In a far-away time Tristram Bird of Padstow bought a gun at a little
shop in the quaint old market which in those days opened to the quay,
the winding river, and the St. Minver sand-hills. When he had bought
his gun he began forthwith to shoot birds and other poor little
creatures.
After a while he grew more ambitious, and told the fair young maids of
Padstow that he wanted to shoot a seal or something more worthy of his
gun; and so one bright morning he made his way down to Hawker's Cove,
near the mouth of the harbour.
When Tristram got there he looked about him to see what he could shoot,
and the first thing he saw was a young maid sitting all alone on a
rock, combing her hair with a sea-green comb.
He was so overcome at such an unexpected sight that he quite forgot
what had brought him to the cove, and could do nothing but stare.
The rock on which the maiden sat was covered with seaweed, and
surrounded by a big pool, called in that distant time the Mermaid's
Glass.
She was apparently unconscious that a good-looking young man was
gazing at her with his bold dark eyes, and as she combed her long and
beautiful hair she leaned over the pool and looked at herself in the
Mermaid's Glass, and the face reflected in it was startling in its
beauty and charm.
Tristram Bird was very tall--six feet three in his stockings--and
being such a tall young man, he could see over the maiden's head into
the pool, and the face in its setting of golden hair reflected in its
clear depths entirely bewitched him, and so did her graceful form,
which was partly veiled in a golden raiment of her own beautiful hair.
As he stood gazing at the bewitching face looking up from the Mermaid's
Glass, its owner suddenly glanced over her shoulder, and saw Tristram
staring at her.
'Good-morning to you, fair maid,' he said, still keeping his bold
dark eyes fixed upon her, telling himself as he gazed that her face
was even more bewitching than was its reflection.
'Good-morning, sir,' said she.
'Doing your toilet out in the open,' he said.
'Yes,' quoth she, wondering who the handsome youth could be and how
he came to be there.
'Your hair is worth combing,' he said.
'Is it?' said she.
'It is, my dear,' he said. ''Tis the colour of oats waiting for
the sickle.'
'Is it?' quoth she.
'Yes; and no prettier face ever looked into the Mermaid's Glass.'
'How do you know?' asked she.
'My heart told me so,' he said, coming a step or two nearer the pool,
'and so did my eyes when I saw its reflection looking up from the
water. It bewitched me, sweet.'
'Did it?' laughed she, with a tilt of her round young chin.
'Yes,' he said, with an answering laugh, drawing another step nearer
the pool.
'It does not take a man of your breed long to fall in love,' said
the beautiful maid, with a toss of her golden head and a curl of her
sweet red lips.
'Who told you that?' asked the love-sick young man, going red as
a poppy.
'Faces carry tales as well as little birds,' quoth she.
'If my face is a tale-bearer, it will tell you that I love you more
than heart can say and tongue can tell,' he said, drawing yet nearer
the pool.
'Will it?' said she, combing her golden hair with her sea-green comb.
'Indeed it will, and must,' he said; 'for I love you with all my soul,
and I want you to give me a lock of your golden hair to wear over
my heart.'
'I do not give locks of my hair to landlubbers!' cried she, with
another toss of her proud young head and a scornful curl of her bright
red lips.
'A landlubber forsooth!' he said, with an angry flash in his bold
black eyes. 'Who are you to speak so scornfully of a man of the
land? One would think you were a maid of the sea.'
'I am,' quoth she, twining the tress of her hair she had combed round
her shell-pink arm.
'No seamaid is half as beautiful as you,' said Tristram Bird,
incredulous of what the maid said. 'But, maid of the sea or maid of
the land, I love you, sweet, and I want to have you to wife.'
'Want must be your master, sir,' said she, with an angry flash in
her sea-blue eyes.
'Love is my master, sweet maid,' he said. 'You are my love, and you
have mastered me.'
'Have I?' said she, with a little toss of her golden head.
'Yes,' he said; 'and now that I have told you you are my love, and
I want you to marry me, you will give me a lock of your golden hair,
won't you, sweet?'
'I cannot,' said she.
'Give me one little golden wire of your hair, if you won't give me a
lock,' he pleaded, coming close to the edge of the pool. 'I will make
a golden ring of it,' he said, 'and wear it in the eye of the world.'
'Will you?' said she.
'I will, my dear,' he said.
'But I will not give you a hair of my head even to make a ring with,'
said she.
'Then give me one for a leading-string,' he said. 'If you will,
my charmer, you shall take the end of it and lead me whithersoever
you will.'
'Even to the whipping-post?' said she.
'Even to the whipping-post,' he said. 'So you will be my fair bride,
won't 'ee, sweet? If you will consent to love me, I'll make you as
happy as the day is long.'
'Will you?' cried she, with a warning look in her sea-blue eyes and
a strange little laugh.
'Yes,' he said, thinking her answer meant consent. 'And I've got a
dear little house at Higher St. Saviour's, overlooking the river and
Padstow Town low in the valley.'
'Have you?' said she.
'I have,' he said. 'And the little house is full of handsome things--a
chestful of linen which my own mother wove for me on her loom against
the time I should be wed to a pretty maid like you, an oaken dresser
with every shelf full of cloam, [9] and a cosy settle where we can
sit hand in hand talking of our love. You will marry me soon, won't
you, sweet? The little house, and all that's in it, is waiting for
my charmer.'
'Is it?' cried the beautiful maid, taking up another tress of her
golden hair, and slowly combing its silken length with her sea-green
comb. 'But let me tell you once and for ever, I would not marry
you if you were decked in diamonds and your house a golden house,
and everything in it made of jewels and set in gold.'
'Wouldn't you?' cried Tristram Bird, in great amazement.
'I wouldn't,' said she.
'You are a strange young maid to refuse an upstanding young man like
me,' he said, 'who has a house of his own, to say nothing of what is
inside it. Why, dozens of fair young maidens up to Padstow would have
me to-morrow if I was only to ax them.'
'Then ax them,' cried the beautiful maid, turning her proud young head,
and looking out towards Pentire, gorgeous in its spring colouring.
'But I can't ask any of them to marry me when I love you,' cried the
infatuated youth. 'You have bewitched me, sweet, and no other man
shall have you. If I can't have you living, I'll have you dead. I
came down to Hawker's Cove to shoot something to startle the natives
of Padstow Town, and they will be startled, shure 'nough, if I shoot
a beautiful little vixen like you and take home to them.'
'Shoot me if you will, but marry you I will not,' said the beautiful
maiden, with a scornful laugh. 'But I give you fair warning that if
you shoot me, as you say you will, you will rue the day you did your
wicked deed. I will curse you and this beautiful haven, which has
ever been a refuge for ships from the time that ships sailed upon the
seas;' and her sea-blue eyes looked up and down the estuary from the
headlands that guarded its mouth to the farthest point of the blue,
winding river.
'I will shoot you in spite of the curse if you won't consent to be
mine,' cried the bewitched young man.
'I will never consent,' said she.
'Then I will shoot you now,' he said, and Tristram Bird lifted his gun
and fired, and the ball entered the poor young maiden's soft pink side.
She put her hand to her side to cover the gaping wound the shot
had made, and as she did so she pulled herself out of the water,
and where the feet should have been was the glittering tail of a fish!
'I have shot a poor young Mermaid,' Tristram cried, 'and woe is
me!' and he shivered like one when somebody is passing over his grave.
'Yes, you have shot a poor Mermaid,' said the maid of the sea,
'and I am dying, and with my dying breath I curse this safe harbour,
which was large enough to hold all the fighting ships of the Spanish
Armada and your own, and it shall be cursed with a bar of sand which
shall be a bar of doom to many a stately ship and many a noble life,
and it shall stretch from the Mermaid's Glass to Trebetherick Bay on
the opposite shore, and prevent this haven of deep water from ever
again becoming a floating harbour save at full tide. The Mermaid's
wraith will haunt the bar of doom her dying curse shall bring until
your wicked deed has been fully avenged;' and looking round the great
bay of shining waters, laughing and rippling in the eye of the sun,
she raised her arms and cursed the harbour of Padstow with a bitter
curse, and Tristram shuddered as he listened, and as she cursed she
uttered a wailing cry and fell back dead into the pool, and the water
where she sank was dyed with her blood.
'I have committed a wicked deed,' said Tristram Bird, gazing into
the blood-stained pool, 'and verily I shall be punished for my sin;'
and he turned away with the fear of coming doom in his heart.
As he went up the cove and along the top of the cliffs the distressful,
wailing cry of the Mermaid seemed to follow him, and the sky gloomed
all around as he went, and the sea moaned a dreadful moan as it came
up the bay.
When he reached Tregirls, overlooking the Cove, he stood by the gate
for a minute and gazed out over the beautiful harbour. The sea, which
only half an hour ago was as blue as the eyes of the seamaid he had
shot, and full of smiles and laughter, was now black as ash-buds,
save where a golden streak lay across the water from Hawker's Cove
to Trebetherick Bay.
'The Mermaid's curse is already working,' moaned Tristram Bird, and
he fled through the lane leading to Padstow as if a death-hound was
after him.
When he reached Place House he met a little crowd of Padstow maids
going out flower-gathering.
'Whither away so fast, Tristram Bird?' asked a little maid. 'You
aren't driving a teem of snails this time, 'tis plain to see. Where
hast thou been?'
'Need you ask?' said a pert young girl. 'He has been away shooting
something to startle the maids of Padstow with! What strange new
creature did you shoot, Tristram Bird?'
'A wonderful creature with eyes like blue fire,' returned the unhappy
youth, looking away over St. Minver dunes towards the Tors--'a sweet,
soft creature with beautiful hair, every wire of which was a sunbeam
of gold, and her face was the loveliest I ever beheld. It clean
bewitched me.'
'A beautiful maid like that, and yet you shot her?' cried all the
young maids of Padstow Town.
'Yes, I shot her, to my undoing and the undoing of our fair haven,'
groaned Tristram Bird; and he told them all about it--where he had
seen the beautiful Mermaid, of his bewitchment from the moment he saw
her face of haunting charm looking up at him from the Mermaid's Glass,
and of the curse she uttered ere she fell back dead into the pool.
All the smiles went out of the bright faces of the Padstow maids,
as he told his tale.
'What a pity, Tristram Bird, you should have been so foolish as to
shoot a Mermaid!' they said; and they did not go and pick flowers as
they had intended, but went back to their homes instead, and Tristram
Bird went on to Higher St. Saviour's, where he lived in a little
house overlooking Padstow Town nestling like a bird in its nest.
A fearful gale blew on the night of the day Tristram Bird shot
the Mermaid, and all the next day, too, and the next night; and
through the awful howling of the gale was heard the bellowing of the
wind-tormented sea.
Such a terrible storm had never been known at Padstow Town within the
memory of man, so the old Granfer men said, and never a gale lasted
so long.
When the wind went down the natives of Padstow ventured out to see what
the gale had wrought, and sad was the havoc it had made; and some went
out to Chapel Stile, where a small chapel stood overlooking the haven,
and what should meet their horrified gaze but a terrible bar of sand
which the Mermaid's curse had brought there; and it stretched from
Hawker's Cove to the opposite shore, and what was worse, the great
sand-bar was covered with wrecks of ships and bodies of drowned men.
'It is the bar of doom brought there by the fearful curse of the
maid of the sea whom I shot with my brand-new gun,' cried Tristram
Bird, who was one of the first to reach the stile when the wind had
gone down; and he told them all, as he had told the Padstow maids,
of what the Mermaid had said before and after he had shot her. 'And
because of the wicked deed I did,' he said, 'I have brought a curse
on my native town, and Padstow will never be blessed with a safe and
beautiful harbour till the poor Mermaid's death be avenged.'
There was a dreadful silence after Tristram Bird had spoken, and the
men and women of Padstow Town gazed at each other, troubled and sad,
knowing that what the youth, who had been bewitched by the Mermaid's
face, had said was true, for there below them was the great bar of
sand dividing the outer harbour from the inner, and on it lay the masts
and spars of broken ships and the lifeless bodies of the drowned. The
wind was quiet, but the sea was still breaking and roaring on the
back of the Doombar, and as the waves thundered and broke, a wailing
cry sounded forth, like the wail that Tristram heard when the Mermaid
disappeared under the water; it sounded like the distressful cry of
a woman bewailing her dead, and all who heard shivered and shook,
and both old and young looked down on the Doombar with dread in their
eyes, but they saw nothing but the dead bodies of the sailors and
their broken ships.
'It is the Mermaid's wraith,' cried an old Granfer man, leaning
against the grey walls of the ancient chapel, 'and she is wailing the
wail of the drowned; and, mark my words, everyone,' letting his eyes
wander from one face to another, 'each time a ship is caught on this
dreadful bar and lives are lost--as lost they will be--the Mermaid's
wraith will bewail the drowned.'
And it came to pass as the old man said, and whenever vessels are
wrecked on that fateful bar of sand lying across the mouth of Padstow
Harbour and men are drowned, it is told that the Mermaid's distressful
cry is still heard bewailing the poor dead sailors.