272, 274; Jahn, p. 185;
Rappold, p. 135; Bartsch, vol. i. pp. 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 283, 308,
318; Niederhoeffer, vol. i. p. 168, vol. ii. p. 235, vol. iii. p. 171;
Knoop, p. 10; Jahn, pp. 182, 185, 206, 207, 217, 220, 221; and many
others.

[183] "Gent. Mag. Lib." (Pop. Superst.) p. 51; Brand, vol. i. p. 250,
note; Pitre, vol. xii. pp. 304, 307; Bartsch, vol. ii. p. 288;
"Antiquary," vol. xxi. p. 195, vol. xxii. p. 67. _Cf._ a legend in which
the scene haunted by the enchanted lady is a Johannisberg on the top of
which is a chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist, to which
pilgrimages were made and the lady appeared on Midsummer Day (Gredt, pp.
215, 219, 225, 579).

[184] Von Tettau, p. 220; Kuhn und Schwartz, pp. 9, 200; Meier, pp. 6,
8; Gredt, pp. 7, 228, 281. In another story, quoted by Meier (p. 34),
from Crusius' "Schwaeb. Chron.", the enchanted maiden is called "a
heathen's daughter"--pointing directly to pagan origin.

CHAPTER X.

SWAN-MAIDENS.

The _maerchen_ of Hasan of Bassorah--The Marquis of the Sun--The
feather robe and other disguises--The taboo--The Star's
Daughter--Melusina--The Lady of the Van Pool and other
variants--The Nightmare.

The narratives with which we have hitherto been occupied belong to the
class called Sagas. But our discussions of them have led us once and
again to refer to the other class mentioned in the second Chapter--that
of Nursery Tales or _Maerchen_. For, as I have already pointed out, there
is no bridgeless gulf between them. We have seen the very same incidents
narrated in Wales or in Germany with breathless awe as a veritable
occurrence which in India, or among the Arabs, are a mere play of fancy.
Equally well the case may be reversed, and what is gravely told at the
antipodes as a series of events in the life of a Maori ancestor, may be
reported in France or England as a nursery tale. Nay, we need not go out
of Europe itself to find the same plot serving for a saga in one land
and a _maerchen_, detached from all circumstances of time and place, in
another.

An excellent example of this is furnished by the myth of the
Swan-maiden, one of the most widely distributed, and at the same time
one of the most beautiful, stories ever evolved from the mind of man. As
its first type I shall take the tale of Hasan of Bassorah, where it has
been treated with an epic grandeur hardly surpassed by any of its
companions in the famous "Nights," and per