Note 3 — Chapter LXXXI

Cp. the palace of Morgan la Fay in the Orlando Innamorato, canto 36, (Dunlop’s History of Fiction, p. 168, Liebrecht’s translation, p. 76); also the continuation of the romance of Huon de Bourdeaux, (Dunlop’s History of Fiction, p. 262, Liebrecht’s translation, p. 128); and the romance of Ogier le Danois, (Dunlop’s History of Fiction, p. 286, Liebrecht’s translation, p. 141); cp. also the 6th Fable in the IInd book of the Hitopadeśa, (Johnson’s translation, p. 57). Stories in which human beings marry dwellers in the water are common enough in Europe, see Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 116, and ff, Veckenstedt’s Wendische Märchen, p. 192, and La Motto Fouqué’s story of Undine. The present story resembles in many points “Der rothe Hund” in Gaal’s Märchen der Magyaren. There is a similar castle in the sea in Prym und Socin, Syrische Märchen, p. 125. Cp. Hagen’s Helden-Sagen, Vol. I, p. 53, where king Wilkinus marries a Meerweib, and the following extract from a letter of Mr. David Fitzgerald’s in the Academy.

“The Siren’s tale—like many other episodes of the Iliad and the Odyssey—reappears in various forms, one of the most curious of which is perhaps to be found in Ireland. I borrow it from O’Curry; and I omit the depreciatory criticism with which it is now the fashion to season extracts from that scholar’s useful works. Ruad, son of Rigdonn, a king’s son, crossing over to North-land with three ships and thirty men in each found his vessel held fast in mid-sea. [Compare the tale of Vidúshaka in Vol. I.] At last he leaped over the side to see what was holding it, and sinking down through the waters, alighted in a meadow where were nine beautiful women. These gave him nine boatloads of gold as the price of his embraces, and by their power held the three vessels immoveable on the water above for nine days. Promising to visit them on his return, the young Irish prince got away from the Sirens and their beds of red bronze, and continued his course to Lochlann, where he stayed with his follow-pupil, son to the king of that country, for seven years. Coming back, the vessels put about to avoid the submerged isle, and had nearly gained the Irish shore, when they heard behind them the song of lamentation of the nine sea-women, who were in vain pursuit of them in a boat of bronze. One of these murdered before Ruad’s eyes the child she had borne him, and flung it head foremost after him. O’Curry left a version of this tale from the Book of Ballymote. I have borrowed a detail or two given in the Tochmarc Emere (fol. 21b)—e. g., the important Homeric feature of the watery meadow (machaire). The story given by Gervase of Tilbury (ed. Liebrecht, pp. 30, 31), of the porpoise-men in the Mediterranean and the young sailor; the Shetland seal-legend in Grimm’s edition of Croker’s tales (Irische Elfen-Märchen, Leipzig, 1826, pp. xlvii et seqq.); and the story found in Vincentius Bellovacensis and elsewhere, of the mermaid giantess and her purple cloak, may be named as belonging or related to the same cycle. These legends are represented in living Irish traditions and the purple cloak just referred to appears, much disguised, in the story of Liban in the book of the Dun.” Coraes in his notes on the Æthiopica of Heliodorus, p. 225, has the following quotation from the life of Apollonius of Tyana written by Philostratus, IV, 25, referring to Menippus who married a female of the Rákshasí type and was saved from his fate by Apollonius.

“Ἡ χρηστὴ νύμφη μία τῶν Ἐμπουσῶν ἐστιν ἃς Λαμιάς τε καὶ Μορμολυκίας οἱ πολλοὶ ἡγοῦνται ......... σαρκῶν δὲ, καὶ μάλιστα ἀνθρωπείων, ἐρῶσι, καὶ παλλεύουσι (ἴσ. σφαλλουσι) τοῖς ἀφροδισίοις, οὓς ἂν ἐθέλωσι δαίσασθαι.”