CHAPTER IX.

ILLUSION.

Maya--Natural Treacheries--Misleaders--Glamour--Lorelei--Chinese
Mermaid--Transformations--Swan Maidens--Pigeon Maidens--The
Seal-skin--Nudity--Teufelsee--Gohlitsee--Japanese Siren--Dropping
Cave--Venusberg--Godiva--Will-o'-Wisp--Holy Fräulein--The Forsaken
Merman--The Water-Man--Sea Phantom--Sunken Treasures--Suicide.


Most beautiful of all the goddesses of India is Maya, Illusion. In
Hindu iconography she is portrayed in drapery of beautiful colours,
with decoration of richest gems and broidery of flowers. From above
her crown falls a veil which, curving above her knees, returns on
the other side, making, as it were, also an apron in which are held
fair animal forms--prototypes of the creation over which she has
dominion. The youthful yet serious beauty of her face and head is
surrounded with a semi-aureole, fringed with soft lightning, striated
with luminous sparks; and these are background for a cruciform nimbus
made of three clusters of rays. Maya presses her full breasts, from
which flow fountains of milk which fall in graceful streams to mingle
with the sea on which she stands.

So to our Aryan ancestors appeared the spirit that paints the universe,
flushing with tints so strangely impartial fruits forbidden and
unforbidden for man and beast. Mankind are slandered by the priest's
creed, Populus vult decipi; they are justly vindicated in Plato's
aphorism, 'Unwillingly is the soul deprived of truth;' but still
they are deceived. Large numbers are truly described by Swedenborg,
who found hells whose occupants believed themselves in heaven and
sang praises therefor. Such praises we may hear in the loud laughter
proceeding from dens where paradise has been gained by the cheap charm
of a glass of gin or a prostitute's caress. Serpent finds its ideal
in serpent. In heaven, says Swedenborg, we shall see things as they
are. But it is the adage of those who have lost their paradise, and
eat still the dry dust of reality not raised by science; the general
world has not felt that divine curse, or it has been wiped away so that
the most sensual fool may rejoice in feeling himself God's darling,
and pities the paganism of Plato. Man and beast are certain that they
do see things as they are. Maya's milk is tinctured from the poppies
of her robe; untold millions of misgivings have been put to sleep by
her tender bounty; the waters that sustain her are those of Lethe.

But beneath every illusive heaven Nature stretches also an illusive
hell. The poppies lose their force at last, and under the scourge
of necessity man wakes to find all his paradise of roses turned to
briars. Maya's breast-fountains pass deeper than the surface--from
one flows soft Lethe, the other issues at last in Phlegethon. Fear is
even a more potent painter than Hope, and out of the manifold menaces
of Nature can at last overlay the fairest illusions. It is a pathetic
fact, that so soon as man begins to think his first theory infers a
will at work wherever he sees no cause; his second, to suppose that
it will harm him!

Harriet Martineau's account of her childish terror caused by seeing
some prismatic colours dancing on the wall of a vacant room she was
entering--'imps' that had no worse origin than a tremulous candelabrum,
but which haunted her nerves through life--is an experience which may
be traced in the haunted childhood of every nation. There are other
phenomena besides these prismatic colours, which have had an evil name
in popular superstition, despite their beauty. Strange it might seem to
a Buddhist that yon exquisite tree with its blood-red buds should be
called the Judas-tree, as to us that the graceful swan which might be
the natural emblem of purity should be associated with witchcraft! But
the student of mythology will at every moment be impressed by the fact
that myths oftener represent a primitive science than mere fancies
and conceits. The sinuous neck of the swan, its passionate jealousy,
and the uncanny whistle, or else dumbness, found where, from so snowy
an outside, melody might have been looked for, may have made this
animal the type of a double nature. The treacherous brilliants of
the serpent, or honey protected by stings, or the bright blossoms of
poisons, would have trained the instinct which apprehends evil under
the apparition of beauty. This, as we shall have occasion to see,
has had a controlling influence upon the ethical constitution of our
nature. But it is at present necessary to observe that the primitive
science generally reversed the induction of our later philosophy; for
where an evil or pain was discovered in anything, it concluded that
such was its raison d'être, and its attractive qualities were simply
a demon's treacherous bait. However, here are the first stimulants
to self-control in the lessons that taught distrust of appearances.

Because many a pilgrim perished through a confidence in the
lake-pictures of the mirage which led to carelessness about economising
his skin of water, the mirage gained its present name--Bahr Sheitan,
or Devil's Water. The 'Will o' wisp,' which appeared to promise the
night-wanderer warmth or guidance, but led him into a bog, had its
excellent directions as to the place to avoid perverted by an unhappy
misunderstanding into a wilful falsehood, and has been branded ignis
fatuus. Most of the mimicries in nature gradually became as suspicious
to the primitive observer as aliases to a magistrate. The thing
that seemed to be fire, or water, but was not; the insect or animal
which took its hue or form from some other, from the leaf-spotted
or stem-striped cats to that innocent insect whose vegetal disguise
has gained for it the familiar name of 'Devil's Walking-stick;'
the humanlike hiss, laugh, or cry of animals; the vibratory sound or
movement which so often is felt as if near when it really is far; the
sand which seems hard but sinks; the sward which proves a bog;--all
these have their representation in the demonology of delusion. The
Coroados of Brazil says that the Evil One 'sometimes transforms
(himself) into a swamp, &c., leads him astray, vexes him, brings him
into danger, and even kills him.' [153] It is like an echo of Burton's
account. 'Terrestrial devils are those lares, genii, faunes, satyrs,
wood-nymphs, foliots, fairies, Robin Good-fellows, trulli, &c., which,
as they are most conversant with men, so they do them most harm. These
are they that dance on heaths and greens, as Lavater thinks with
Trithemius, and, as Olaus Magnus adds, leave that green circle which
we commonly find in plain fields. They are sometimes seen by old women
and children. Hieron. Pauli, in his description of the city of Bercino,
Spain, relates how they have been familiarly seen near that town, about
fountains and hills. 'Sometimes,' saith Trithemius, 'they lead simple
people into the recesses of mountains and show them wonderful sights,'
&c. Giraldus Cambrensis gives an instance of a monk of Wales that was
so deluded. Paracelsus reckons up many places in Germany where they
do usually walk about in little coats, some two feet long. [154] Real
dangers beset the woods and mountain passes, the swamp and quicksand;
in such forms did they haunt the untamed jungles of imagination!

Over that sea on which Maya stands extends the silvery wand of
Glamour. It descended to the immortal Old Man of the Sea, favourite
of the nymphs, oracle of the coasts, patron of fishermen, friend of
Proteus, who could see through all the sea's depths and assume all
shapes. How many witcheries could proceed from the many-tinted sea to
affect the eyes and enable them to see Triton with his wreathed horn,
and mermaids combing their hair, and marine monsters, and Aphrodite
poised on the white foam! Glaucoma it may be to the physicians;
but Glaucus it is in the scheme of Maya, who has never left land
or sea without her witness. Beside the Polar Sea a Samoyed sailor,
asked by Castrén 'where is Num' (i.e., Jumala, his god), pointed to
the dark distant sea, and said, He is there.

To the ancients there were two seas,--the azure above, and that
beneath. The imaginative child in its development passes all those
dreamy coasts; sees in clouds mountains of snow on the horizon, and in
the sunset luminous seas laving golden isles. When as yet to the young
world the shining sun was Berchta, the white fleecy clouds were her
swans. When she descended to the sea, as a thousand stories related,
it was to repeat the course of the sun for all tribes looking on a
westward sea. No one who has read that charming little book, 'The
Gods in Exile,' [155] will wonder at the happy instinct of learning
shown in Heine's little poem, 'Sonnenuntergang,' [156] wherein we
see shining solar Beauty compelled to become the spinning housewife,
or reluctant spouse of Poseidon:--


A lovely dame whom the old ocean-god
For convenience once had married;
And in the day-time she wanders gaily
Through the high heaven, purple-arrayed,
And all in diamonds gleaming,
And all beloved, and all amazing
To every worldly being,
And every worldly being rejoicing
With warmth and splendour from her glances.
Alas! at evening, sad and unwilling,
Back must she bend her slow steps
To the dripping house, to the barren embrace
Of grisly old age.


This of course is Heinesque, and has no relation to any legend of
Bertha, but is a fair specimen of mythology in the making, and is
quite in the spirit of many of the myths that have flitted around
sunset on the sea. Whatever the explanation of their descent, the
Shining One and her fleecy retinue were transformed. When to sea or
lake came Berchta (or Perchta), it was as Bertha of the Large Foot
(i.e., webbed), or of the Long Nose (beak), and her troop were
Swan-maidens. Their celestial character was changed with that of
their mistress. They became familiars of sorcerers and sorceresses. To
'wear yellow slippers' became the designation of a witch.

How did these fleecy white cloud-phantoms become demonised? What
connection is there between them and the enticing Lorelei and the
dangerous Rhine-daughters watching over golden treasures, once,
perhaps, metaphors of moonlight ripples? They who have listened to
the wild laughter of these in Wagner's opera, Das Rheingold, and
their weird 'Heiayaheia!' can hardly fail to suspect that they became
associated with the real human nymphs whom the summer sun still finds
freely sporting in the bright streams of Russia, Hungary, Austria,
and East Germany, naked and not ashamed. Many a warning voice against
these careless Phrynes, who may have left tattered raiment on the shore
to be transfigured in the silvery waves, must have gone forth from
priests and anxious mothers. Nor would there be wanting traditions
enough to impress such warnings. Few regions have been without such
stories as those which the traveller Hiouen-Thsang (7th century)
found in Buddhist chronicles of the Rakshasis of Ceylon. 'They waylay
the merchants who land in the isle, and, changing themselves to women
of great beauty, come before them with fragrant flowers and music;
attracting them with kind words to the town of Iron, they offer them
a feast, and give themselves up to pleasure with them; then shut them
in an iron prison, and eat them one after the other.'

There is a strong accent of human nature in the usual plot of the
Swan-maiden legend, her garments stolen while she bathes, and her
willingness to pay wondrous prices for them--since they are her
feathers and her swanhood, without which she must remain for ever
captive of the thief. The stories are told in regions so widely
sundered, and their minor details are so different, that we may at
any rate be certain that they are not all traceable solely to fleecy
clouds. Sometimes the garments of the demoness--and these beings
are always feminine--are not feathery, as in the German stories, but
seal-skins, or of nondescript red tissue. Thus, the Envoy Li Ting-yuan
(1801) records a Chinese legend of a man named Ming-ling-tzu, a poor
and worthy farmer without family, who, on going to draw water from
a spring near his house, saw a woman bathing in it. She had hung
her clothes on a pine tree, and, in punishment for her 'shameless
ways' and for her fouling the well, he carried off the dress. The
clothing was unlike the familiar Lewchewan in style, and 'of a ruddy
sunset colour.' The woman, having finished her bath, cried out in
great anger, 'What thief has been here in broad day? Bring back my
clothes, quick.' She then perceived Ming-ling-tzu, and threw herself
on the ground before him. He began to scold her, and asked why she
came and fouled his water; to which she replied that both the pine
tree and the well were made by the Creator for the use of all. The
farmer entered into conversation with her, and pointed out that fate
evidently intended her to be his wife, as he absolutely refused to
give up her clothes, while without them she could not get away. The
result was that they were married. She lived with him for ten years,
and bore him a son and a daughter. At the end of that time her fate
was fulfilled: she ascended a tree during the absence of her husband,
and having bidden his children farewell, glided off on a cloud and
disappeared. [157]

In South Africa a parallel myth, in its demonological aspect, bears
no trace of a cloud origin. In this case a Hottentot, travelling with
a Bushwoman and her child, met a troop of wild horses. They were all
hungry; and the woman, taking off a petticoat made of human skin,
was instantly changed into a lioness. She struck down a horse, and
lapped its blood; then, at the request of the Hottentot, who in his
terror had climbed a tree, she resumed her petticoat and womanhood, and
the friends, after a meal of horseflesh, resumed their journey. [158]
Among the Minussinian Tartars these demons partake of the nature of
the Greek Harpies; they are bloodthirsty vampyre-demons who drink
the blood of men slain in battle, darken the air in their flight,
and house themselves in one great black fiend. [159] As we go East
the portrait of the Swan-maiden becomes less dark, and she is not
associated with the sea or the under-world. Such is one among the
Malays, related by Mr. Tylor. In the island of Celebes it is said
that seven nymphs came down from the sky to bathe, and were seen by
Kasimbaha, who at first thought them white doves, but in the bath
perceived they were women. He stole the robe of one of them, Utahagi,
and as she could not fly without it, she became his wife and bare him
a son. She was called Utahagi because of a single magic white hair
she had; this her husband pulled out, when immediately a storm arose,
and she flew to heaven. The child was in great grief, and the husband
cast about how he should follow her up into the sky.

The Swan-maiden appears somewhat in the character of a Nemesis in
a Siberian myth told by Mr. Baring-Gould. A certain Samoyed who had
stolen a Swan-maiden's robe, refused to return it unless she secured
for him the heart of seven demon robbers, one of whom had killed
the Samoyed's mother. The robbers were in the habit of hanging
up their hearts on pegs in their tent. The Swan-maiden procured
them. The Samoyed smashed six of the hearts; made the seventh robber
resuscitate his mother, whose soul, kept in a purse, had only to be
shaken over the old woman's grave for that feat to be accomplished,
and the Swan-maiden got back her plumage and flew away rejoicing. [160]

In Slavonic Folklore the Swan-maiden is generally of a dangerous
character, and if a swan is killed they are careful not to show it to
children for fear they will die. When they appear as ducks, geese,
and other water-fowl, they are apt to be more mischievous than when
they come as pigeons; and it is deemed perilous to kill a pigeon,
as among sailors it was once held to kill an albatross. Afanasief
relates a legend which shows that, even when associated with the
water-king, the Tsar Morskoi or Slavonic Neptune, the pigeon preserves
its beneficent character. A king out hunting lies down to drink from
a lake (as in the story related on p. 146), when Tsar Morskoi seizes
him by the beard, and will not release him until he agrees to give
him his infant son. The infant prince, deserted on the edge of the
fatal lake, by advice of a sorceress hides in some bushes, whence he
presently sees twelve pigeons arrive, which, having thrown off their
feathers, disport themselves in the lake. At length a thirteenth,
more beautiful than the rest, arrives, and her sorochka (shift) Ivan
seizes. To recover it she agrees to be his wife, and, having told
him he will find her beneath the waters, resumes her pigeon-shape and
flies away. Beneath the lake he finds a beautiful realm, and though
the Tsar Morskoi treats him roughly and imposes heavy tasks on him,
the pigeon-maiden (Vassilissa) assists him, and they dwell together
happily. [161]

In Norse Mythology the vesture of the uncanny maid is oftenest a
seal-skin, and a vein of pathos enters the legends. Of the many
legends of this kind, still believed in Sweden and Norway, one has
been pleasantly versified by Miss Eliza Keary. A fisherman having
found a pretty white seal-skin, took it home with him. At night there
was a wailing at his door; the maid enters, becomes his wife, and
bears him three children. But after seven years she finds the skin,
and with it ran to the shore. The eldest child tells the story to
the father on his return home.


Then we three, Daddy,
Ran after, crying, 'Take us to the sea!

Wait for us, Mammy, we are coming too!
Here's Alice, Willie can't keep up with you!
Mammy, stop--just for a minute or two!'
At last we came to where the hill
Slopes straight down to the beach,
And there we stood all breathless, still
Fast clinging each to each.
We saw her sitting upon a stone,
Putting the little seal-skin on.
O Mammy! Mammy!
She never said goodbye, Daddy,
She didn't kiss us three;
She just put the little seal-skin on
And slipt into the sea!


Some of the legends of this character are nearly as realistic as
Mr. Swinburne's 'Morality' of David and Bathsheba. To imagine
the scarcity of wives in regions to which the primitive Aryan
race migrated, we have only to remember the ben trovato story of
Californians holding a ball in honour of a bonnet, in the days before
women had followed them in migration. To steal Bathsheba's clothes,
and so capture her, might at one period have been sufficiently common
in Europe to require all the terrors contained in the armoury of
tradition concerning the demonesses that might so be taken in, and
might so tempt men to take them in. In the end they might disappear,
carrying off treasures in the most prosaic fashion, or perhaps they
might bring to one's doors a small Trojan war. It is probable that
the sentiment of modesty, so far as it is represented in the shame
of nudity, was the result of prudential agencies. Though the dread
of nudity has become in some regions a superstition in the female
mind strong enough to have its martyrs--as was seen at the sinking
of the Northfleet and the burning hotel in St. Louis--it is one
that has been fostered by men in distrust of their own animalism. In
barbarous regions, where civilisation introduces clothes, the women
are generally the last to adopt them; and though Mr. Herbert Spencer
attributes this to female conservatism, it appears more probable
that it is because the men are the first to lose their innocence and
the women last to receive anything expensive. It is noticeable how
generally the Swan-maidens are said in the myths to be captured by
violence or stratagem. At the same time the most unconscious temptress
might be the means of breaking up homes and misleading workmen, and
thus become invested with all the wild legends told of the illusory
phenomena of nature in popular mythology.

It is marvellous to observe how all the insinuations of the bane were
followed by equal dexterities in the antedote. The fair tempters might
disguise their intent in an appeal to the wayfarer's humanity; and,
behold, there were a thousand well-attested narratives ready for the
lips of wife and mother showing the demoness appealing for succour
to be fatalest of all!

There is a stone on the Müggelsberger, in Altmark, which is said to
cover a treasure; this stone is sometimes called 'Devil's Altar,'
and sometimes it is said a fire is seen there which disappears when
approached. It lies on the verge of Teufelsee,--a lake dark and small,
and believed to be fathomless. Where the stone lies a castle once
stood which sank into the ground with its fair princess. But from the
underground castle there is a subterranean avenue to a neighbouring
hill, and from this hill of an evening sometimes comes an old woman,
bent over her staff. Next day there will be seen a most beautiful lady
combing her long golden hair. To all who pass she makes her entreaties
that they will set her free, her pathetic appeals being backed by offer
of a jewelled casket which she holds. The only means of liberating her
is, she announces, that some one shall bear her on his shoulders three
times round Teufelsee church without looking back. The experiment
has several times been made. One villager at his first round saw a
large hay-waggon drawn past him by four mice, and following it with
his eyes received blows on the ears. Another saw a waggon drawn by
four coal-black fire-breathing horses coming straight against him,
started back, and all disappeared with the cry 'Lost again for ever!' A
third tried and almost got through. He was found senseless, and on
recovering related that when he took the princess on his shoulders
she was light as a feather, but she grew heavier and heavier as he
bore her round. Snakes, toads, and all horrible animals with fiery
eyes surrounded him; dwarfs hurled blocks of wood and stones at him;
yet he did not look back, and had nearly completed the third round,
when he saw his village burst into flames; then he looked behind--a
blow felled him--and he seems to have only lived long enough to tell
this story. The youth of Köpernick are warned to steel their hearts
against any fair maid combing her hair near Teufelsee. But the folklore
of the same neighbourhood admits that it is by no means so dangerous
for dames to listen to appeals of this kind. In the Gohlitzsee, for
example, a midwife was induced to plunge in response to a call for aid;
having aided a little Merwoman in travail, she was given an apronful of
dust, which appeared odd until on shore it proved to be many thalers.

In countries where the popular imagination, instead of being
scientific, is trained to be religiously retrospective, it relapses
at the slightest touch into the infantine speculations of the human
race. Not long ago, standing at a shop-window in Ostend where a
'Japanese Siren' was on view, the clever imposture interested me
less than the comments of the passing and pausing observers. The
most frequent wonders seriously expressed were, whether she sang,
or combed her hair, or was under a doom, or had a soul to be
saved. Every question related to Circe, Ulysses and the Sirens, and
other conceptions of antiquity. The Japanese artists rightly concluded
they could float their Siren in any intellectual waters where Jonah
in his whale could pass, or a fish appear with its penny. Nay, even
in their primitive form the Sirens find their kith and kin still
haunting all the coasts of northern Europe. A type of the Irish and
Scottish Siren may be found in the very complete legend of one seen
by John Reid, shipmaster of Cromarty. With long flowing yellow hair
she sat half on a rock, half in water, nude and beautiful, half woman
half fish, and John managed to catch and hold her tight till she had
promised to fulfil three wishes; then, released, she sprang into the
sea. The wishes were all fulfilled, and to one of them (though John
would never reveal it) the good-luck of the Reids was for a century
after ascribed. [162]

The scene of this legend is the 'Dropping Cave,' and significantly
near the Lover's Leap. One of John's wishes included the success of
his courtship. These Caves run parallel with that of Venusberg, where
the minstrel Tannhäuser is tempted by Venus and her nymphs. Heine
finishes off his description of this Frau Venus by saying he fancied
he met her one day in the Place Bréda. 'What do you take this lady
to be?' asked he of Balzac, who was with him. 'She is a mistress,'
replied Balzac. 'A duchess rather,' returned Heine. But the friends
found on further explanation that they were both quite right. Venus'
doves, soiled for a time, were spiritualised at last and made white,
while the snowy swan grew darker. An old German word for swan,
elbiz, originally denoting its whiteness (albus), furthered its
connection with all 'elfish' beings--elf being from the same word,
meaning white; but, as in Goethe's 'Erl König,' often disguising a
dark character. The Swan and the Pigeon meet (with some modifications)
as symbols of the Good and Evil powers in the legend of Lohengrin. The
witch transforms the boy into a Swan, which, however, draws to save his
sister, falsely accused of his murder, the Knight of the Sangreal, who,
when the mystery of his holy name is inquired into by his too curious
bride, is borne away by white doves. These legends all bear in them,
however faintly, the accent of the early conflict of religion with
the wild passions of mankind. Their religious bearings bring us to
inquiries which must be considered at a later phase of our work. But
apart from purely moral considerations, it is evident that there must
have been practical dangers surrounding the early social chaos amid
which the first immigrants in Europe found themselves.

Although the legend of Lady Godiva includes elements of another origin,
it is probable that in the fate of Peeping Tom there is a distant
reflection of the punishment sometimes said to overtake those who
gazed too curiously upon the Swan-maiden without her feathers. The
devotion of the nude lady of Coventry would not be out of keeping
with one class of these mermaiden myths. There is a superstition, now
particularly strong in Iceland, that all fairies are children of Eve,
whom she hid away on an occasion when the Lord came to visit her,
because they were not washed and presentable. So he condemned them
to be for ever invisible. This superstition seems to be related to
an old debate whether these præternatural beings are the children of
Adam and Eve or not. A Scotch story bears against that conclusion. A
beautiful nymph, with a slight robe of green, came from the sea and
approached a fisherman while he was reading his Bible. She asked him if
it contained any promise of mercy for her. He replied that it contained
an offer of salvation to 'all the children of Adam;' whereupon with a
loud shriek she dashed into the sea again. Euphemism would co-operate
with natural compassion in saying a good word for 'the good little
people,' whether hiding in earth or sea. In Altmark, 'Will-o'-wisps'
are believed to be the souls of unbaptized children--sometimes of
lunatics--unable to rest in their graves; they are called 'Light-men,'
and it is said that though they may sometimes mislead they often guide
rightly, especially if a small coin be thrown them,--this being also
an African plan of breaking a sorcerer's spell. Christianity long
after its advent in Germany had to contend seriously with customs and
beliefs found in some lakeside villages where the fishermen regarded
themselves as in friendly relations with the præternatural guardians
of the waters, and unto this day speak of their presiding sea-maiden
as a Holy Fräulein. They hear her bells chiming up from the depths in
holy seasons to mingle with those whose sounds are wafted from church
towers; and it seems to have required many fables, told by prints of
fishermen found sitting lifeless on their boats while listening to
them, to gradually transfer reverence to the new christian fairy.

It may be they heard some such melody as that which has found its
finest expression in Mr. Matthew Arnold's 'Forsaken Merman:'--


Children dear, was it yesterday
(Call yet once) that she went away?
Once she sate with you and me,
On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,
And the youngest sate on her knee.
She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well,
When down swung the sound of the far-off bell.
She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea;
She said: 'I must go, for my kinsfolk pray
In the little grey church on the shore to-day.
'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me!
And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee.'
I said, 'Go up, dear heart, through the waves,
Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves.'
She smil'd, she went up through the surf in the bay.
Children dear, was it yesterday?


Perhaps we should find the antecedents of this Merman's lost Margaret,
whom he called back in vain, in the Danish ballad of 'The Merman and
the Marstig's Daughter,' who, in Goethe's version, sought the winsome
May in church, thither riding as a gay knight on


horse of the water clear,
The saddle and bridle of sea-sand were.

They went from the church with the bridal train,
They danced in glee, and they danced full fain;
They danced them down to the salt-sea strand,
And they left them standing there, hand in hand.

'Now wait thee, love, with my steed so free,
And the bonniest bark I'll bring for thee.'
And when they passed to the white, white sand,
The ships came sailing on to the land;

But when they were out in the midst of the sound,
Down went they all in the deep profound!
Long, long on the shore, when the winds were high,
They heard from the waters the maiden's cry.

I rede ye, damsels, as best I can--
Tread not the dance with the Water-Man!


According to other legends, however, the realm under-sea was not a
place for weeping. Child-eyes beheld all that the Erl-king promised,
in Goethe's ballad--


Wilt thou go, bonny boy? wilt thou go with me?
My daughters shall wait on thee daintily;
My daughters around thee in dance shall sweep,
And rock thee and kiss thee, and sing thee to sleep!


Or perhaps child-eyes, lingering in the burning glow of manhood's
passion, might see in the peaceful sea some picture of lost love like
that so sweetly described in Heine's 'Sea Phantom:'--


But I still leaned o'er the side of the vessel,
Gazing with sad-dreaming glances
Down at the water, clear as a mirror,
Looking yet deeper and deeper,--
Till far in the sea's abysses,
At first like dim wavering vapours,
Then slowly--slowly--deeper in colour,
Domes of churches and towers seemed rising,
And then, as clear as day, a city grand....
Infinite longing, wondrous sorrow,
Steal through my heart,--
My heart as yet scarce healed;
It seems as though its wounds, forgotten,
By loving lips again were kissed,
And once again were bleeding
Drops of burning crimson,
Which long and slowly trickle down
Upon an ancient house below there
In the deep, deep sea-town,
On an ancient, high-roofed, curious house,
Where, lone and melancholy,
Below by the window a maiden sits,
Her head on her arm reclined,--
Like a poor and uncared-for child;
And I know thee, thou poor and long-sorrowing child!

... I meanwhile, my spirit all grief,
Over the whole broad world have sought thee,
And ever have sought thee,
Thou dearly beloved,
Thou long, long lost one,
Thou finally found one,--
At last I have found thee, and now am gazing
Upon thy sweet face,
With earnest, faithful glances,
Still sweetly smiling;
And never will I again on earth leave thee.
I am coming adown to thee,
And with longing, wide-reaching embraces,
Love, I leap down to thy heart!


The temptations of fishermen to secure objects seen at the bottom of
transparent lakes, sometimes appearing like boxes or lumps of gold,
and even more reflections of objects in the upper world or air, must
have been sources of danger; there are many tales of their being so
beguiled to destruction. These things were believed treasures of the
little folk who live under water, and would not part with them except
on payment. In Blumenthal lake, 'tis said, there is an iron-bound
yellow coffer which fishermen often have tried to raise, but their
cords are cut as it nears the surface. At the bottom of the same
lake valuable clothing is seen, and a woman who once tried to secure
it was so nearly drowned that it is thought safer to leave it. The
legends of sunken towns (as in Lake Paarsteinchen and Lough Neagh),
and bells (whose chimes may be heard on certain sacred days), are
probably variants of this class of delusions. They are often said to
have been sunk by some final vindictive stroke of a magician or witch
resolved to destroy the city no longer trusting them. Landslides,
engulfing seaside homes, might originate legends like that of King
Gradlon's daughter Dahut, whom the Breton peasant sees in rough weather
on rocks around Poul-Dahut, where she unlocked the sluice-gates on
the city Is in obedience to her fiend-lover.

If it be remembered that less than fifty years ago Dr. Belon [163]
thought it desirable to anatomise gold fishes, and prove in various
ways that it is a fallacy to suppose they feed on pure gold (as
many a peasant near Lyons declares of the laurets sold daily in the
market), it will hardly be thought wonderful that perilous visions of
precious things were seen by early fishermen in pellucid depths, and
that these should at last be regarded as seductive arts of Lorelei,
who have given many lakes and rivers the reputation of requiring one
or more annual victims.

Possibly it was through accumulation of many dreams about beautiful
realms beneath the sea or above the clouds that suicide became among
the Norse folk so common. It was a proverb that the worst end was to
die in bed, and to die by suicide was to be like Egil, and Omund, and
King Hake, like nearly all the heroes who so passed to Valhalla. The
Northman had no doubt concerning the paradise to which he was going,
and did not wish to reach it enfeebled by age. But the time would come
when the earth and human affection must assert their claims, and the
watery tribes be pictured as cruel devourers of the living. Even so
would the wood-nymphs and mountain-nymphs be degraded, and fearful
legends of those lost and wandering in dark forests be repeated to
shuddering childhood. The actual dangers would mask themselves in
the endless disguises of illusion, the wold and wave be peopled with
cruel and treacherous seducers. Thus suicide might gradually lose
its charms, and a dismal underworld of heartless gnomes replace the
grottoes and fairies.

We may close this chapter with a Scottish legend relating to the
'Shi'ichs,' or Men of Peace, in which there is a strange intimation
of a human mind dreaming that it dreams, and so far on its way to
waking. A woman was carried away by these shadowy beings in order that
she might suckle her child which they had previously stolen. During her
retention she once observed the Shi'ichs anointing their eyes from a
caldron, and seizing an opportunity, she managed to anoint one of her
own eyes with the ointment. With that one eye she now saw the secret
abode and all in it 'as they really were.' The deceptive splendour
had vanished. The gaudy ornaments of a fairy grot had become the
naked walls of a gloomy cavern. When this woman had returned to live
among human beings again, her anointed eye saw much that others saw
not; among other things she once saw a 'man of peace,' invisible to
others, and asked him about her child. Astonished at being recognised,
he demanded how she had been able to discover him; and when she had
confessed, he spit in her eye and extinguished it for ever.