Minstrelsy of the Scottish border - National Library of Scotland

THE SCOTTISH BORDER. 329
if she should die foi- want of food ;
and, therefore, on
the third night, they left the door open, that she might
escape. Accordingly she did not fail to embrace the op-
portunity ; but, gliding with incredible swiftness to the
sea-side, she plunged herself into the waters, and was
welcomed by a number of her own species, who were
heard to enquire what she had seen among the natives
of the earth.? " Nothing," she answered, " wonderful,
" except that they were silly enough to throw away the
" water in which they had boiled their eggs."
Collins, in his notes upon the line,
" Mona, long hid from those who sail the main,"
explains it, by a similar Celtic tradition. It seems, a
mermaid had become so much charmed with a young
man, who walked upon the beach, that she made love to
him ; and, being rejected with scorn, she excited, by en-
chantment, a mist, which long concealed the island from
all navigators.
I must mention another Mankish tradition, because,
being derived from the common source of Celtic mytho-
logy, they appear the most natural illustrations of a He-
bridean tale. About fifty years before Waldron went to
reside in Man (for there were living witnesses of the le-
gend, when he was upon the island,) a project was under-
taken, to fish treasures up from the deep, by means of
a diving-bell. A venturous fellow, accordingly, descend-
ed, and kept pulling for more rope, till all they had on