8o FISHES OF FANCY. 



it. And why has the stickleback to build a nest ? Because 

 during the Deluge it pulled the tow out of the bilge-hole 

 of the Ark, and if it had not been for the hedgehog who 

 plugged up the leak with its own body, Noah would have 

 had an exciting time of it, baling out his boat. 



Those who read these pages do not probably believe in 

 mermaids, or in the sea-cattle which they have helped to 

 herd ever since the days of Proteus, and long before that. 

 Yet the belief in the mermaid is a contemporary fact, 

 and in the British Isles too. From the Shetland Isles to 

 Cornwall, and in the Sister-isle as well, the coast is still 

 the resort of kelpy, and nix, and water-sprite ; while sea- 

 bulls — lineal descendants of those sea-calves with which 

 Neptune terrified the hostile charioteer — and sea-horses, 

 such as whirled the car of Poseidon over the waves he 

 ruled, still come out on dry land in the Isle of Man and 

 the Hebrides, to the great annoyance of those who own 

 land-cattle. And what are these sea-things but the prin- 

 cipalities, and powers, and possessions over which the 

 Morskoi Tsar, the Water-King of Russian folk-tale, lineal 

 descendant of Neptune, holds the sceptre ? In Ralston's 

 delightful pages we see him, a somewhat shadowy form 

 but a patriarchal monarch, living in subaqueous halls of 

 light and splendour, whence he emerges at times to seize 

 a human victim. It is generally a boy whom he gets into 

 his power, and who eventually obtains the hand of one of 

 his daughters, and escapes with her to the upper world. 

 And so through the cycle of the sea-trow myth we come 

 to our own coasts and our own day, and in the land of 

 Thule find the old, old fancy still in all its unmarred charm. 

 Along the sandy margin of the voes of Uist the beautiful 

 maiden still comes up from her home beneath the waves to 

 enjoy the sunshine, and if the tourist should chance to see 



