great beauty! He threw his cloak about her, and took her
to his home. There she lived with him and bore a son. But he was
continually troubled that one so beautiful should be dumb; for she had
never spoken. One day a companion jeered at the spectre that he had at
home, and, angry and terrified, he urged her to tell him who or what she
was, and threatened with his sword to kill the child before her, if she
did not. Then she said that he had lost a good wife by forcing her to
speak; and she vanished. A few years after, when the son was playing on
the shore, his mother dragged him into the sea, and he was drowned.

In the South of France a belief prevails in beings called Dracs, who
have apparently a complete human form, and who inhabit indifferently the
rivers or the sea. Gervase of Tilbury has recorded several instances of
their appearance, of which the following is one:--

"There is on the banks of the Rhone, under a guard-house at the north
gate of the city of Arles, a great pool of the river. In these deep
places they say that the Dracs are often seen of bright nights. A few
years ago, there was, for three successive days, openly heard the
following words in the place outside the gate of the city which I have
mentioned, while the figure, as it were, of a man ran along the
bank,--'The hour is past, and the man does not come!' On the third day,
about the ninth hour, while the figure of a man raised his voice higher
than usual, a young man ran swiftly to the bank, plunged in, and was
swallowed up, and the voice was heard no more."

The depths of the sea appear to be the Fairy Land of France, and the
French Mermaids merely fairies. Such is their character in popular
ballads of Provence. Among popular legends of Brittany, "The Groac'h of
the Isle of Lok" is peculiarly striking, but withal merely a fairy
story,--the Groac'h being a first cousin at least of Undine and the
Lorelei. Yet in Brittany another Mermaid--Morgan, or Morverc'h,
sea-woman, or sea-daughter--sings and combs its golden hair by the
noontide sun at the edge of the ocean.

The Irish Moruach, or Merrow, seamaid, is the _bona fide_ Mermaid, and
some families in the South of Ireland are said to claim descent from
them. There are numerous legends.

Mermaids are plentiful in all accounts of Norway; and Aldrovandus gives
the portrait of one that was captured in the Baltic, and presented to
Sigismund, King of Poland. It lived several days, and was seen by all