Chapter XVII: Sea-Maiden

_Source._--Campbell, _Pop. Tales_, No. 4. I have omitted the births of the animal comrades and transposed the carlin to the middle of the tale. Mr. Batten has considerately idealised the Sea-Maiden in his frontispiece. When she restores the husband to the wife in one of the variants, she brings him out of her mouth! "So the sea-maiden put up his head (_Who do you mean? Out of her mouth to be sure. She had swallowed him_)."

_Parallels._--The early part of the story occurs in No. xv., "Shee An Gannon," and the last part in No. xix., "Fair, Brown, and Trembling" (both from Curtin), Campbell's No. 1. "The Young King" is much like it; also MacInnes's No. iv., "Herding of Cruachan" and No. viii., "Lod the Farmer's Son." The third of Mr. Britten's Irish folk-tales in the _Folk-Lore Journal_ is a Sea-Maiden story. The story is obviously a favourite one among the Celts. Yet its main incidents occur with frequency in Continental folk-tales. Prof. Kohler has collected a number in his notes on Campbell's Tales in _Orient und Occident_, Bnd. ii., 115-8. The trial of the sword occurs in the saga of Sigurd, yet it is also frequent in Celtic saga and folk-tales (see Mr. Nutt's note, MacInnes's _Tales_, 473, and add Curtin, 320). The hideous carlin and her three giant sons is also common form in Celtic. The external soul of the Sea-Maiden carried about in an egg, in a trout, in a hoodie, in a hind, is a remarkable instance of a peculiarly savage conception which has been studied by Major Temple, _Wide-awake Stories_, 404-5; by Mr. E. Clodd, in the "Philosophy of Punchkin," in _Folk-Lore Journal_, vol. ii., and by Mr. Frazer in his _Golden Bough_, vol. ii.

_Remarks._--As both Prof. Rhys (_Hibbert Lect._, 464) and Mr. Nutt (MacInnes's _Tales_, 477) have pointed out, practically the same story (that of Perseus and Andromeda) is told of the Ultonian hero, Cuchulain, in the _Wooing of Emer_, a tale which occurs in the Book of Leinster, a MS. of the twelfth century, and was probably copied from one of the eighth. Unfortunately, it is not complete, and the Sea-Maiden incident is only to be found in a British Museum MS. of about 1300. In this, Cuchulain finds that the daughter of Ruad is to be given as a tribute to the Fomori, who, according to Prof. Rhys, _Folk-Lore_, ii., 293, have something of the night_mare_ about their etymology. Cuchulain fights _three_ of them successively, has his wounds bound up by a strip of the maiden's garments, and then departs. Thereafter many boasted of having slain the Fomori, but the maiden believed them not till at last by a stratagem she recognises Cuchulain. I may add to this that in Mr. Curtin's _Myths_, 330, the threefold trial of the sword is told of Cuchulain. This would seem to trace our story back to the seventh or eighth century and certainly to the thirteenth. If so, it is likely enough that it spread from Ireland through Europe with the Irish missions (for the wide extent of which see map in Mrs. Bryant's _Celtic Ireland_). The very letters that have spread through all Europe except Russia, are to be traced to the script of these Irish monks; why not certain folk-tales? There is a further question whether the story was originally told of Cuchulain as a hero-tale and then became departicularised as a folk-tale, or was the process _vice versa_. Certainly in the form in which it appears in the _Tochmarc Emer_ it is not complete, so that here, as elsewhere, we seem to have an instance of a folk-tale applied to a well-known heroic name, and becoming a hero-tale or saga.