Bid adieu to our friends for us;
We are going to the great salt water.
After singing this they sank into the water. They had very long hair.
A picture of the man looking at the snake-girls was scraped for me by
the Indian who told me this story. The pair were represented as snakes
with female heads. When I first heard this tale, I promptly set it down
as nothing else but the Melusina story derived from a Canadian French
source. But I have since found that it is so widely spread, and is told
in so many different forms, and is so deeply connected with tribal
traditions and totems, that there is now no doubt in my mind that it is
at least pre-Columbian.
Another and a very curious version of this story was obtained by Mrs.
W. Wallace Brown, who has been the chief discoverer of curious Indian
lore among the Passamaquoddies. It is called:
_Ne Hwas, the Mermaid._
A long time ago there was an Indian, with his wife and two daughters.
They lived by a great lake, or the sea, and the mother told her girls
never to go into the water there, for that, if they did, something
would happen to them.
They, however, deceived her repeatedly. When swimming is prohibited it
becomes delightful. The shore of this lake _sands_ away out or
slopes to an island. One day they went to it, leaving their clothes on
the beach. The parents missed them.
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