In a far-away time Tristram Bird of Padstow bought a gun at a little
shop in the quaint old market which in those days opened to the quay,
the winding river, and the St. Minver sand-hills. When he had bought
his gun he began forthwith to shoot birds and other poor little
creatures.
After a while he grew more ambitious, and told the fair young maids
of Padstow that he wanted to shoot a seal or something more worthy of
his gun; and so one bright morning he made his way down to
Hawker’s Cove, near the mouth of the harbour. [54]
When Tristram got there he looked about him to see what he could
shoot, and the first thing he saw was a young maid sitting all alone on
a rock, combing her hair with a sea-green comb.
He was so overcome at such an unexpected sight that he quite forgot
what had brought him to the cove, and could do nothing but stare.
The rock on which the maiden sat was covered with seaweed, and
surrounded by a big pool, called in that distant time the
Mermaid’s Glass.
She was apparently unconscious that a good-looking young man was
gazing at her with his bold dark eyes, and as she combed her long and
beautiful hair she leaned over the pool and looked at herself in the
Mermaid’s Glass, and the face reflected in it was startling in
its beauty and charm.
Tristram Bird was very tall—six feet three in his
stockings—and being such a tall young man, he could see over the
maiden’s head into the pool, and the face in its setting of
golden hair reflected in its clear depths entirely bewitched him, and
so did her graceful form, which was partly veiled in a golden raiment
of her own beautiful hair.
As he stood gazing at the bewitching face looking up from the
Mermaid’s Glass, its owner suddenly glanced over her shoulder,
and saw Tristram staring at her.
‘Good-morning to you, fair maid,’ he said, still keeping
his bold dark eyes fixed upon her, telling himself
as he gazed that her face was even more bewitching than was its
reflection.
‘Good-morning, sir,’ said she.
‘Doing your toilet out in the open,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ quoth she, wondering who the handsome youth could
be and how he came to be there.
‘Your hair is worth combing,’ he said.
‘Is it?’ said she.
‘It is, my dear,’ he said. ‘’Tis the colour
of oats waiting for the sickle.’
‘Is it?’ quoth she.
‘Yes; and no prettier face ever looked into the
Mermaid’s Glass.’
‘How do you know?’ asked she.
‘My heart told me so,’ he said, coming a step or two
nearer the pool, ‘and so did my eyes when I saw its reflection
looking up from the water. It bewitched me, sweet.’
‘Did it?’ laughed she, with a tilt of her round young
chin.
‘Yes,’ he said, with an answering laugh, drawing another
step nearer the pool.
‘It does not take a man of your breed long to fall in
love,’ said the beautiful maid, with a toss of her golden head
and a curl of her sweet red lips.
‘Who told you that?’ asked the love-sick young man,
going red as a poppy.
‘Faces carry tales as well as little birds,’ quoth
she.
‘If my face is a tale-bearer, it will tell you that I love you more than heart can say and tongue can
tell,’ he said, drawing yet nearer the pool.
‘Will it?’ said she, combing her golden hair with her
sea-green comb.
‘Indeed it will, and must,’ he said; ‘for I love
you with all my soul, and I want you to give me a lock of your golden
hair to wear over my heart.’
‘I do not give locks of my hair to landlubbers!’ cried
she, with another toss of her proud young head and a scornful curl of
her bright red lips.
‘A landlubber forsooth!’ he said, with an angry flash in
his bold black eyes. ‘Who are you to speak so scornfully of a man
of the land? One would think you were a maid of the sea.’
‘I am,’ quoth she, twining the tress of her hair she had
combed round her shell-pink arm.
‘No seamaid is half as beautiful as you,’ said Tristram
Bird, incredulous of what the maid said. ‘But, maid of the sea or
maid of the land, I love you, sweet, and I want to have you to
wife.’
‘Want must be your master, sir,’ said she, with an angry
flash in her sea-blue eyes.
‘Love is my master, sweet maid,’ he said. ‘You are
my love, and you have mastered me.’
‘Have I?’ said she, with a little toss of her golden
head.
‘Yes,’ he said; ‘and now that I have told you you
are my love, and I want you to marry me, you will give me a lock of
your golden hair, won’t you, sweet?’
‘I cannot,’ said she.
‘Give me one little golden wire of your hair, if you
won’t give me a lock,’ he pleaded, coming close to the edge
of the pool. ‘I will make a golden ring of it,’ he said,
‘and wear it in the eye of the world.’
‘Will you?’ said she.
‘I will, my dear,’ he said.
‘But I will not give you a hair of my head even to make a ring
with,’ said she.
‘Then give me one for a leading-string,’ he said.
‘If you will, my charmer, you shall take the end of it and lead
me whithersoever you will.’
‘Even to the whipping-post?’ said she.
‘Even to the whipping-post,’ he said. ‘So you will
be my fair bride, won’t ’ee, sweet? If you will consent to
love me, I’ll make you as happy as the day is long.’
‘Will you?’ cried she, with a warning look in her
sea-blue eyes and a strange little laugh.
‘Yes,’ he said, thinking her answer meant consent.
‘And I’ve got a dear little house at Higher St.
Saviour’s, overlooking the river and Padstow Town low in the
valley.’
‘Have you?’ said she.
‘I have,’ he said. ‘And the little house is full
of handsome things—a chestful of linen which my own mother wove
for me on her loom against the time I should be wed to a pretty maid
like you, an oaken dresser with every shelf full of cloam,1
and a cosy [60]settle where we can sit hand in hand talking of
our love. You will marry me soon, won’t you, sweet? The little
house, and all that’s in it, is waiting for my
charmer.’
‘Is it?’ cried the beautiful maid, taking up another
tress of her golden hair, and slowly combing its silken length with her
sea-green comb. ‘But let me tell you once and for ever, I would
not marry you if you were decked in diamonds and your house a golden
house, and everything in it made of jewels and set in gold.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’ cried Tristram Bird, in great
amazement.
‘I wouldn’t,’ said she.
‘You are a strange young maid to refuse an upstanding young
man like me,’ he said, ‘who has a house of his own, to say
nothing of what is inside it. Why, dozens of fair young maidens up to
Padstow would have me to-morrow if I was only to ax them.’
‘Then ax them,’ cried the beautiful maid, turning
her proud young head, and looking out towards Pentire, gorgeous in its
spring colouring.
‘But I can’t ask any of them to marry me when I love
you,’ cried the infatuated youth. ‘You have
bewitched me, sweet, and no other man shall have you. If I can’t
have you living, I’ll have you dead. I came down to
Hawker’s Cove to shoot something to startle the natives of
Padstow Town, and they will be startled, shure ’nough, if I shoot
a beautiful little vixen like you and take home to them.’
‘Shoot me if you will, but marry you I will not,’ said
the beautiful maiden, with a scornful laugh. ‘But I give you fair
warning that if you shoot me, as you say you will, you will rue the day
you did your wicked deed. I will curse you and this beautiful haven,
which has ever been a refuge for ships from the time that ships sailed
upon the seas;’ and her sea-blue eyes looked up and down the
estuary from the headlands that guarded its mouth to the farthest point
of the blue, winding river.
‘I will shoot you in spite of the curse if you won’t
consent to be mine,’ cried the bewitched young man.
‘I will never consent,’ said she.
‘Then I will shoot you now,’ he said, and Tristram Bird
lifted his gun and fired, and the ball entered the poor young
maiden’s soft pink side.
She put her hand to her side to cover the gaping wound the shot had
made, and as she did so she pulled herself out of the water, and where
the feet should have been was the glittering tail of a fish!
‘I have shot a poor young Mermaid,’ Tristram cried,
‘and woe is me!’ and he shivered like one when somebody is
passing over his grave.
‘Yes, you have shot a poor Mermaid,’ said the maid of
the sea, ‘and I am dying, and with my dying breath I curse this
safe harbour, which was large enough to hold all the fighting ships of
the Spanish Armada and your own, and it shall be cursed with a bar of
sand which shall be a bar of doom to many a stately ship and many a
noble life, and it shall stretch from the Mermaid’s
Glass to Trebetherick Bay on the opposite shore, and prevent this haven
of deep water from ever again becoming a floating harbour save at full
tide. The Mermaid’s wraith will haunt the bar of doom her dying
curse shall bring until your wicked deed has been fully avenged;’
and looking round the great bay of shining waters, laughing and
rippling in the eye of the sun, she raised her arms and cursed the
harbour of Padstow with a bitter curse, and Tristram shuddered as he
listened, and as she cursed she uttered a wailing cry and fell back
dead into the pool, and the water where she sank was dyed with her
blood.'
‘I have committed a wicked deed,’ said Tristram Bird,
gazing into the blood-stained pool, ‘and verily all
be punished for my sin;’ and he turned away with the fear of
coming doom in his heart.
As he went up the cove and along the top of the cliffs the
distressful, wailing cry of the Mermaid seemed to follow him, and the
sky gloomed all around as he went, and the sea moaned a dreadful moan
as it came up the bay.
When he reached Tregirls, overlooking the Cove, he stood by the gate
for a minute and gazed out over the beautiful harbour. The sea, which
only half an hour ago was as blue as the eyes of the seamaid he had
shot, and full of smiles and laughter, was now black as ash-buds, save
where a golden streak lay across the water from Hawker’s Cove to
Trebetherick Bay.
‘The Mermaid’s curse is already working,’ moaned
Tristram Bird, and he fled through the lane leading to Padstow as if a
death-hound was after him.
When he reached Place House he met a little crowd of Padstow maids
going out flower-gathering.
‘Whither away so fast, Tristram Bird?’ asked a little
maid. ‘You aren’t driving a teem of snails this time,
’tis plain to see. Where hast thou been?’
‘Need you ask?’ said a pert young girl. ‘He has
been away shooting something to startle the maids of Padstow with! What
strange new creature did you shoot, Tristram Bird?’
‘A wonderful creature with eyes like blue fire,’
returned the unhappy youth, looking away over St.
Minver dunes towards the Tors—’a sweet, soft creature with
beautiful hair, every wire of which was a sunbeam of gold, and her face
was the loveliest I ever beheld. It clean bewitched me.’
‘A beautiful maid like that, and yet you shot her?’
cried all the young maids of Padstow Town.
‘Yes, I shot her, to my undoing and the undoing of our fair
haven,’ groaned Tristram Bird; and he told them all about
it—where he had seen the beautiful Mermaid, of his bewitchment
from the moment he saw her face of haunting charm looking up at him
from the Mermaid’s Glass, and of the curse she uttered ere she
fell back dead into the pool.
All the smiles went out of the bright faces of the Padstow maids, as
he told his tale.
‘What a pity, Tristram Bird, you should have been so foolish
as to shoot a Mermaid!’ they said; and they did not go and pick
flowers as they had intended, but went back to their homes instead, and
Tristram Bird went on to Higher St. Saviour’s, where he lived in
a little house overlooking Padstow Town nestling like a bird in its
nest.
A fearful gale blew on the night of the day Tristram Bird shot the
Mermaid, and all the next day, too, and the next night; and through the
awful howling of the gale was heard the bellowing of the wind-tormented
sea.
Such a terrible storm had never been known at Padstow Town within
the memory of man, so the old Granfer men said, and never a
gale lasted so long.
When the wind went down the natives of Padstow ventured out to see
what the gale had wrought, and sad was the havoc it had made; and some
went out to Chapel Stile, where a small chapel stood overlooking the
haven, and what should meet their horrified gaze but a terrible bar of
sand which the Mermaid’s curse had brought there; and it
stretched from Hawker’s Cove to the opposite shore, and what was
worse, the great sand-bar was covered with wrecks of ships and bodies
of drowned men.
‘It is the bar of doom brought there by the fearful curse of
the maid of the sea whom I shot with my brand-new gun,’ cried
Tristram Bird, who was one of the first to reach the stile when the
wind had gone drown; and he told them all, as he had told the
Padstow maids, of what the Mermaid had said before and after he had
shot her. ‘And because of the wicked deed I did,’ he said,
‘I have brought a curse on my native town, and Padstow will never
be blessed with a safe and beautiful harbour till the poor
Mermaid’s death be avenged.’
There was a dreadful silence after Tristram Bird had spoken, and the
men and women of Padstow Town gazed at each other, troubled and sad,
knowing that what the youth, who had been bewitched by the
Mermaid’s face, had said was true, for there below them was the
great bar of sand dividing the outer harbour from the inner, and on it
lay the masts and spars of broken ships and the lifeless bodies of the
drowned. The wind was quiet, but the sea was still breaking and roaring
on the back of the Doombar, and as the waves thundered and broke, a
wailing cry sounded forth, like the wail that Tristram heard when the
Mermaid disappeared under the water; it sounded like the distressful
cry of a woman bewailing her dead, and all who heard shivered and
shook, and both old and young looked down on the Doombar with dread in
their eyes, but they saw nothing but the dead bodies of the sailors and
their broken ships.
‘It is the Mermaid’s wraith,’
cried an old Granfer man.
‘It is the Mermaid’s wraith,’ cried an old Granfer
man, leaning against the grey walls of the ancient chapel, ‘and
she is wailing the wail of the drowned; and, mark my words,
everyone,’ letting his eyes wander from one face to another,
‘each time a ship is caught on this dreadful bar and lives are
lost—as lost they will be—the Mermaid’s wraith will
bewail the drowned.’
From: North Cornwall Faries and Legends by Enys Tregarthen
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