False Mermaid

In all three versions the bridegroom is forbidden to strike “three causeless blows.” Of course he disobeys… Once the husband and wife were invited to a christening in the neighbourhood. The lady, however, seemed reluctant to go, making the feminine excuse that the distance was too far to walk. Her husband told her to fetch one of the horses from the field. “I will,” said she, “if you will bring me my gloves, which I left in the house.” He went, and, returning with the gloves, found that she had not gone for the horse, so he jocularly slapped her shoulder with one of the gloves, saying: “Go, go!” Whereupon she reminded him of the condition that he was not to strike her without a cause, and warned him to be more careful in future.

Another time, when they were together at a wedding, she burst out sobbing amid the joy and mirth of all around her. Her husband touched her on the shoulder and inquired the cause of her weeping. She replied: “Now people are entering into trouble; and your troubles are likely to commence, as you have the second time stricken me without a cause.”

Finding how very wide an interpretation she put upon the “causeless blows,” the unfortunate husband did his best to avoid anything which could give occasion for the third and last blow. But one day they were together at a funeral, where, in the midst of the grief, she appeared in the highest spirits and indulged in immoderate fits of laughter. Her husband was so shocked that he touched her, saying: “Hush, hush! Don’t laugh!” She retorted that she laughed “because people, when they die, go out of trouble”; and, rising up, she left the house, exclaiming: “The last blow has been struck; our marriage contract is broken, and at an end! Farewell!”

—The Science of Fairy Tales: An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology

, by Edwin Sidney Hartland, 1916

1

When Nora came through the sliding doors to the arrivals lounge at Dublin Airport, Sean Meehan was holding a hand-lettered sign: GAVIN. He’d promised to collect her, and was as good as his word. He was almost exactly what she expected: an ordinary working-class Dub, clean-shaven with short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, gray hoodie under a black leather bomber jacket, black jeans. He was clearly sizing her up as well.

“Car’s outside,” he said. She had evidently passed muster.

“Look, Mr. Meehan, you really don’t have to do this. You’ve already done more than enough. Jack Donovan said he’d be glad to collect me from the bus—”

“Ah no—we’re going to Skerries, you and I, and you’re off the clock. No arguments. And call me Sean.”

He took her bag and they walked out to the car park. After paying at one of the automated kiosks, he turned to her. “I didn’t want to do this inside—anybody could have been watching—but I figured you might like some proof that I am who I say. Before getting into a car with me, like. So here you go”—he handed each one over as he spoke—“driver’s licence, passport, taxi licence, the wife’s mobile number—you can ring her if you like.”

Nora glanced at the cards, and pushed them back. “There’s no need for all that—I believe you.”