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 Phœnician, 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:

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:

The mother thereupon came out of the water, and wailed this song as she put the child to her breast:

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:

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.