IS8 



MliLUN 



MF.I/VILLE 



and parliamentary troops, resulting in the defeat 

 nf tin- latter : mill amongxt it* natives have leen 

 \iehbi-hop ilf Melton, who lies buried in the 

 church, nii.l -Orator' Henley. Pop. (1801) 1766; 

 (1K8I)520; (1891)639-2. 



Mrlllll. tin- capital of the French department of 



S.-ii I Manic, on tin- Seine, near 1 1, Forest of 



Fontainebleau, 2H miles SE. of Paris. It has two 

 interesting churches, and manufactures of leather, 

 pottery. Vr. Melun. tin- Me/oduniiin of ('n-siir, 

 fell iiito the hands of the English after a six 

 months' siege, in U'J<>. and was held liy them for 

 ten year.. l'..p. ( IS7'J| 11,098; (1891) 12,7J. 



MrliiMiir. nr \ln.i -is \. the name of a fnirj' 

 lady who tigim-* prominently in tlie celebrated 

 medieval French romance so called, the motif of 

 which is similar U> that of the legend of Eros 

 (Cupid) and 1'syehe. is of far-reaching antiquity, 

 and has many parallel* and analogues in the legends 

 and popular fictions of most countries, Asiatic as 

 well as Furopeon. Briefly stated, Melusine con- 

 - to marry a knight called liaymondin, or 

 Kaymond, on the condition that he should never 

 nee her on a certain day every week, to which he 

 hinds liim-eli hy solemn oaths. She 1 tears him 

 eight sons, the warlike exploit* of seven of whom 

 occupy the greater jtortiou of this entertaining 

 romance. At length Raymond is induced liy his 

 brother to break his promise, and on the usual day 

 of Mi-lupine's scclii-ion he discovers her in a bath, 

 the lower part of her Ixxly being like a great 

 Herpent. Soon after this Raymond, enraged at 

 the cruelty of one of his sons, upbraids the inno- 

 cent Meluiine as ' a false serpent, whose ollspring 

 could never come to auv |>crmaiieiit good. Melusinc 

 forgives him, hut her doom cannot lie averted, and, 

 after a touching scene, she taken her (light through 

 the window in the likeness of a monstrous dragon; 

 and in this form she afterwards ap|>eared hovering 

 near the castle of l.usignau erected hy her own 

 fairy power for her Moved lord l!:iytnond -when- 

 ever one of her descendants was almnt to die, thus 

 acting th-' part of the Irish II,,,. 



In the myth of Cutiid and Psyche the mortal 

 maiden is not to bebold her celestial spouse; hut. 

 incited bv her envious -i-tei-. she takes a lighted 

 lamp to look upon him one night as he lies asleep. 

 and, in her agitation at beholding his marvellous 

 beauty, a drop of oil from the lamp falls on him, 

 wheiiMi|Nin he and the splendid palace vanish, and 

 lie tinds herself on a desolate heath. She is 

 reunited to him, however, after performing a 

 iiumlx-r of seemingly impossible tasks bv order of 

 her vindictive mother in law, Venn-. 1'his myth 

 ban deeply p'-in-n.iii-l F.uropcaii folklore. In a 

 IBM tale a girl is married to a gni-u bird, who 

 rhangi-s to a handsome young man on hathing in 

 a pan of milk. She is not to a.-k his name. In a 

 Norse tale a prince is Switched by his step 

 mother, MI that he is a white hear hy day and a 

 man by night; in a Danish tale, a wolf; in a 



' tale 



ile (of l-'.uiopejiii origin doubtless), a 

 hideous block man : am. in all three, and many 

 ..t her analogues and variants, the bride !..-- l,,-i 

 'i. hani-d -|iu-e for a time in the same niair 

 in the i.r.i-co K.. mail mMh. which several learned 

 scholars | )n ve endeavoured to interpret iu> typifying 

 the ii.iiirr.il phenomenon of the Dawn. 



I IMC of the oldest i U the 



Hindu myth of I'rvasi and Pimiravns. the eon 

 ditioii which the celestial nymph iniiMwes on her 

 loi-band being that she is not to see him naked 

 which Mr Andrew Lang (I'ujtlnin nml Mi/t/i] con- 

 siders, with gi"sl reason, as signifying ' a custom 

 of women.' Pmwine, the mother of Melu-ine. 

 on her husband, the king of Albany, the 



that he should never see her in child 



lied. He forget* his promise and loses his fairy 

 spouse. According to a Spanish legend of the 

 princely family of Haro, a lord of liiscay, while 

 chasing the wild !>oar, meets with a fairy, who 

 consents to weil him if he promise never to pro- 

 nounce a holy name in her presence. In another 

 Hindu legend, Bheki, the frog, is a maiden who 

 eon-en is to marry a king on the condition that he 

 never shows her a drop of water : being faint one 

 day, she asked her husband for water, which he 

 gave her, forgetting his promise, and she dis 

 appeared. 



A very striking parallel to the legend of Melusine 

 is fourm in a tale current among the Esthonians, 

 in which a wandering youth falls in love with 

 maiden sitting on a rock hy the shore, who take* 

 him (like Undine with the knight in Fm<iiu-'> 

 charming tale) down into a submarine palace, when- 

 she marries him, but imposes on him one con- 

 dition, that he must not seek to see her on a 

 Thursday. His curiosity at length overpowers his 

 prudence, anil he discovers her in a great tank of 

 water, with the lower part of her body like that of 

 a fish, the result lieing that he Buds himself near 

 his native village, where nobody knows him, for he 

 is now an old man, and all his relatives are dead. 

 I inline is also a daughter of the stream, and she 

 makes her husband promise that he will never 

 speak angrily to her when on or near any water. 

 So, too. in the Persian tale of King Kuzvaiishali and 

 the Turkish tale of the king of Yemen, lioth of 

 whom espouse daughters of the genii ; the condition 

 is that the husband must not question or complain 

 of anything his wife should do. however strange it 

 might appear. Such conditions occur so frequently 

 in the fairy tales of almost every |ieople (see also 

 l.oiiKNintlN ;) : and it may l>e added that tales of 

 Forbidden Chambers, familiar to readers of the 

 Afiiliiini .\ iii/its, of which manv examples arcs 

 current in Europe, are closely allied to legends 

 of the 1'rvasi and Puriii.-i\ as. l-'.ros and Psyche, 

 and Melusina cycle. 



8e Max-Midler's I'lii/a from n Hrrmnn Wnrkthnp, 

 voL ii. ; liaring-GouM'i Curiout Myth* of the Middle 

 A'.in; COX'B Afi/thnloiiii of ike Aryan Natinn* (1870); 

 i. ilium's Triitmiir Mat/ml, *j,i (trans. Stalybraxs); Clous- 

 l,,n\ /',i;i/.n- /'('. "nil l-'irtiinu (1887); CloUBton's 

 Uroupof Hattrrn llomanrrt and Xtoria (1889); and tlu- 

 "Id Kn^lixh vunuon of the romance of Mrltuine. from 

 the Krcncli of Jnlin of Arrmg ( liW7 ), printed for the Karly 

 Kui;li>li lixt Soi-icty (Is!'! I, from a unique MS. of the 

 loth oiitu'v, with full i*p|nTnii\ notes hy the present 

 writer on the Cupid and Psyche niul MehiMiia cycle of 

 - ,-,.; 



M<'lvill<*. the name of an island, a sound, and 

 a peninsula in the polar regions of North America. 

 The ix/tiin/ is crossed by 7"> N. hit. and 110 \\ . 

 long., and is separated on the west by Fit/william 

 Miait from Prince Patrick Island. ( Ireatest length, 

 -i"' miles; greatest breadth, 130 miles. In 1819 

 Parry, who pave the island its name, passed the 

 winter here with his crews. The xmiint. about '-'.'H 

 miles long by 2<KI broad, extends south-east of the 

 island, and eonimiinieates with the Arctic Ocean 

 on the west by Hanks Strait, and with Baffin Bay 

 on the east by Barrow Strait and Lancaster Sound. 

 The fMMMMUa projects from the continent at its 

 north eastern corner, and has on the N. the Fury 

 and Hecla Strait, and on the K. Fox Channel. It 

 i- 'J.'iO miles in length by aliout 100 in average 

 breadth. Another Melville Island lies across the 

 entrance to Van IMcmcn Culf off the shore of the 

 northern territory of South Australia. Area, 143 

 MI. m. It is hilly and covenil with vegetation. 

 The earliest Itrilish settlement on this coast was 

 nioilc here in 1824. 



Melville. ANDREW, a champion of Scottish 

 Preshytenanisiu, was born 1st August 1545, at 



