Note 48.1 — Chapter II · THE STORY IN MODERN FOLKLORE—THE KING OF THE FISHES TYPE.

We have now surveyed the stories of the Danae type and those of the King of the Fishes type. There remain a large number of variants wherein one or more of the incidents are wanting. Some of these have already been mentioned. Where, as in many stories of the Danae type, the hero is not duplicated, the Life-token is not found. A few stories, however, approximate to the King of the Fishes type, but want the Life-token. We may, perhaps, class these together as The Mermaid type, from a variant of Campbell’s Argyllshire tale, told him by an aged man in South Uist, which lays the scene in the Isle of Skye. The eldest of three sons is promised to the mermaid; and when, at the age of eighteen, he learns this, he wisely sets out for a place where there is no salt water. He divides equitably the carcase of an old horse between a lion, a wolf and a falcon, who are disputing over it, and receives in return the power to transform himself into either of their forms at pleasure, or (for Mr. Campbell was uncertain which) the promise of their help at need. By this means, when acting as a king’s herd, he overcomes three giants and a giantess, and obtains three enchanted flying horses, three splendid dresses and a washing-basin and silver comb, on using which he would become the most beautiful man in the world. He fights the “draygan” from the sea on three successive days, and rescues the king’s daughter. The latter afterwards recognises him by a scratch that she had made on his forehead, as he lay with his head in her lap the third day, waiting for the dragon. They are married, but their happiness is of no great length; for the lady longs for dulse, and as he goes to seek it the mermaid catches and swallows him. But mermaids are susceptible to music; so by playing on the harp the hero’s wife succeeds in inducing the creature to bring up her husband, who in the form of a falcon flies to shore. The mermaid then takes the wife instead. A soothsayer informs him that the mermaid’s soul is an egg, inside a goose, inside a ram, inside a hurtful bull that dwells in a certain glen. With the help of the Grateful Animals he succeeds in recovering his wife and slaying the mermaid.48.1