Footnote 635:[(return)]
See Pughe, The Physicians of Myddfai, 1861 (these were descendants of a water-fairy); Rh[^y]s, Y Cymmrodor, iv. 164; Hartland, Arch. Rev. i. 202. Such water-gods with lovely daughters are known in most mythologies—the Greek Nereus and the Nereids, the Slavonic Water-king, and the Japanese god Ocean-Possessor (Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, 148; Chamberlain, Ko-ji-ki, 120). Manannan had nine daughters (Wood-Martin, i. 135).
Footnote 636:[(return)]
Sébillot, ii. 338, 344; Rh[^y]s, CFL i. 243; Henderson, Folk-Lore of the N. Counties, 262. Cf. the rhymes, "L'Arguenon veut chaque année son poisson," the "fish" being a human victim, and
"Blood-thirsty Dee
Each year needs three,
But bonny Don,
She needs none."
Footnote 637:[(return)]
Sébillot, ii. 339.
Footnote 638:[(return)]
Rendes Dindsenchas, RC xv. 315, 457. Other instances of punishment following misuse of a well are given in Sébillot, ii. 192; Rees, 520, 523. An Irish lake no longer healed after a hunter swam his mangy hounds through it (Joyce, PN ii. 90). A similar legend occurs with the Votiaks, one of whose sacred lakes was removed to its present position because a woman washed dirty clothes in it (L'Anthropologie, xv. 107).
Footnote 639:[(return)]
Rh[^y]s, CFL i. 392.
Footnote 640:[(return)]
Girald. Cambr. Itin. Hib. ii. 9; Joyce, OCR 97; Kennedy, 281; O'Grady, i. 233; Skene, ii. 59; Campbell, WHT ii. 147. The waters often submerge a town, now seen below the waves—the town of Is in Armorica (Le Braz, i. p. xxxix), or the towers under Lough Neagh. In some Welsh instances a man is the culprit (Rh[^y]s, CFL i. 379). In the case of Lough Neagh the keeper of the well was Liban, who lived on in the waters as a mermaid. Later she was caught and received the baptismal name of Muirghenn, "sea-birth." Here the myth of a water-goddess, said to have been baptized, is attached to the legend of the careless guardian of a spring, with whom she is identified (O'Grady, ii. 184, 265).
Footnote 641:[(return)]
Roberts, Cambrian Pop. Antiq. 246; Hunt, Popular Romances, 291; New Stat. Account, x. 313.
Footnote 642:[(return)]
Thorpe, Northern Myth. ii. 78.
Footnote 643:[(return)]
Joyce, PN ii. 84. Slán occurs in many names of wells. Well-worship is denounced in the canons of the Fourth Council of Arles.
Footnote 644:[(return)]
Cartailhac, L'Age de Pierre, 74; Bulliot et Thiollier, Mission de S. Martin, 60.