e had been away for a whole year; and the chief
appeared to him shortly afterwards in a dream, revealing himself as no
human being, but the chief of the salmon, the divine fish; and he
required the man thenceforth to worship him. Curiously similar to the
Japanese tale is a tale told to M. Sebillot by a cabin-boy of Saint Cast
in Brittany. A fisherman caught one day the king of the fishes, in the
shape of a small gilded fish, but was persuaded to let him go under
promise to send (such is the popular belief in the unselfishness of
kings) at all times as many of his subjects as the fisherman wanted into
his nets. The promise was royally fulfilled. More than this, when the
fisherman's boat was once capsized by a storm the king of the fishes
appeared, gave its drowning owner to drink from a bottle he had brought
for the purpose, and conveyed him under the water to his capital,--a
beautiful city whose streets, surpassing those of London in the
traditions of English peasant children, were paved not only with gold
but with diamonds and other gems. The fisherman promptly filled his
pockets with these paving-stones; and then the king politely told him:
"When you are tired of being with us, you have only to say so." There is
a limit to hospitality; so the fisherman took the hint, and told the
king how delighted he should be to remain there always, but that he had
a wife and children at home who would think he was drowned. The king
called a tunny and commanded him to take the fisherman on his back and
deposit him on a rock near the shore, where the other fishers could see
and rescue him. Then, with the parting gift of an inexhaustible purse,
he dismissed his guest. When the fisherman got back to his village he
found he had been away more than six months. In the chapter on
Changelings I had occasion to refer to some instances of women being
carried off at a critical time in their lives. One more such instance
may be added here. Among the Bohemians a mythical female called
Polednice is believed to be dangerous to women who have recently added
to the population; and such women are accordingly warned to keep within
doors, especially at noon and after the angelus in the evening. On one
occasion a woman, who scorned the warnings she had received, was carried
off by Polednice in the form of a whirlwind, as she sat in the
harvest-field chatting with the reapers, to whom she had brought their
dinner. Only after a year and a day was she permit