to desist, telling him that it was death for him to cross
that stream. Graelent did not heed her, but plunged into the torrent.
The stream was deep and rapid, and presently he was torn from his
saddle. Seeing this, the lady's attendants begged her to save him.
Turning back, the lady clutched her lover by the belt and dragged him
to the shore. He was well-nigh drowned, but under her care he speedily
recovered, and, say the Breton folk, entered with her that realm of
Fairyland into which penetrated Thomas the Rhymer, Ogier the Dane, and
other heroes. His white steed when it escaped from the river grieved
greatly for its master, rushing up and down the bank, neighing loudly,
and pawing with its hoofs upon the ground. Many men coveted so noble
a charger, and tried to capture him, but all in vain, so each year,
"in its season," as the old romance says, the forest is filled with
the sorrowful neighing of the good steed which may not find its
master.

The story of Graelent is one of those which deal with what is known to
folk-lorists as the 'fairy-wife' subject. A taboo is always placed
upon the mortal bridegroom. Sometimes he must not utter the name of
his wife; in other tales, as in that of Melusine, he must not seek her
on a certain day of the week. The essence of the story is, of course,
that the taboo is broken, and in most cases the mortal husband loses
his supernatural mate.

Another incident in the general _motif_ is the stealing of the
fairy-woman's clothes. The idea is the same as that found in stories
where the fisherman steals the sea-woman's skin canoe as a prelude to
making her his wife, or the feather cloak of the swan-maiden is seized
by the hunter when he finds her asleep, thus placing the supernatural
maiden in his power. Among savages it is quite a common and usual
circumstance for the spouses not to mention each other's names for
months after marriage, nor even to see one another's faces. In the
story under consideration the taboo consists in the mortal bridegroom
being forbidden to allude in any circumstances to his supernatural
wife, who is undoubtedly the same type of being encountered by Thomas
the Rhymer and Bonny Kilmeny in the ballads related of them. They are
denizens of a country, a fairy realm, which figures partly as an abode
of the dead, and which we are certainly justified in identifying with
the Celtic Otherworld. The river which the fairy-woman crosses bears a
certain resemblance to the St