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Updated: May 31, 2025
The wonderful salamanders sparkle and sport amid the flames; deep in the earth the meagre and malicious gnomes pursue their revels; the forest-spirits belong to the air, and wander in the woods; while in the seas, rivers, and streams live the widespread race of water-spirits.
These are a sort of water-spirits who inveigle women and children into the recesses which they inhabit, beneath lakes and rivers, by floating past them, on the surface of the water, in the shape of gold rings or cups. The women thus seized are employed as nurses, and after seven years are permitted to revisit earth.
Before him go beautiful water-spirits, scattering flowers all running and dancing on the water, without the slightest difficulty. It is said the enchantment of the O'Donoghue will last until the silver shoes of his horse are worn off by the friction of the waves. There are many yet living at Killarney, who solemnly declare that they have seen the chieftain on his May-morning ride.
He is at odds with the other water-spirits in the neighborhood, counting from the adjacent valleys, and his kingdom only recommences further off on the Danube, into which some of his good friends direct their course.
Some say that when Ludlow marched his men into his castle, the O'Donoghue, driven to despair, leaped from one of the windows into the lake, that he was not drowned, but turned into a sort of merman under the waves, and has lived there ever since, with the friendly water-spirits, and his family and many of his friends who have followed him.
The oracle added that I must perform three expiatory sacrifices to Saturn, on account of my too harsh treatment of the false Querilinthos, and that Semiramis need not take part in these ceremonies, though she herself must perform the sacrifices to the water-spirits.
Of course it was out of the question to attempt the passage of such a vortex in canoes, except at half flood or half ebb tide, at which periods the waters became quiet. On arriving at the mouth of the gulf, the travellers found the tide out and the entrance to it curling and rolling in massive volumes, as if all the evil water-spirits of the north were holding their orgies there.
Whatever may be unseemly in life is covered by a rich and mystic drapery of twilight. The floating bath-houses of the Neva, with their variegated tressel-work and brilliant colors, resemble fairy palaces; and the plashing of the bathers falls upon the ear like the gambols of water-spirits.
I made the oracle reply that she must sacrifice to the water-spirits on the banks of two rivers, at the same hour, and that afterwards the question of her lying-in would be resolved.
Suddenly, upon a great blue billow that came rolling in, she saw the Water-Spirits smiling on her; and high aloft, in their white gleaming arms, her child stretched forth his hands to welcome her; while the little voice she so longed to hear again cried gayly, "See, dear mother, I am come; and look what lovely things the gentle Spirits gave, that I might seem more beautiful to you."
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