reat state.

With your own father's daughter
I'd be sure to agree,
But to drink the salt water
Wouldn't do so with me!

The lady looked at him quite amazed, and swinging her head from side to
side like a great scholar, 'Well,' says she, 'Maurice, if you're not a
poet, where is poetry to be found?'

In this way they kept on at it, framing high compliments; one answering
the other, and their feet going with the music as fast as their tongues.
All the fish kept dancing, too; Maurice heard the clatter and was afraid
to stop playing lest it might be displeasing to the fish, and not
knowing what so many of them may take it into their heads to do to him
if they got vexed.

Well, the lady with the green hair kept on coaxing Maurice with soft
speeches, till at last she over-persuaded him to promise to marry her,
and be king over the fishes, great and small. Maurice was well fitted to
be their king, if they wanted one that could make them dance; and he
surely would drink, barring the salt water, with any fish of them all.

[Illustration: The Sea-lady allures Maurice into the Sea.]

When Maurice's mother saw him with that unnatural thing in the form of a
green-haired lady as his guide, and he and she dancing down together so
lovingly to the water's edge, through the thick of the fishes, she
called out after him to stop and come back. 'Oh, then,' says she, 'as if
I was not widow enough before, there he is going away from me to be
married to that scaly woman. And who knows but 'tis grandmother I may be
to a hake or a cod--Lord help and pity me, but 'tis a mighty unnatural
thing! And may-be 'tis boiling and eating my own grandchild I'll be,
with a bit of salt butter, and I not knowing it! Oh, Maurice, Maurice,
if there's any love or nature left in you, come back to your own _ould_
mother, who reared you like a decent Christian!' Then the poor woman
began to cry and sob so finely that it would do anyone good to hear
her.

Maurice was not long getting to the rim of the water. There he kept
playing and dancing on as if nothing was the matter, and a great
thundering wave coming in towards him ready to swallow him up alive; but
as he could not see it, he did not fear it. His mother it was who saw it
plainly through the big tears that were rolling down her cheeks; and
though she saw it, and her heart was aching as much as ever mother's
heart ached for a son, she kept dancing, dancing all the time for the
bare