ws of
Wales allowed a husband to bestow. A husband was permitted to beat his
wife for three causes; and if on any other occasion he raised his hand
against her, she had her remedy in the shape of a _sarad_, or fine, to
be paid to her for the disgrace. But a _sarad_ would not satisfy this
proud lady; nothing less than a divorce would meet the case. The
Partridge's wife, as we have seen, was still more exacting: she declined
to be struck at all. In the same way the fish who had become a girl, in
the Dyak story, cautioned her husband to use her well; and when he
struck her she rushed back screaming into the water. In another Bornoese
tradition, which is quoted by Mr. Farrer, the heroine is taken up to the
sky because her husband had struck her, there having been no previous
prohibition.[222] A different sort of personal violence is resented in
the Bantik legend cited above. There the husband is forbidden to tear
out one white hair which adorns Outahagi, his wife's head. He disobeys
after she has given birth to a son; and she vanishes in a tempest and
returns to the sky, where her husband is forced to seek her again.

The stipulation made by Wild Edric's bride is still more arbitrary,
according to our notions, than these. Her husband was forbidden to
reproach her on account of her sisters, or the place from which he
snatched her away. In other words, he was forbidden to charge her with
her supernatural character. When Diarmaid, the daughter of King
Underwaves, comes in the form of a beggar to Fionn and insists on
sharing his couch, she becomes a beautiful girl, and consents to marry
him on condition that he does not say to her thrice how he found her. In
a variant, the hero, going out shooting, meets with a hare, which, when
hard pressed by the dogs, turns into a woman. She promises to wed him on
his entering into three vows, namely, not to ask his king to a feast
without first letting her know (a most housewifely proviso), not to cast
up to her in any company that he found her in the form of a hare, and
not to leave her in the company of only one man. Both these are West
Highland tales; and in the manner of the taboo they closely resemble
that given by Map. In an Illyrian story, a Vila is by a youth found one
morning sleeping in the grass. He is astonished at her beauty, and
plants a shade for her. When she wakes she is pleased, and asks what he
wants for such kindness. He asks nothing less than to take her to wife;
and sh