THE MERMAID. 223 



' that if there are such creatures, Tony, they must wear their looking- 

 glasses and combs fastened on somehow, like fins to a fish.* ' See ! ' 

 said Tony, chuckling with delight, ' what a thing it is to know the 

 Scriptures, like your reverence ; I should never have found it out. 

 But there's another point, sir, I should like to know, if you please ; 

 I've been bothered about it in my mind hundreds of times. Here be 

 I, that have gone up and down Holacombe cliffs and streams fifty 

 years come next Candlemas, and I've gone and watched the water by 

 moonlight and sunlight, days and nights, on purpose, in rough weather 

 and smooth (even Sundays, too, saving your presence), and my sight 

 as good as most men's, and yet I never could come to see a merry- 

 maid in all my life : how's that, sir ? J * Are you sure, Tony,' I re- 

 joined, ' that there are such things in existence at all ? ' { Oh, sir, my 

 old father see her twice ! He was out one night for wreck (my father 

 watched the coast, like most of the old people formerly), and it came 

 to pass that he was down at the duck-pool on the sand at low- water 

 tide, and all to once he heard music in the sea. Well, he croped on 

 behind a rock, like a coastguardsman watching a boat, and got very 

 near the music .... and there was the merrymaid, very plain to be 

 seen, swimming about upon the waves like a woman bathing and 

 singing away. But my father said it was very sad and solemn to 

 hear more like the tune of a funeral hymn than a Christmas carol, 

 by far but it was so sweet that it was as much as he could do to hold 

 back from plunging into the tide after her. And he an old man of 

 sixty-seven, with a wife and a houseful of children at home. The 

 second time was down here by Holacombe Pits. He had been looking 

 out for spars there was a ship breaking up in the Channel and he 

 saw some one move just at half-tide mark ; so he went on very softly, 

 step by step, till he got nigh the place, and there was tne merrymaid 

 sitting on a rock, the bootyfullest merrymaid that eye could behold, 

 and she was twisting about her long hair, and dressing it, just like one 

 of our girls getting ready for her sweetheart on the Sabbath-day. 

 The old man made sure he should greep hold of her before ever she 

 found him out, and he had got so near that a couple of paces more 

 and he would have caught her by the hair, as sure as tithe or tax, 

 when, lo and behold, she looked back and glimpsed him ! So, in one 

 moment she dived head-foremost off the rock, and then tumbled her- 

 self topsy-turvy about in the water, and cast a look at my poor father, 

 and grinned like a seal.' " 



And a seal it probably was that Tony's " poor father " saw. 



