Arabian one, as his sea-sprite lives in a box, whilst the Oriental genie carried a case on his head. Again, the Welsh story describes the beautiful companion of the Man-Fish as very faithful to her liegelord, whilst exactly the contrary is told of the Oriental lady who was in vain kept in a glass case by her wicked tyrant.

Perhaps the Welsh legend is, therefore, a curious cross-breed between an old popular tale and some bookish notions accidentally picked up by the now octogenarian oyster-dredger near Tenby. What he told, looks as if it had reference to some long-forgotten viking, who was living on board ship (that is, in a box) with a bride stolen from natives; and that she, being quite willing to dwell with him (which is not the case in the Arab story) always gave warning, when he was asleep on shore, against the coming of foes.

The same old man who told this Mermaid and this Man-Fish tale, said that--" Sea-Horses have also been seen on this coast. They prowl about the fields at night and in the day-time. But they are very shy; at the least sound they make tracks, scampering off to their home, the sea, or vanishing into the clouds."

This is clearly a Nuggle; but that special name--which as yet I have not been able to trace anywhere in this country but in Shetland -George Thomas, when questioned, did not know. He neither knew anything of the "Finn" name, though his Man-Fish distinctly looks as if he were of that connection. Even of Nixes he could not tell any tale. Seals, or Selkies, which in Shetland are an alias for the "Norway Finns" (whom I identify with the Teutonic Fionn race), George Thomas only knew in their real, not in any mythological, state. He had often seen "sea-calves "-(German: See-Kälber)-as the expres sion on that shore of South Wales is. They haunt the caverns along the coast, where they breed their young. A sailor will say, on getting a glimpse of a mother with her brood: "There goes the Cow!" This word "sea-calf" renders it, in my opinion, very likely that the Scotch "Kelpie" name, which cannot be explained from Gaelic, is only a diminutive of Calf, or Kalb (German: Kälbchen, or Kälblein; in dialect speech: Kälble).

Of Sea-Horses, George Thomas further said that he had often heard sailors about his neighbourhood declare that "they had seen them on the Indian coast, where they really do exist." This, of course, refers to the zoological family of the marine creatures. Thus, in the popular mind, the mythical forms of fancy mingle with the real beings of natural history, if the former have not even been evolved from the latter.

XII.

Some further tales, or fragments of tales, were got from another very aged person, Bridget Hodge. She is 82 years old, and lives at a place on the Welsh sea-shore, near Saundersfoot, called "The Wise Man's Bridge." The whole place is composed of two cottages only. Probably in former times, when the land-laws were different, it was a village. Why the place was called "The Wise Man's Bridge," Mrs. Hodge could not tell; there being no bridge, nor river, anywhere near.

That old woman remembers hearing, in her youth, of a mermaid who was stranded on the beach near the Wise Man's Bridge. She sat combing her hair, and crying bitterly. Here this particular story ends a little too soon; and we are not wiser than before. Of importance, however, is another tale related by the same more than octogenarian woman :

"There was a Water-Witch who once visited the coast near herenamely, Pendine. She came from Bridgewater in a ship of her own, and had jugs on board to carry her balm in. The ship ran ashore, and was turned into a horse's head-bone. The Water-Witch cried bitterly when she found the vessel was nowhere to be seen. She piteously sang in great grief and lamentation

Lullaby! lullaby!

From Bridgewater to Pendine!

Then she mounted the horse's head-bone, and rode out to sea, disappearing for ever from view."

Of this horse's head-bone we shall presently hear more. I will only add here that Bridget Hodges also said "her son once saw a horse's head coming out of the sea, with large eyes staring vacantly; but it seemed to have no ears-or if it had, they must have been thrown back, as frightened horses sometimes have them. As he watched it, it glided back into the sea, and never came up again, although he waited over an hour, in hopes of seeing it reappear." This must have been a Nuggle apparition to the heated fancy of the man who, perhaps, had seen some large marine animal.

The horse's head-bone was again mentioned to my informant

1 Mr. George Sinclair, now of Dunedin, New Zealand, writes to me of Shetland stories about "witches on shore, who, by means of wooden cups, wreck boats at sea. The cups are put into a tub of water; each cup means a boat; and the witch names them. Then she violently agitates the water, and the number of upset cups corresponds to the number of wrecked boats." The witches' doings in Macbeth remind us of this sea-magic.

during his rambles. "I had walked out "—he writes-" from Tenby some two miles or more, and found myself at a village called New Hedges. Here I got into conversation with the villagers, and was directed to a tumble-down cottage where lived a very old fellow, 85 years of age, David Harris by name. He had been a labouring man and never able to read or write, and is now paralysed in his limbs and bent double with infirmity; but his memory is still clear and unclouded for the tales he had heard in his youth. His utterance is difficult, and many words I could not catch very easily. But I jotted down on my way what he told, and here is the result of my notes." David Harris said :

Along the Pendine shore there is a huge cavern where many ships have been known to be wrecked-and no wonder. For, the spot was at one time haunted by two Sea-Witches who used to ride out to sea on a horse's head-bone, and lure big ships to destruction, the sailors thinking they were coming into deep water. These witches had only the shape of people. Sometimes they would ride on the water, carrying the ships they were luring on their backs."

I believe the horse's head-bone represents, in these stories, an old poetical figure for the waves which in an Eddic poem are called the "prancing steeds." Homer likens the agitated, white-crested waves and wavelets to frolicsome goats and kids capering about. When in the story told by that Welsh labourer it is said that the Water Witches had "only the shape of people," it is almost literally the same expression as in a weird Zulu story, related by Mr. David Leslie. And when it is said that the witches sometimes ride on the water, carrying the ships they are luring on their backs, their character as the representatives of the waves, or rather as the waves themselves, becomes fully patent.

A story in which the Mermaid plays the part of a good genius, was told by the same old man near Tenby. He said :

:

"There were some rocks outside Milford Haven, known as the Scilly Rocks. They were the terror of seamen entering that harbour, and certain death would assuredly have overtaken all who approached them closely but for a Mermaid who was often seen to sit there, warning ships not to come too near. Or, as the sailors put it :—

The Mermaid on the rocks she sat,

With glass and comb in hand.

'Clear off, ye livery lads,' she cried;

'Ye be not far from land!'"

Among the Zulus and Amatongas (p. 119: "Only they are not quite people, now; they are Esemkofu "),

"These lines," my informant says, "were repeated to me all in one sentence; but they sounded rhythmic; so I have put them down as above." To my own question as to whether the strange word "livery" was pronounced short or long in the first syllable, the reply was: "long."

All these tales have been gathered from the people's lips in that south-western corner of Wales in which a population of Flemings came in in the twelfth century. The remembrance of that Germanic settlement from Belgium still lingers in the popular mind; for George Thomas, the old oyster-dredger, said he recollects a tradition about the Flemish clothiers who taught the Welsh people all kinds of arts-especially the working up of wool into cloth; knitting; and also, good house-building. The same old man would have it that the name of Tenby is derived from "ten" and "bay"; ten men having in far-off times landed in the bay and settled on the place. This is one of the many popular etymologies which are found in similar cases when a word apparently lends itself to an easy explanation. Another derivation explains Tenby as a Danish "by," or town, whilst the Welsh people prefer to call it "Dynbych (Denbigh) ý Pyscoed"; that is, the Precipice of Fishes.

In some places in that south-western quarter of Wales, the people still talk a language of an apparently mixed character, in which Flemish words seem to linger. At least, Mr. Charles Hancock was told by country people who spoke English, that they could not understand many things said by other villagers who also spoke English. It strikes me that the word "livery," in the Mermaid's song before quoted, might be the Flemish or Nether German lieve; so that "livery lads" would be "dear lads." The same word exists also in English in such phrases as: "I had as lief go as stay."

These indications already point to the Teutonic character of the water-tales gathered in and near Pembrokeshire.

XIII.

Lest the general reader might be startled by the above statement as to a Germanic influence even in Wales, it will be as well to give here some points not universally known.

Long before the Flemings-perhaps some 1,400 years before their immigration into Pembrokeshire-Frisian and other Germanic seafaring men and warriors may have come to Wales, and settled there ; for in Roman times, Menapians and Chaukians were already among the tribes that dwelt even farther west, in Ireland. The majority of the Belgians, to whom the Menapians belonged, were stated by VOL. CCLII, NO. 1816.

I I

Cæsar to be of Germanic origin, and to take pride in that descent. The Chaukians were a Frisian, Teutonic, tribe. If Menapians and Chaukians were dwellers in Ireland, they may be expected to have touched also the Welsh coast.

Indeed, the Menapian, or Manapian, name which, in Ptolemaios' time, occurs for a town (Mavanía móλes) in that part of Ireland where now Dublin stands, also occurs later on for St. David's (Menapia, Menevia) on the opposite Welsh coast, as well as for some other parts between Ireland and Great Britain. It stands to reason that Belgian Menapians, after having settled so far west in Ireland, would soon make a military impression upon Kymric or Siluro-Kymric soil; turning once more a little back to the east. This procedure is the more easily understood when we remember that other Belgian tribes were settled in Southern Britain long before the landing of Cæsar. He found those tribes of Belgian origin as agriculturists on the British coast, whilst the native Kelts had been driven by them into the interior.1

Altogether the history of Germanic invasions of this country shows that on several occasions Ireland—not Britain—was first aimed at. Witness the earliest attempts of the Scandinavian Picts or Pehts, and the earliest Viking expeditions of the Norwegians; both proceeding, in the first instance, along the north and north-west of what is now Scotland, towards the Irish shores. In this way, Chaukians and Menapians, Pehts and Norsemen-all coming over what Ptolemaios already called the "German Ocean "-usually set sail at first for green Erin, and, owing to various reasons, then moved again a little back in the direction from whence they had come. Even strategically this was not a bad plan. The Iberian (Euskarian or Basque) and Keltic races of the British Isles were thus repeatedly taken between a double Teutonic grip-from the west and from the east.

Keltic derivations, it is true, have been given by way of attempting to explain the Menapian name. But the fact of the Menapians having evidently come over to Ireland as the brothers-in-arms of the German Chaukians seems to point to their own Teutonic origin, which was that of the greater number of the Belgian population in Cæsar's time. A Belgian deputation itself declared to the Roman General that the vast majority of the Belgians were of German blood (plerosque Belgas esse ortos a Germanis). Cæsar further clearly says that the three races which inhabit Gaul-namely, the Belgians, the Aquitanians, and the Kelts-all differ among themselves in speech, in institutions, and laws.3 In other words, Gaul (used as a geographical,

Gallic War, v. 12.

a Ibid. ii. 4.

• Ibid. i. 1.