"There are those who will tell you that mermaids are gentle creatures with no harm about them. This is not the way of it at all. Mermaids are dark and evil beings, the spawn of the devil himself, and no Christian man, if he values his soul, should have anything to do with them.

There is an island in the Shannon, near Athlone, where a mermaid sits on the rocks combing her hair and admiring herself in a small, silver hand-mirror. To see her sitting there is an evil thing for it foretells some terrible disaster or means that a crime is being committed somewhere near at hand; for she is an evil spirit and never appears except to announce ill-luck, in which she takes an unholy delight..

One day, a young fisherman was casting his nets along the river when he was drawn towards this particular island by a strong and mysterious current. Although he struggled with the tiller of his boat, he could not prevent it from being pulled onto the rocks and dashed to pieces. He fell down through the foaming waters - down, down, until he felt that his lungs would burst. The darkness of the river took him and he lost consciousness.

He did not die but woke to find himself lying on the side of a beautiful hill in a strange country that he had never seen before.

Low and rolling hills, covered in strange bell-like flowers, stretched away on either side of him and a mellow, golden haze seemed to permeate everything around him. At first he thought that he might be in paradise itself but then it came to him that he was not dead but in some mysterious land, far below the river. There was a faint singing in the air, like the single clear note of a bell or the sound of a sweet but inhuman voice singing in a persistent tone. He followed the sound across the country and before long came upon a mermaid sitting in a garlanded bower at the edge of a small, still pool. She was combing her hair and looking into her hand-mirror with great attention. The fisherman approached her cautiously for he knew that this was an enchanted place. At his approach, the mermaid laid down her mirror and greeted him with the most dazzling of smiles.

'Welcome, mortal', she said pleasantly. 'I have been waiting for you to come to me. It was I who drew your boat across the waters far above and it was I who dashed it against the rocks there. Please do not think badly of me for I only did it so that I might have some company in my lonely world here in the depths. I only did it out of despair at my empty life.'

She spoke so sweetly and so pleadingly that the fisherman could not help but feel sorry for her. That is the way of it with the water-people; they can enchant and beguile you with their honeyed words and with the tone of their voice. Her captive could not see her for the evil sprite she was. He sat down with her in the bower whilst she sang to him in a pure, clear voice and soon he had all but forgotten his family and friends and the world above the waves.

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