SCOTTISH MERMAIDS. 143 
always have tails. It is not necessary to turn to any of the 
“ Just-so Stories ’’ to learn how the mermaid lost the one or came 
by the other of these useful and ornamental appendages; for a 
full and faithful account of both phenomena may be found by 
those who care to put themselves to the trouble of a little 
research in the writings of various learned authors, whose earnest- 
ness of purpose and belief in the truth of what they are narrating 
are as far removed from the cheerful inconsequence of Mr 
Kipling’s tales as are his object and style and treatment differ 
from theirs. It is not without significance of the persistency of 
the myth, and the perennial power it possesses of appealing to the 
fancy, that, even in these days when stolid matter-of-factness 
threatens to blight so much of the fruit of the imagination, the 
mermaid is still found capable of playing a leading part in the 
popular reading, just as in the literature of Greece and Rome. 
For, quite apart from the field of poetry, has not Mr H. C. 
Wells succeeded in giving us some idea of the perplexities and 
complications that are liable to arise when a “ sea-lady ’’. happens 
to find her way on shore? 
The close similarity existing between the mermaid legends of 
different times and of various parts of the continent and those of 
our own islands is, of course, nothing to be surprised at. They 
all belong to that great body of folklore which is the common 
property of so many nations and peoples, owing to its having 
been in the possession of the original racial stock and becoming, 
through process of time, indigenous to the soil wherever members 
or offshoots settled. 
Before proceeding to deal in detail with Scottish mermaid 
Jegends I may be permitted, in a few more introductory words, to 
indicate the general character of the various forms in which the 
_myth prevails. 
The mermaid of whom Tennyson has sung is, it is to be 
feared, a somewhat elementary, unsophisticated damsel in com- 
parison with the most of her kind :— 
““T would be a mermaid fair. 
I would sing to myself the whole of the day; 
With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair ; 
And still as I comb’d I would sing and say, 
‘Who is it loves me? who loves not me?’ ”’ 
Charming, indeed, she is, but she is hardly the mermaid of the 
