S4 FISHES OF FANCY. 



made out of a long fish-bone ; and lastly, they gave him 

 the shell of a large tortoise for a shield. So that by the 

 time Babiole was equipped cap-a-pie there had been a con- 

 siderable destruction of friendly fishes. When the seal- 

 fisher falls into the water, and is caught by the seals, what 

 do they do with him ? They take him down into Seal- 

 world, and there show him a harpoon of his and a wounded 

 seal, and they make him lay his hand on the wound which 

 he had inflicted, and swear that he will never hunt seals any 

 more. And then they take him, by a short cut, back to his 

 home again. Even when fishes swallow human beings, 

 they do so in the most friendly spirit imaginable. The 

 number of notable personages that have thus been amiably 

 gulped down, and afterwards restored to friends and sun- 

 light, is very large indeed, and the conduct of the fish is in 

 every case admirable. When, for instance, the " great fish " 

 swallowed Jonah, it did so with the best intentions, for, so 

 the Arabic legend says, it swam to shore, a three days' 

 journey, with its mouth above water all the way, for the 

 greater convenience of the prophet's breathing. The good 

 taste of such behaviour is undeniable. 



But by far the most widely-spread legend of the sea- 

 things' philanthropy is that which makes them the guardians 

 of lost treasures, and the vehicle for their restoration to 

 their proper owners — the fish-with-the-ring-inside-it myth, 

 that every country in turn has adapted from the original 

 story that was told on the banks of the Oxus to Aryan 

 children, long before Britain, as we know it, had come to 

 the surface of the sea. 



The salmon with a ring in its mouth, that figures in the 

 arms of Glasgow, is one of the many fishes credited with 

 being the means of lost jewels returning to their owners. 

 A certain queen gave a soldier, with whom she had fallen 



