Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/239

Rh him back to his own country. Another version is in still closer contact with the tales previously cited. The hero is conveyed by a gigantic bird to the Golden City, and there wedded by the queen, who gives him strict charge not to ascend to the middle terrace of the palace. Disregarding this charge, he is kicked by a steed with a jewelled saddle, which he essays to mount, into a lake, and, rising to the surface, he finds himself standing in the midst of a garden-pond in his native city. Note that in all these stories the hero's disobedience has the effect of transporting him back to his native place; or, as in the Arabian tale, to his starting-point.

Another group of variants goes somewhat further, and introduces that mysterious lapse of time which visitors to Fairyland experience. A loutish youth in an Esthonian tale is beloved by a mermaid and taken to the subaqueous dwelling where she reigns as queen. He is forbidden to call her Mermaid. Every Thursday she disappears, passing the day in a locked chamber until the third cock-crow in the evening. After living happily with her for some time, he is overcome with curiosity and jealousy, and peeps in through the window-curtains. The room has no floor; but where the floor should be is water, in which the mermaid is swimming—woman to the waist, and fish below. The following day she appears to him in mourning, and, reproaching him, bids him farewell. With a thunder-clap he becomes unconscious, to find himself next lying on the beach where he had first met his love. Rising, he goes into the village to find that his parents have been dead for thirty years, and evenhi s brothers are no more. He has become an old man, and is dependent on charity. One day he ventures to tell his story. That night he disappears; and, after some time, the waves cast up his dead body on the shore. The mermaid of this story is, like the dove-maiden in the Sclavonic tale cited before, one of a well-known class, possessed of a double nature, and condemned to spend a portion of their time in the lower form, secluded from those whom they most love. The godmother, also, in the Mary's Child type, betrays in the same characteristic a trace of her mythological descent.