Note 331 — 39 TAM LIN

In the MS. of B also the transformation into a het gad of iron comes just before the direction to dip the object into a stand of milk; but we have the turning into a mother-naked man several stanzas earlier. By reading, in 331, I'll turn, and putting 33 after 34, we should have the order of events which we find in A.

That Tam Lin should go into water or milk as a dove or snake, or in some other of his temporary forms, and come out a man, is the only disposition which is consistent with the order of the world to which he belongs. Mannhardt gives us a most curious and interesting insight into some of the laws of that world in Wald-u. Feldkulte, II, 64-70. The wife of a Cashmere king, in a story there cited from Benfey's Pantschatantra, I, 254, § 92, is delivered of a serpent, but is reported to have borne a son. Another king offers his daughter in marriage, and the Cashmere king, to keep his secret, accepts the proposal. In due time the princess claims her bridegroom, and they give her the snake. Though greatly distressed, she accepts her lot, and takes the snake about to the holy places, at the last of which she receives a command to put the snake into the water-tank. As soon as this is done the snake takes the form of a man. A woman's giving birth to a snake was by no means a rare thing in Karst in the seventeenth century, and it was the rule in one noble family that all the offspring should be in serpent form, or at least have a serpent's head; but a bath in water turned them into human shape. For elves and water nymphs who have entered into connections with men in the form of women, bathing in water is equally necessary for resuming their previous shape, as appears from an ancient version of the story of Melusina: Gervasius, ed. Liebrecht, p. 4 f, and Vincentius Bellovacensis, Speculum Naturale, 2, 127 (from Helinaudus), cited by Liebrecht, at p. 66.

A lad who had been changed into an ass by a couple of witches recovers his shape merely by jumping into water and rolling about in it: William of Malmesbury's Kings of England, c. 10, cited by Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, iii, 109; Düntzer, Liebrecht's Dunlop, p. 538. Simple illusions of magic, such as clods and wisps made to appear swine to our eyes, are inevitably dissolved when the unrealities touch water. Liebrecht's Gervasius, p. 65.