mony was that of the lady's superhuman beauty; and he dismissed
them in admiration to their home. After many years of happiness Edric
returned one evening late from hunting, and could not find his wife. He
spent some time in vainly calling for her before she came. "Of course,"
he began, angrily, "you have not been detained so long by your sisters,
have you?" The rest of his wrath fell upon the empty air; for at the
mention of her sisters she vanished. And neither her husband's
self-reproaches, nor his tears, nor any search could ever find her
again.[216]

A point far more interesting than the actual mode of capture is the
taboo. The condition on which the heroine remains with her captor-spouse
is, in stories of the Hasan of Bassorah type, his preservation of the
feather-garb; in those of the Melusina type (with which we are now
dealing), his observance of the taboo. In the tales just cited from
Walter Map we have two important forms of the taboo, and in the legend
of Melusina herself we have a third. The latter is an example of the
ordinary objection on the part of supernatural beings to be seen
otherwise than just how and when they please, which we have dealt with
in a previous chapter; and little need be added to what I have already
said on the subject. The other two are, however, worth some
consideration.

In the account of Wastin of Wastiniog we are told that he was forbidden
to strike his wife with the bridle. Let us compare this prohibition with
that of the fairy of "the bottomless pool of Corwrion," in Upper
Arllechwedd, Carnarvonshire, who wedded the heir of the owner of
Corwrion. The marriage took place on two conditions--first, that the
husband was not to know his wife's name, though he might give her any
name he chose; and, second, that if she misbehaved towards him, he might
now and then beat her with a rod, but that he should not strike her with
iron, on pain of her leaving him at once. "This covenant," says
Professor Rhys in repeating the tale, "was kept for some years, so that
they lived happily together, and had four children, of whom the two
youngest were a boy and a girl. But one day, as they went to one of the
fields of Bryn Twrw, in the direction of Penardd Gron, to catch a pony,
the fairy wife, being so much nimbler than her husband, ran before him
and had her hand in the pony's mane in no time. She called out to her
husband to throw her a halter; but instead of that he threw towards her
a bridle