deduces its name and pedigree from an

earth-spirit married to one of its ancestors; but it does not appear

whether any Swan-maiden myth attaches to her. The fish _puttin_ is

sacred among the Dyaks. On no account will they eat it, because they

would be eating their relations, for they are descended from the lady

whose first and last form was a _puttin_. In other words, the _puttin_

is their totem. A family of the town of Chama on the Gold Coast claims

in like manner to be descended from the fish-woman of whose story I have

given an outline; and a legend to the same effect is current at the

neighbouring town of Appam; nor in either instance do the members of the

family dare to eat of the fish of the kind to which they believe their

ancestress belonged. The totem superstition is manifest in the case of

the Phoenician, or Babylonian, goddess Derceto, who was represented as

woman to the waist and thence downward fish. She was believed to have

been a woman, the mother of Semiramis, and to have thrown herself in

despair into a lake. Her worshippers abstained from eating fish; though

fish were offered to her in sacrifice, and golden fish suspended in her

temple. Melusina was the mother of the family of Lusignan. She used to

appear and shriek on one of the castle towers as often as the head of

the family, or a King of France, was to die, or when any disaster was

about to happen to the realm, or to the town of Luxemburg. She was also

the author of certain presages of plenty or famine. Similar legends are

told of the castles of Argouges and Rânes in Normandy. If the Irish

Banshee tales could be minutely examined, it is probable that they would

resolve themselves into stories of supernatural ancestresses. To the

Vila of the Illyrian story, and the fairy of Sir Francis Palgrave's

Spanish story, noble families attribute their origin. A family in the

Tirol is descended from the lady who insisted on her husband's pouring

water with his right hand; and the members of a noble Greek family have

the blood of a Nereid in their veins.[232]

Though the heroine of the Van Pool might never return to her husband,

she was drawn back to earth by the care of her three sons, who, by means

of her instructions, became celebrated physicians. On one occasion she

accompanied them to a place still called Pant-y-Meddygon (the hollow, or

dingle, of the physicians), and there pointed out to them the various

herbs which grew around, and revealed their medicinal virtues. It is

added that, in order that their knowledge should not be lost, the

physicians wisely committed the same to writing for the benefit of

mankind throughout all ages. A collection of medical recipes purporting

to be this very work still exists in a manuscript preserved at Jesus

College, Oxford, which is now in course of publication by Professor Rhys

and Mr. J. Gwenogvryn Evans, and is known as the Red Book of Hergest. An

edition of the "Meddygon Myddfai," as this collection is called, was

published by the Welsh MSS. Society thirty years ago, with an English

translation. It professes to have been written under the direction of

Rhiwallon the Physician and his sons Kadwgan, Gruffydd, and Einion; and

they are called "the ablest and most eminent of the physicians of their

time and of the time of Rhys Gryg, their lord, and the lord of Dinevor,

the nobleman who kept their rights and privileges whole unto them, as

was meet." This nobleman was Prince of South Wales in the early part of

the thirteenth century; and his monumental effigy is in the cathedral

of St. David's. Mr. Gwenogvryn Evans, than whom there is no higher

authority, is of opinion that the manuscript was written at the end of

the fourteenth century--that is to say, about two hundred years after

the date at which the marriage between the youth of Blaensawdde and his

fairy love is alleged to have taken place; and it is believed by the

editor of the published volume to be a copy of a still more ancient

manuscript now in the British Museum. Yet it contains no reference to

the legend of the Van Pool. The volume in question includes a transcript

of another manuscript of the work, which is ascribed in the colophon to

Howel the Physician, who, writing in the first person, claims to be

"regularly descended in the male line from the said Einion, the son of

Rhiwallon, the physician of Myddfai, being resident in Cilgwryd, in

Gower." This recension of the work is much later in date than the

former. A portion of it cannot be older than the end of the fifteenth

century; and the manuscript from which it was printed was probably the

result of accretions extending over a long period of time, down to the

year 1743, when it was copied "from the book of John Jones, Physician of

Myddfai, the last lineal descendant of the family." The remedies it

contains, though many of them are antique enough, and superstitious

enough, are of various dates and sources; and, so far from being

attributed to a supernatural origin, they are distinctly said to "have

been proved to be the best and most suitable for the human body through

the research and diligent study of Rhiwallon" and his three sons. The

negative evidence of the "Meddygon Myddfai," therefore, tends to show

that the connection of the Van Pool story with the Physicians is of

comparatively recent date.[233]

And yet it is but natural (if we may use such an expression) that a

mythical creature like the Lady of the Lake should be the progenitor of

an extraordinary offspring. Elsewhere we have seen her sisters the

totems of clans, the goddesses of nations, the parents of great families

and renowned personages. Melusina gave birth to monsters of ugliness and

evil,[234] and through them to a long line of nobles. So the heroine of

the Llanberis legend had two sons and two daughters, all of whom were

remarkable. The elder son became a great physician, and all his

descendants were celebrated for their proficiency in medicine. The

second son was a Welsh Tubal-cain. One of the daughters invented the

small ten-stringed harp, and the other the spinning wheel. "Thus," we

are told, "were introduced the arts of medicine, manufactures, music,

and woollen work!" If, then, there were a family at Myddfai celebrated

for their leechcraft, and possessed of lands and influence, as we know

was the fact, their hereditary skill would seem to an ignorant peasantry

to demand a supernatural origin; and their wealth and material power

would not refuse the additional consideration which a connection with

the legend of the neighbouring pool would bring them.

But for all that the incident of the reappearance by the mother to her

children may have been part of the original story. The Carnarvonshire

fairies of various tales analogous to that of the Van Pool are recalled

by maternal love to the scenes of their wedded life; and the hapless

father hears his wife's voice outside the window chanting pathetically:

"If my son should feel it cold,

Let him wear his father's coat;

If the fair one feel the cold,

Let her wear my petticoat!"

Whatever he may have thought of these valuable directions, they hardly

seem to us sufficient to have brought the lady up from "the bottomless

pool of Corwrion" to utter. There is more sense in the mother's song in

a Kaffir tale. This woman was not of purely supernatural origin. She was

born in consequence of her (human) mother's eating pellets given her by

a bird. Married to a chief by whom she was greatly beloved, it was

noticed that she never went out of doors by day. In her husband's

absence her father-in-law forced her to go and fetch water from the

river for him in the daytime. Like the woman by the waters of the Rhone,

she was drawn down into the river. That evening her child cried

piteously; and the nurse took it to the stream in the middle of the

night, singing:

"It is crying, it is crying,

The child of Sihamba Ngenyanga;

It is crying, it will not be pacified."

The mother thereupon came out of the water, and wailed this song as she

put the child to her breast:

"It is crying, it is crying,

The child of the walker by moonlight.

It was done intentionally by people whose names are unmentionable.[235]

They sent her for water during the day.

She tried to dip with the milk-basket, and then it sank.

Tried to dip with the ladle, and then it sank.

Tried to dip with the mantle, and then it sank."

The result of the information conveyed in these words was her ultimate

recovery by her husband with the assistance of her mother, who was a

skilful sorceress.[236]

A Finnish tale belonging to the Cinderella group represents the heroine

as changed into a reindeer-cow by an ogress who takes her place as wife

and mother. But her babe will not be comforted; so a woman, to whose

care he is committed, carries him into the forest, and sings the

following incantation:

"Little blue eyes, little red-fell,

Come thou thine own son to suckle,

Feed whom thou hast given birth to!

Of that cannibal nought will he,

Never drinks from that bloodsucker;

For her breasts to him are loathsome,

Nor can hunger drive him to them."

The reindeer cannot withstand this appeal. She casts her skin, and comes

in human form to suckle her child. This results, after two repetitions

in the husband's burning the reindeer hide and clasping her in his arms.

But, like Peleus, he has to hold her fast in spite of various

transformations, until he has overcome the charm and has her once more

in her pristine shape![237]

It was not strength so much as boldness and tenacity that conquered

here. In the Kaffir story the husband's first attempt to pull his wife

out of the water by sheer force failed. Thus, too, in one of the

Tirolese stories already mentioned the husband lies in wait for his wife

when she returns, as usual, to comb her little girl's hair on a

Saturday. He catches her by the arm as she enters; and she tells him

that if he can hold her for a little while she must stay: otherwise she

will never come again. All his strength is, however, too little to

struggle successfully with her. The mother's visits to her children are,

indeed, a frequent sequel to the story; and occasionally the tie which

compels her to return is taken advantage of by the forsaken husband to

obtain possession of her again. But fraud, not force, is the means

employed, as in the Lapp story of the Maiden out of the Sea, where the

mermaid's clothes are once more confiscated. In a legend of Llyn y

Dywarchen (the Lake of the Sod), not very far from Beddgelert, the

water-nymph subsequently appears to her husband, conversing with him

from a floating turf while he stands on the shore. Here the motive of

the reappearance is the unusual one of conjugal, rather than parental,

affection.[238]

I must not omit to add that the first Sunday in August is kept in the

neighbourhood of the Van Pool as the anniversary of the fairy's return

to the lake. It is believed that annually on that day a commotion takes

place in the lake; its waters boil to herald the approach of the lady

with her oxen. It was, and still is (though in decreasing force), the

custom for large numbers of people to make a pilgrimage to witness the

phenomenon; and it is said that the lady herself appears in mermaid form

upon the surface, and combs her tresses. I have little doubt that in

this superstition we have the relic of a religious festival in honour of

an archaic divinity whose abode was in the lake. She has, perhaps, only

escaped being an enchanted princess by being a Welsh rather than a

German goddess. If the mermaid form be of genuine antiquity,--about

which I confess to a lurking suspicion,--it is another bond with the

Scottish stories, with Melusina and with Derceto.[239]

We have now considered the principal points of the myth. The

feather-robe, or skin, we found absent from all its more archaic

examples. There, no change of form occurs, or when it does occur it is

accomplished by simple transformation. When present, the robe is a mere

symbol of the lady's superhuman nature, or else the result of

enchantment. These are more recent types, and are all, or nearly all,

_märchen_. In the later sagas, such as those of Melusina and the Lady of

the Van Pool, it is again absent; though relics of the change of form

frequently remain.

Capture of the Swan-maiden proper is effected by theft of her robe: in

other types either by main force, or more frequently with her consent,

more or less willingly given, or by her own initiative.

We then passed to the more important subject of the taboo. The taboo,

strictly speaking, only appears where the peltry is absent. Several of

its forms correspond with rules of antique etiquette. Others recall

special points connected with savage life, such as the dislike of iron

and steel, and the prejudice against the mention of a personal name.

Other prohibitions are against reproaching the wife with her origin,

against reminding her of her former condition, or against questioning

her conduct or crossing her will. But whether the taboo be present or

absent, the loss of the wife is equally inevitable, equally foreseen

from the beginning. It is the doom of the connection between a simple

man and a superhuman female. Even where the feather-robe is absent the

taboo is not always found. Among savages the marriage-bond is often very

loose: notably in the more backward races. And among these the

superhuman wife's excuse for flight is simpler; and sometimes it is only

an arbitrary exercise of will. The taboo grows up with the advance in

civilization.

Lastly, we considered the Swan-maiden as divine ancestress. We found her

resident in heaven, we found her worshipped, we found her as the totem

of a clan. The totemistic stories are widely spread,--so widely, indeed,

as to afford a presumption that we have in them a clue to the whole

meaning of the myth. For not only have we the complete totemistic form,

as among the Dyaks and the tribes of the Gold Coast; but we find the

superstition fading through the goddess Derceto into modern sagas of the

supernatural mother of a family, who to her sometimes owe extraordinary

powers, and over whose fate she continually watches.

Here, then, our study of this beautiful myth must close. I am far from

suggesting that the subject is exhausted. On the contrary, it is so

large and so complex that I have rigidly abstained from anything more

than a very imperfect examination of its principal features. On some of

the points here partially discussed I shall have something more to add

in our final chapter, when discussing certain theories on the fairy

beliefs.

FOOTNOTES:

[202] Grey, p. 66; Taylor, p. 138; White, vol. i. pp. 95, 115, _et

seqq._, vol. ii. p. 127, _et seqq_.

[203] "F. L. Journal," vol. i. p. 202; "Revue des Trad. Pop." vol. iv.

p. 305.

[204] Von Hahn, vol. ii. p. 78. In illustration of these remarks on

marital relations in a society where female kinship only is recognized,

let me quote the following paragraph concerning Maori customs. The

Maories, it must be borne in mind, have only recently emerged from this

stage; and many relics of it remain.

"Sometimes the father simply told his intended son-in-law he might come

and live with his daughter; she was thenceforth considered his wife, he

lived with his father-in-law, and became one of the tribe, or _hapu_, to

which his wife belonged, and in case of war, was often obliged to fight

against his own relatives. So common is the custom of the bridegroom

going to live with his wife's family, that it frequently occurs, when he

refuses to do so, she will leave him, and go back to her relatives;

several instances came under my notice where young men have tried to

break through this custom, and have so lost their wives" (Taylor, p.

337).

[205] Not entirely: see Burton, "Suppl. Nights," vol. vi. p. 363; "F. L.

Journal," vol. i. p. 284; Sastri, p. 148.

[206] In speaking of a type as more or less recent than another, it must

be recollected that I am not speaking of chronological order, but of the

order of development. For aught we know, the story of the Marquis of the

Sun may as a matter of date be actually older, could we trace it, than

the far more archaic story of Tawhaki. But the society in which it took

shape was more advanced than that disclosed in the Maori legend.

[207] Webster, p. 120; Campbell, vol. i. p. 25; "Mélusine," vol. i. p.

446; "F. L. Españ." vol. i. p. 187; Schneller, p. 71; Imbriani, p. 411;

Cosquin, vol. i. pp. 9, 25; Sébillot, "Contes," vol. i. p. 197;

Grundtvig, vol. i. p. 46; Cavallius, p. 255; Maspons y Labros, p. 102;

"F. L. Journal," vol. i. p. 284, quoting Lewis.

[208] Waldau, p. 248; Ralston, "R. F. Tales," p. 120, from Afanasief.

[209] Compare the assistance rendered by the birds to Tini-rau, _suprà_,

p. 286. The Eskimo hero is conveyed to his wife on a salmon's tail

(Rink, p. 145). Where is the Buddhist pedigree of this incident, or the

evidence of Buddhist influence which produced it?

[210] Sastri, p. 80; Cosquin, vol. ii. pp. 19, 18; Ralston, "Tibetan

Tales," p. 72; "F. L. Journal," vol. ii. p. 9; Vernaleken, p. 280.

[211] "F. L. Journal," vol. vii. p. 318; Pitré, vol. iv. pp. 391, 410. A

variant given by Prof. De Gubernatis is nearly allied to the Cinderella

group ("Novelline," p. 29); Brett, p. 176.

[212] Basset, p. 161, quoting Bresnier, "Cours de langue Arabe." In a

Maya story given by Dr. Brinton, the husband prevents his wife's

transformation in a different way--namely, by throwing salt ("F. L.

Journal," vol. i. p. 251).

[213] "Journ. Ethnol. Soc." N. S., vol. ii. p. 26; Giles, _passim_;

Brauns, p. 388.

[214] "Y Cymmrodor," vol. v. p. 94.

[215] Map, Dist. ii. c. 11.

[216] Map, Dist. ii. c. 12.

[217] "Y Cymmrodor," vol. iv. p. 201. Nothing turns on the actual names

in these stories; they have been evidently much corrupted,--probably

past all recognition.

[218] Ibid. p. 189; vol. v. pp. 59, 66; vol. vi. p. 196.

[219] Pliny l. xvi. c. 95; Thorpe, vol. ii. pp. 275, 277; Stephens, p.

248, citing the "Barzas Breiz."

[220] The above paragraphs had scarcely been written when the London

papers (June 1890) reprinted extracts from a letter in the _Vossische

Zeitung_ relating the adventures of Dr. Bayol, the Governor of Kotenon,

who was recently imprisoned by the bloodthirsty King of Dahomey. The

king was too suspicious to sign the letter written in his name to the

President of the French Republic. In all probability he was unwilling to

let the President have his sign manual, for of course M. Carnot would

have no hesitation in bewitching him by its means.

[221] Keightley, p. 121, quoting from Thiele; Thorpe, vol. iii. p. 155.

[222] Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales (Public Record Comm., 1841)

pp. 44, 252. (The Dimetian code was the one in force at Myddfai; but

that of Gwynedd was similar in this respect.) Farrer, p. 256.

[223] Campbell, vol. iii. p. 403; Mac Innes, p. 211; Wratislaw, p. 314.

_Cf._ a similar story told by a peasant to Dr. Krauss' mother no longer

ago than 1888, as having recently happened at Mrkopolje: he "knew the

parties!" (Krauss, "Volksgl." p. 107).

[224] Ellis, p. 208; Grinnell, p. 129.

[225] "Choice Notes," p. 96; _cf._ Jahn, p. 364, cited above, p. 279.

(Kennedy relates the story of the Lady of Inchiquin differently.

According to him the husband was never to invite company to the castle.

This is probably more modern than the other version. Kennedy, p. 282.)

Keightley, p. 458, quoting the _Quarterly Review_, vol. xxii. Sir

Francis Palgrave, though an accurate writer, was guilty of the

unpardonable sin of invariably neglecting to give his authorities. Ibid.

p. 485, quoting Mdlle. Bosquet, "La Normandie Romanesque."

[226] "Journal Amer. F. L." vol ii. p. 137; vol. i. p. 76; Schneller, p.

210; "Rosenöl," vol. i. p. 162; Child, vol. i. p. 337, quoting Schmidt

and Apollodorus; "Panjab N. & Q.," vol. ii. p. 207. (In this form the

story is found as a tradition, probably derived from the Mahábhárata.)

"Trans. Aberd. Eistedd." p. 225; White, vol. i. p. 126.

[227] Dennys, p. 140; "Corpus Poet. Bor." vol. i. p. 168;

"Kathá-sarit-ságara," vol. ii. p. 453, _cf._ p. 577; White, vol. i. p.

88; Schneller, p. 210; Robertson Smith, p. 50.

[228] Gill, p. 265.

[229] "Indian N. & Q." vol. iv. p. 147.

[230] "Sacred Books of the East," vol. xxvii. pp. 471, 475, 476; "Indian

N. & Q." vol. iv. p. 147.

[231] Romilly, p. 134; Landes, p. 123.

[232] Bent, p. 13. The Nereids in modern Greek folklore are conceived in

all points as Swan-maidens. They fly through the air by means of magical

raiment (Schmidt, p. 133).

[233] See my article on the "Meddygon Myddfai," entitled "Old Welsh Folk

Medicine," "Y Cymmrodor," vol. ix. p. 227.

[234] A certain German family used to excuse its faults by attributing

them to a sea-fay who was reckoned among its ancestors; Birlinger, "Aus

Schwaben," vol. i. p. 7, quoting the "Zimmerische Chronik."

[235] Namely, her husband's father, whose name she was not permitted by

etiquette to utter. See above, p. 309.

[236] Theal, p. 54. The Teton lady who became a mermaid was summoned, by

singing an incantation, to suckle her child; "Journal Amer. F. L." vol.

ii. p. 137.

[237] Schreck, p. 71.

[238] Poestion, p. 55; "Cymru Fu," p. 474.

[239] "Y Cymmrodor," vol. iv. p. 177, vol. vi. p. 203. I have also made

inquiries at Ystradgynlais, in the neighbourhood of the lake, the

results of which confirm the statements of Professor Rhys'

correspondents; but I have failed to elicit any further information.