Sometimes when the sun is rising on the sea and making the waves all pink and gold, the sailors whose boats are sailing out of the grey night fancy that they see fair ladies floating on the white crests of the waves, or drying their long yellow hair in the warm sunshine.
Sometimes poets who wander on the beach at night, or sit on the high cliffs where the sea-pinks grow, see those beautiful ladies playing in the silver moonlight.
And musicians hear them singing, singing, singing, till their songs silence the sea-birds harsh cry, and their voices blend with the swish and the rush of the sea and the moan of the waves on the shore.
The sailors tell stories of them, and the musicians put their songs into their hearts. But the poets write poems about them, and say:—
‘There are no ladies so fair to see as the nymphs whose father is a king.
Nereus is their father, and they are the Nereids.
Their home is under the sea; as blue as the sea are their eyes.
Their long, long hair is yellow like sand.
Their silver voices are like lutes, and they steal men’s hearts away.’
Long, long ago, one of these nymphs became the wife of a brave knight, who found her sleeping amongst the rocks and loved her for her beauty. Cymoënt was her name, and the other nymphs called her Cymoënt the Black Browed, because dark lashes and eyebrows shaded her sea-blue eyes.
The knight and the nymph had a son as strong and as brave as his father, and as beautiful as his mother, and Cymoënt called him Marinell.
‘My son must be richer than any of the knights who live on the land,’ said Cymoënt to the king her father. ‘Give him riches.’
So the sea-king told the waves to cast on the shore riches that they had stolen from all the ships that had ever been wrecked. And the waves strewed the strand with gold and amber and ivory and pearls, and every sort of jewel and precious stone.
The shore sparkled and shone with Marinell’s riches, and no one dared touch them, for Marinell had beaten a hundred knights in battle, and fought every man who dared venture to ride along these sands.