[183] A, E, F in Hardung's Romanceiro, I, 49-55, B, C, D, the same, pp. 59-67.
[184] As in 'Don Bueso,' Duran, I, lxv, A. de los Rios, in Jahrbuch für romanische u. englische Literatur, III, 282, two copies.
[185] "Curse women, and still more him that trusts them," says the knight at the end of Portuguese A, and so in English A.
[186] It has been contended that malato signifies a peasant of low condition: see Braga, C. p. do Arch. açor., p. 399; but, on the other hand, Amador de los Rios, as above, VII, 433. Sense requires, if not the specific meaning leprous, at least something contagious, and sufficiently serious to make the knight tremble in his saddle, as he does in Portuguese A. Hardung aptly cites from Spanish B: "Fija soy de un malato que tiene la malatia." Compare the French ballads.
[113]
THE GREAT SILKIE OF SULE SKERRY
Proceedings of The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, I, 86, 1852. Communicated by the late Captain F. W. L. Thomas, R. N.; written down by him from the dictation of a venerable lady of Snarra Voe, Shetland.
This Shetland ballad[187] was reprinted in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine, April, 1864, with spelling Scotticized, and two or three other uncalled-for changes.
"Finns," as they are for the most part called, denizens of a region below the depths of the ocean, are able to ascend to the land above by donning a seal-skin, which then they are wont to lay off, and, having divested themselves of it, they "act just like men and women." If this integument be taken away from them, they cannot pass through the sea again and return to their proper abode, and they become subject to the power of man, like the swan-maidens and mer-wives of Scandinavian and German tradition: Grimm's Mythologie, I, 354f. Female Finns, under these circumstances, have been fain to accept of human partners. The Great Selchie, or Big Seal, of Shul Skerry, had had commerce with a woman during an excursion to the upper world. See Hibbert's Description of the Shetland Islands, pp. 566-571, and Karl Blind in the Contemporary Review, XL, 404, 1881. A correspondent of Blind gives stanza 3 with a slight variation, thus: