A Blending of Legends

In these legends we observe how the tradition of a mere water-nymph has developed into a story concerning a hapless damsel.  The first applies to the Lorelei as a water-spirit pure and simple, but legends which refer to beings originally water-spirits have a knack of becoming associated in later times with stories of distressed ladies.  Indeed, one such came to the writer’s knowledge only a few months ago.  The mansion of Caroline Park, near Edinburgh, dating from the end of the seventeenth century, has in its vicinity a well which is reputed to be inhabited by a ’Green Lady,’ who emerges from her watery dwelling at twilight and rings the great bell of the old manor-house.  On visiting the vicinity for the purpose of verifying the legend information was gleaned respecting another story of a captured lady who had been incarcerated in a room in the mansion and had written some verses to her lover with her diamond ring on a window-pane.  The strange thing is that these stories, though obviously of different origin, appear now to have become fused in the popular imagination:  the ‘Green Lady’ and the verse-writing damsel become one and the same, thus affording a case in point of the fusion of a mythological tale with a later and probably verifiable incident.  The Lorelei is of course a water-spirit of the siren type, one who lures heedless mariners to their destruction.  In Scotland and the north of England we find her congener in the water-kelpie, who lurks in pools lying in wait for victims.  But the kelpie is usually represented in the form of a horse and not in that of a beauteous maiden.

The Nixie

Another water-spirit not unlike the Lorelei is the nixie, which is both male and female, the male appearing like any human being, but, as in the case of the water-spirits of the Slavonic peoples and England, Scotland, and Central America, being possessed of green teeth.  The male is called nix, the female nixie, the generic term for both being nicker, from a root which perhaps means ‘to wash.’  There is perhaps some truth in the statement which would derive the Satanic patronymic of ‘Old Nick’ from these beings, as spirits extremely familiar to the Teutonic mind.  On fine sunny days the nixies may be seen sitting on the banks of rivers, or on the branches of trees, combing their long golden locks.  Previous to a drowning accident the nixies can be seen dancing on the surface of the water.  Like all sea and river spirits, their subaqueous abode is of a magnificence unparalleled upon earth, and to this they often convey mortals, who, however, complain that the splendours of the nixies’ palaces are altogether spoiled for them by the circumstance that their banquets are served without salt.

     Where on the marshes boometh the bittern,
     Nicker the Soulless sits with his ghittern;
     Sits inconsolable, friendless and foeless,
     Bewailing his destiny, Nicker the Soulless.