THE MERMAID. 215 



" Roused by that voice of silver sound, 

 From the paved floor he lightly sprung, 

 And, glaring with his eyes around, 

 Where the fair nymph her tresses wrung." * 



Guided by occasional sounds, he at length saw an object 

 lying on a rock a dozen yards from the shore, at which he 

 was somewhat frightened. "The face and shoulders ap- 

 peared of human form and of a reddish colour ; over the 

 shoulders hung long green hair ; the tail resembled that of 

 a seal, but the extremities of the arms he could not see 

 distinctly." 



" As on the wond'ring youth she smiled, 

 Again she raised the melting lay," * 



for the creature continued to make a musical noise during 

 the two minutes he gazed at it, and, on perceiving him, 

 disappeared in an instant. 



The universality of the belief in an animal of combined 

 human and fish-like form is very remarkable. That it 

 exists amongst the Japanese we have evidence in their 

 curious and ingeniously-constructed models which are 

 occasionally brought to this country. I have one of 

 these which is so exactly the counterpart of that which 

 my friend Mr. Frank Buckland described, originally in 

 Land and Water, and which forms the subject of a 

 chapter in his ' Curiosities of Natural History/ f that the 

 portrait of the one (Fig. 14) will equally well represent 

 the other. The lower half of the body is made of the skin 

 and scales of a fish of the carp family, and fastened on 

 to this, so neatly that it is hardly possible to detect where 

 the joint is made, is a wooden body, the ribs of which are so 

 prominent that the poor mermaid has a miserable and half- 



* John Ley den. 



f Third Series, vol. ii. p. 134, 2nd ed. -4 



