one is a strange figure of a mermaid, which to many might seem out of character in a church." (Mr Blight gives a drawing of this bench end.) This is followed by a quotation bearing the initials R. S. H., which it is presumed are those of the Rev. R. S. Hawker, of Morwenstow.

The fishermen who were the ancestors of the Church, came from the Galilean waters to haul for men. We, born to God at the font, are children of the water. Therefore all the early symbolism of the Church was of and from the sea. The carvure of the early arches was taken from the sea and its creatures. Fish, dolphins, mermen, and mermaids abound in the early types, transferred to wood and stone."

Surely the poet of "the Western Shore" might have explained the fact of the figures of mermaids being carved on the bench ends of some of the old churches with less difficulty, had he remembered that nearly all the churches on the coast of Cornwall were built by and for fishermen, to whom the superstitions of mermen and mermaidens had the familiarity of a creed.

The intimate connexion between the inhabitants of Brittany, of Cornwall, and of Wales, would appear to lead to the conclusion that the Breton word Morverch, or mermaid, had much to do with the name of this parish, Morva,-of Morvel, near Liskeard; and probably of Morwenstow, of which the vicar, Mr Hawker, writes,-"My glebe occupies a position of wild and singular beauty. Its western boundary is the sea, skirted by tall and tremendous cliffs, and near their brink, with the exquisite taste of ecclesiastical antiquity, is placed the church. The original and proper designation of the parish is Morwenstow-that is, Morwenna's Stow, or station; but it has been corrupted by recent usage, like many other local names."

THE

MERRYMAIDS AND MERRYMEN.

HE "merry-maids" of the Cornish fishermen and sailors possess the well-recognised features of the mermaid. The Breton ballad, quoted by Mr Keightley, relating to the Morgan (sea-women) and the Morverch (sea-daughters) pecuculiarly adapts itself to the Cornish merry-maid.

"Fisher, hast thou seen the mermaid combing her hair, yellow as gold, by the noontide sun, at the edge of the water?"

"I have seen the fair mermaid; I have also heard her singing her songs plaintive as the waves."

The Irish legends make us acquainted with the amours of men with those sea-sirens. We learn that the Merrows or Moruachs came occasionally from the sea, and interested themselves in the affairs of man. Amongst the fragments which have been gathered, here a pebble and there a pebble, along the Western coast, will be found similar narratives.

The sirens of the Egean Sea-probably the parents of the medieval mermaid-possess in a pre-eminent degree the beauty and the falsehood of all the race. Like all other things, even those mythical creations take colour from that they work in, like the dyer's hand. The Italian mermaid is the true creature of the romance of the sunny south, while the lady of our own southern seas, although she possesses much in common with her Mediterranean sister, has less poetry, but more human sympathy. The following stories read in connexion with those given by Mr Keightley and by Mr Croker will shew this.*

* See "The Fairy Family: a Series of Ballads and Metrical Tales, Illustrating the Fairy Mythology of Europe," Longman, 1857; "The Fairy Mythology, Illustrative of the Romance and Superstitions of Various Countries," by Thomas Keightley; and "Irish Fairy Legends," by Crofton Croker.

When five-and-thirty years since I spent several nights in a fisherman's cottage on a south-western coast, I was treated to many a "long yarn" respecting mermaids seen by the father and his sons in the southern ocean. The appearance of those creatures on our own shores, they said, was rare ; but still they knew they had been seen. From them I learned of more than one family who have received mysterious powers from the sea-nymphs; and I have since heard that members of those families still live, and that they intimate to their credulous friends, their firm belief that this power, which they say has been transmitted to them, was derived, by some one of their ancestors, from merman or mermaiden.

Usually those creatures are associated with some catastrophe; but they are now and then spoken of as the benefactors of man.

One word more. The story of "The Mermaid's Vengeance" has been produced from three versions of evidently the same legend, which differed in many respects one from the other, yet agreeing in the main with each other. The first I heard at the Lizard, or rather at Coverach; the second in Sennen Cove, near the Land's-End; the third at Perranzabaloe. I have preferred the last locality, as being peculiarly fitted for the home of a mermaid story, and because the old man who told the tale there was far more graphic in his incidents; and these were strung more closely together than either of the other stories.*

* The following extract from a letter from an esteemed correspondent shews the existence of a belief in those fabled creations of the ocean amongst an extensive class of the labouring population of Cornwall. There is so much that is characteristic in my correspondent's letter that it is worth preserving as supporting the evidence of the existing belief :—

"I had the chance of seeing what many of our natives firmly believed to be that family. Some fourteen years ago I found myself with about fifty emigrants, in the Gulf of St Lawrence, on board the old tub Resolution, Captain Davies, commander. We were shrouded in a fog so thick

THE MERMAID OF PADSTOW.

THE port of Padstow has a good natural harbour, so far

as rocky area goes, but it is so choked up with drifting sands as to be nearly useless. A peasant recently thus explained the cause. He told how "it was once deep water for the largest vessel, and under the care of a merry-maid—as he called her; but one day, as she was sporting on the surface, a fellow with a gun shot at her. She dived for a moment; but re-appearing, raised her right arm, and vowed that henceforth the harbour should be desolate." added the old man, "it always will be so. We have had commissions, and I know not what, about converting this place into a harbour of refuge. A harbour of refuge would

"And,"

that you might cut it like a cheese, almost all the way from the Banks to Anticosti. One morning, soon after sunrise, when near that island, the fog as thick as night overhead, at times would rise and fall on the shore like the tantalising stage curtain. All at once there was a clear opening right through the dense clouds which rested on the water that gave us a glimpse of the shore, with the rocks covered with what to us appeared very strange creatures. In a minute, the hue and cry from stem to stern, among all the cousin Johnys, was 'What are they, you? What are they, you?' Somebody gave the word mermaids. Old men, women, and children, that hadn't been out of their bunks for weeks, tore on deck to see the mermaids, when, alas! the curtain dropped or rather closed, and the fair were lost to sight, but to memory dear; for all the way to Quebec those not lucky enough to see the sight bothered the others out of their lives to know how they looked, and if we saw the comb and glass in their hands. The captain might as well save his breath as tell them that the creatures they saw on the rocks were seals, walruses, and sea-calves. 'Not yet, Captain dear, you won't come that over me at all; no, not by a long chalk! no, not at all, I can tell 'e! I know there are mermaids in the sea; have heard many say so who have seen them too! but as for seacalves, I ain't such a calf nor donkey neither as to believe ut-there may be a few of what we call soils (seals) for all I know; perhaps so, but the rest were mermaidens.' No doubt centuries hence this story of the mermaidens will be handed down, with many additions, in the log-huts of the Western States."

be a great blessing, but not all the Government commissions in the world could keep the sand out, or make the harbour deep enough to swim a frigate, unless the parsons can find out the way to take up the merrymaid's curse."

Another tale refers the choking up of this harbour to the bad spirit Tregeagle.

THE MERMAID'S ROCK.

10 the westward of the beautiful Cove of Lemorna is a a

I have never been enabled to learn any special story in connexion with this rock. There exists the popular fancy of a lady shewing herself here previous to a storm-with, of course, the invariable comb and glass. She is said to have been heard singing most plaintively before a wreck, and that, all along the shore, the spirits have echoed her in low moaning voices.* Young men are said to have swam off to the rock, lured by the songs which they heard, but they have never returned. Have we not in this a dim shadow of the story of the Sirens?

THE MERMAID OF SEATON.

NEAR a

[EAR Looe,—that is, between Down Derry and Looe,—

Tradition tells us that here once stood a goodly commercial town bearing this name, and that when it was in its pride, Plymouth was but a small fishing village.

* The undulations of the air, travelling with more rapidity than the currents, reach our shores long before the tempest by which they have been established in the centre of the Atlantic, and by producing a low moaning sound, "the soughing of the wind," predicates the storms. The " of Tregeagle" is another expression indicating the same phenomenon.

moans