Legenda Maris Read Free

then an old man came over and held
out his mug for some beer.
    ‘‘Welcome, grandda,” said the master. “What
tale do you have, then?”
    “No tale at all,” said the old man. “Only
this warning. Do not go down to the lake in these days of the spring.”
    “And why is that, grandda?”
    “If you do, you may see there the girls
in green dresses. And then no man alive, nor God in His sky, can save you.”
    A great thick hush had fallen. Even the
fire dropped down on the hearth, and the winged dog folded his wings close, and
went under the table.
    “Why is that, then, grandda? Are they so
terrible, these girls in green dresses?”
    “So they are.”
    “And why are they?”
    The old man said, “Ask the dead, for
they know.”
    Then the show-master nodded, and
refilled the old man’s beer-mug, and said the ape would dance on the rafters
upside down, which it did. And the other matter was let go.
    Except that, near midnight, as they were
all in bed, the master woke Elrahn up. “Tomorrow, at first light, we walk to
the lake, you and I.”
    “Do you want?”
    “Are you a dunce, or what? Do you not
know what the old man said?”
    Elrahn said he did not.
    “Listen then. They call them that here,
girls in green dresses. There are mermaids in spring in this lake. And
we shall catch one or I’ll be hanged by my tassel.”
     
    They
say the mermaids would come in from the sea, up the river to the lake, in
spring. As salmon come in, to spawn. But a mermaid is a fish only up to her
middle, and from there she is a naked woman. So, if she should stand upright on
her tail out of the water among the green reeds, she may look like a girl clad
in green...
    All this the master explained to Elrahn
as down to the lake they went, brushing through the spangle-dew before sunrise.
    The sun was just opening its eye when
they reached the shore. A sight of beauty it was, the coin of water lying there
so still among the misty hills, and the rim of the flame-green reeds, and the
sun just touching the world with one crystal finger. And then the dawn wind
stirred and blew on the reeds, and they rattled like harp-strings struck by an
unseen hand.
    But when the wind was gone, all was
still again. And Elrahn was taken with the idea that human things and animals
breathe, and so are always in a sort of motion, while they live. But the land
and the heaven and the water, which do not breathe at all, may lie as still as
if turned to glass.
    Then the master spoke in a fierce quick
whisper. “See! Do you see, there ?”
    Elrahn looked. A duck was swimming along
the lake. No, it was a great fish. And he thought they might have brought a rod
or net, to catch some fish for breakfast. And then he thought, curiously, of
the Bible, which the priest had kept telling him of, and of the thing spoken to
a fisher-man, saying he should be a fisher of men.
    Just then the fish broke the surface of
the lake, and oh, it was not any fish at all, but a young girl with skin as
white as winter snow and hair as green as water. And then down she dived again
and there was the flip of her tail, and the unbreathing lake was turned once
more to glass.
    Elrahn was amazed, but the show-master
was already going out between the reeds, standing himself on the shore. And in
his hands he held a shining string that looked like gold, but Elrahn knew it
would only be painted.
    He thinks that will catch her, thought Elrahn.
But he himself knew nothing about mermaids, and perhaps it would.
    Presently there came again a rippling
and whirling in the water, and suddenly the water broke in a hundred pieces,
and up out of it burst two creatures, and they were, without any doubt,
mermaids, the pair of them.
    “See my sweet girls—” boldly cried the
master, “look—a golden chain! I have heard how you like to gather treasures.
Should you like this golden chain?”
    And then they looked and they laughed,
the two mermaids.
    Elrahn thought he had never heard a
sound so charming or so