CHAPTER VII.
WATER-FOLK.
OF old, there were Oreads and Naiads to people the rivers and the sea,but they were not fairies; and in after-years the beautiful, brightwater-life of Greece, with its shells and dolphins, its palaces, itssubaqueous music, and its happy-hearted maids and men, faded wholly outof memory. No one dominant race came to replace them. Merpeople, Tritonsand Sirens we meet now and then, as did Hendrik Hudson's crew, and theMoruachs of Ireland, the Morverch (sea-daughters) of Brittainy; butthey, too, were grown, and half-human. They were beautiful and swift,and usually sat combing their long hair, with a mirror in one hand, andtheir glossy tails tapering from the waist. The Danish Mermaid wasgold-haired, cunning and treacherous; the Havmand or Merman washandsome, too, with black hair and beard, but kind and beneficent.
The Swedish pair offered presents to those on shore, or passing inboats, in hopes to sink them beneath the waves.
England and Ireland had no water-sprites which answered to the Nix andthe Kelpie, only the Merrow, who was a Mermaid. She was a fair woman,with white, webbed fingers. She carried upon her head a littlediving-cap, and when she came up to the rocks or the beach, she laid itby; but if it were stolen from her, she lost the power of returning tothe sea. So that if her cap were taken by a young man, she very oftencould do nothing better than to marry him, and spend her time huntingfor it up and down over his house. And once she had found it, she forgotall else but her desire to go home to "the kind sea-caves," and despitethe calling of her neighbors and husband and children, she flitted tothe shore, and plunged into the first oncoming billow, and walked theearth no longer.
MER-FOLK.]
Tales of these spirit-brides who suddenly deserted the green earth fortheir dear native waters, are common in Arabian and European folk-lore.And this characteristic was noted also in the Sea-trows of the ShetlandIslands, who divested themselves of a shining fish-skin, and could notfind the way to their ocean-beds if it were kept out of their reach. Itwas the Danish sailor's belief that seals laid by their skins everyninth night, and took maiden's forms wherewith to sport and sleep on thereefs. And for their capture as they were, warm, living and human, onehad only to snatch and hide away their talisman-skin.
The strange German Water-man wore a green hat, and when he opened hismouth, his teeth as well were green; he appeared to girls who passed hislake, and measured out ribbon, and flung it to them.
But we must search for smaller sprites than these.
The little water-fairies who devoted themselves to drawing underwhomsoever encroached on their pools and brooks, were called Nixies inGermany, Korrigans (for this was part of their office) in Brittainy;Ondins about Magdebourg, and Roussalkis, the long-haired, smiling ones,among the Slavic people.
THE LITTLE OLD NIX NEAR GHENT.]
The engaging Nixies were very minute and mischievous, and abounded inthe Shetland Isles and Cornwall, as did, moreover, the Kelpies, who werelike tiny horses, known even in China; sporting on the margin, andforeboding death by drowning, to any who beheld them; or temptingpassers-by to mount, and plunging, with their victims, headlong intothe deep. The Nix-lady was recognized when she came on shore by theedges of her dress or apron being perpetually wet. The dark-eyed Nix-manwith his seaweed hair and his wide hat, was known by his slit ears andfeet, which he was very careful to conceal. Once in a while he wasobserved to be half-fish. The naked Nixen were draped with moss andkelp; but when they were clothed, they seemed merely little men andwomen, save that the borders of their garments, dripping water, betrayedthem. They did their marketing ashore, wheresoever they were, and,according to all accounts, with a sharp eye to economy. Like theland-elves, they loved to dance and sing. Nix did not favor divers,fishermen, and other intruders on his territory, and he did his best toharm them. He was altogether a fierce, grudging, covetous littlecreature. His comelier wife was much better-natured, and befriendedhuman beings to the utmost of her power.
THE WORK OF THE NICKEL.]
Near Ghent was a little old Nix who lived in the Scheldt; he cried andsighed much, and did mischief to no one. It grieved him when childrenran away from him, yet if they asked what troubled his conscience, heonly sighed heavily, and disappeared.
The modern Greeks believed in a black sprite haunting wells and springs,who was fond of beckoning to strangers. If they came to him, he bestowedgifts upon them; if not, he never seemed angry, but turned patiently towait for the next passer-by.
There was a curious sea-creature in Norway, who swam about as a thinlittle old man with no head. About the magical Isle of Ruegen lived theNickel. His favorite game was to astonish the fishers, by hauling theirboats up among the trees.
At Arles and other towns near the Spanish border in France, were theDracs, who inhabited clear pools and streams, and floated along in theshape of gold rings and cups, so that women and children bathing shouldgrasp them, and be lured under.
The Indian water-manittos, the Nibanaba, were winning in appearance, andwicked in disposition. They, joining the Pukwudjinies, helped to killKwasind.
In Wales were the Gwragedd Annwn, elves who loved the stillness oflonely mountain-lakes, and who seldom ventured into the upper world.They had their own submerged towns and battlements; and from theirlittle sunken city the fairy-bells sent out, ever and anon, muffledsilver voices. The Gwragedd Annwn were not fishy-finned, nor were theyever dwellers in the sea; for in Wales were no mermaid-traditions, norany tales of those who beguiled mortals--
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave.
The Neck and the Stroemkarl of Swedish rivers were two little chaps withhardly a hair's breadth of difference. Either appeared under variousshapes; now as a green-hatted old man with a long beard, out of which hewrung water as he sat on the cliffs; now loitering of a summer night onthe surface, like a chip of wood or a leaf, he seemed a fair child,harping, with yellow ringlets falling from beneath a high red cap to hisshoulders. Both fairies had a genius for music; and the Stroemkarl,especially, had one most marvellous tune to which he put elevenvariations. Now, to ten of them any one might dance decorously, and withsafety; but at the eleventh, which was the enchanted one, all the worldwent mad; and tables, belfries, benches, houses, windmills, trees,horses, cripples, babies, ghosts, and whole towns full of sedatecitizens began capering on the banks about the invisible player, andkept it up in furious fashion until the last note died away.
You know that the wren was hunted in certain countries on a certain day.Well, here is one legend about her. There was a malicious fairy once inthe Isle of Man, very winsome to look at, who worked a sorryKelpie-trick, on the young men of the town, and inveigled them into thesea, where they perished. At last the inhabitants rose in vengeance, andsuspecting her of causing their loss and sorrow, gave her chase so hardand fast by land, that to save herself, she changed her shape into thatof an innocent brown wren. And because she had been so treacherous, aspell was cast upon her, inasmuch as she was obliged every New Year'sDay to fly about as that same bird, until she should be killed by ahuman hand. And from sunrise to sunset, therefore, on the first bleakday of January, all the men and boys of the island fired at the poorwrens, and stoned them, and entrapped them, in the hope of reaching theone guilty fairy among them. And as they could never be sure that theyhad captured the right one, they kept on year by year, chasing andpersecuting the whole flock. But every dead wren's feather theypreserved carefully, and believed that it hindered them from drowningand shipwreck for that twelvemonth; and they took the feathers with themon voyages great and small, in order that the bad fairy's magic maynever be able to prevail, as it had prevailed of yore with their unhappybrothers.
The presence of the sea-fairies had a terror in it, and against theirarts only the strongest and most watchful could hope to be victorious.Their sport was to desolate peaceful homes, and bring destruction ongallant ships. They, dwelling in streams and in the ocean, the worldover, were like the waters they loved: gracious and noble in aspect, andmeaning danger and death to th
e unwary. We fear that, like theearth-fairies, they were heartless quite.
HOB IN HOBHOLE]
But it may be that the gentle Nixies had only a blind longing for humansociety, and would not willingly have wrought harm to the creatures ofanother element. We are more willing to urge excuses for theirwrong-doing than for the like fault in our frowzly under-ground folk;for ugliness seems, somehow, not so shocking when allied with evil asdoes beauty, which was destined for all men's delight and uplifting. Asthe air-elves had their Fairyland whither mortal children wandered, andwhence they returned after an unmeasured lapse of time, still children,to the ivy-grown ruins of their homes, so the water-elves had a rewardfor those they snatched from earth; and legends assure us thewave-rocked prisoners a hundred fathoms down, never grew old, but keptthe flush of their last morning rosy ever on their brows.
Among a little community full of guile, there is great comfort inspotting one honest, kind water-boy, who, not content with beingharmless, as were the Flemish and Grecian Nixies, put himself to work todo good, and charm away some of the worries and ills that burdened theupper world. His name was Hob, and he lived in Hobhole, which was a cavescooped out by the beating tides in old Northumbria.
The lean pockets of the neighboring doctors were partly attributed tothis benignant little person; for he set up an opposition, and hisspecialty was the cure of whooping-cough. Many a Scotch mother took herlad or lass to the spray-covered mouth of the wise goblin's cave, andsang in a low voice:
Hobhole Hob! Ma bairn's gotten t' kink-cough: Tak't off! tak't off!
And so he did, sitting there with his toes in the sea. For Hobhole Hob'ssmall sake, we can afford to part friends with the whole naughty race ofwater-folk.