In the “Speculum Mundi” we have a very circumstantial account indeed of a mermaid who drifted inland through a broken dyke on the Dutch coast during a heavy storm, “and floating up and down and not finding a passage out againe (by reason that the breach was stopped after the flood), was espied by certain women and their servants as they went to milke their kine in the neighbouring pastures, who at the first were afraide of her, but seeing her often, they resolved to take her, which they did, and bringing her home, she suffered herself to be clothed and fed with bread and milk and other meats, and would often strive to steal again into the sea, but being carefully watched, she could not: moreover, she learned to spinne and perform other pettie offices of women, but at the first they cleansed her of her sea-mosse, which did sticke about her. She never spake, but lived dumbe, and continued alive fifteene yeares; then she died. They tooke her in the yeare of our Lord, 1403.” One can scarcely wonder at the poor sea-maid endeavouring to escape; the scraping down to get off the seaweed and barnacles prior to the introduction to the rough dress of a Dutch peasant and the homely lessons in spinning, bread-making, and other domestic cares, were a sad contrast to the life of wild freedom of yore amidst the rolling billows of the wild North Sea. We read, too, that she was taught to kneel before a crucifix—a task in itself, we should imagine, of considerable difficulty to a mermaid. When we read in another old author that “in the island Mauritius they eat of the mermaid, its taste is not unlike veal,” the last vestige of the poetry of the belief vanishes, while the added detail that “when they are first taken they cry and grieve with great sensibility” seems to bring the indulgence in such diet almost to cannibalism. From veal to the “maiden clothed alone in loveliness,” of whom the poet sings, is a contrast indeed, and even the scraped mermaid turned Dutch vrouw is a very different creature to her whose— “Golden hair fell o’er her shoulders white And curled in amorous ringlets round her breasts; Her eyes were melting into love, her lips Had made the very roses envious; Withal a voice so full and yet so clear, So tender, made for loving dialoges. And then she sang—sang of undying love That waited them within her coral groves Beneath the deep blue sea, and all the bliss That mortals made immortal could enjoy, Who lived with her in sweet community.”