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He loved the sea himself, as well as the mountains his Queen had taught him its call years ago and he often wandered about the shore, pondering over the strange old legends with which centuries have wreathed it. "You are wonderful!" he whispered to the lady. "You're like some water-maiden and I believe your eyes are a bit of the sea itself!" "Ah!
'But, after all, he thought, 'nobody could talk under water; and no doubt thinking under water is the same as talking out of it. Besides, though this wonderful little water-maiden was but six inches tall, her thoughts were evidently quite as big as those of an ordinary grown-up person, so that they must be so much the more easily visible.
'Are you there, darling, safe and well? said the old man, looking up fondly as he fastened his skiff. 'Yes, father; here I am and so glad to see you, replied the water-maiden, waiting at the top of the ladder. 'We have a visitor, father dear; are you not glad, so glad to see him? The two men came face to face, and the elder started back. 'What are you doing here? he said sternly.
It gleamed upon the pearly shell; and in its cold lustre Oscar saw the tiny water-maiden, whom he had loved better than anything else in the world, and who was the most precious thing that the world contained, come slowly out of her shell, and stand downcast and drooping before him.
Oscar could never see enough of his little water-maiden; and he talked to her perhaps all the more because she answered him only by sympathetic thoughts.
The well-known story of Undine is similar to that of Melusina, save that the naiad's desire to obtain a human soul is a conception foreign to the spirit of the myth, and marks the degradation which Christianity had inflicted upon the denizens of fairy-land. In one of Dasent's tales the water-maiden is replaced by a kind of werewolf.
And he dragged all the waters in the lands of Lapland and of Kalevala, and caught fish of every sort, only Aino, now the water-maiden, never came into his net. 'Fool that I am, he said at length, 'surely I was once wise, had at least a bit of wisdom, but now all my power has left me.
Silver had brought one of her little white gowns, half finished, and sat sewing in its light, while the old negress came and went about her household tasks. 'So you can sew? said the visitor. 'Of course I can. Aunt Shadow taught me, answered the water-maiden, threading her needle deftly. 'There is no need to do it, for I have so many dresses; but I like to sew, don't you?
Two white gulls stood in the open window and gravely surveyed the stranger. 'They stay with me almost all the time, said the water-maiden; 'every morning they fly out to sea for a while, but they always come back. Then she flitted to and fro, kissed the opening blossoms and talked to them, tying back the more riotous vines and gravely admonishing them.
It cannot escape the reader versed in fairy-lore that the incident of the water-maiden captured by her clothes is common to all European nations, but that it is especially Norse; while the adventures of the Wolverine, and indeed his whole character, are strangely suggestive of Loki, the Spirit of mere Mischief, who becomes evil.
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