Like the book about fairies and elves in the same series, this book both tells various legends and talks about the folk beliefs from which such tales arose. One can put the tales in this book into two groups: tales of the natural water spirits, such as mermaids, selkies, nymphs and guardians of lakes, ponds and springs, and tales of zombies and ghosts of human beings who died at sea under unfavorable circumstances.

The former kind of tale often features a mortal who entered the underwater realm, usually moved either by curiosity or the charm of one of its denizens. This magical place is invariably described as beautiful, but there’s usually a price to be paid for going where no mortal was meant to go. Sometimes a person becomes torn between the two worlds, sometimes he finds that centuries have passed on earth while he spent a few days underwater, sometimes the enchanted world proves more sinister than it appears and wants to hold on to those it has drawn into its net.

The author explains that in the past when seafaring was very dangerous it was difficult for people devoid of wanderlust to understand those who wanted to leave the safe harbor for the perilous sea. Therefore, stories arose of mysterious otherworldly beings and worlds that were hard to forget once one had glimpsed them. Add to that that the sea itself seemed very mysterious to people back then. Unable to understand the reasons behind its changeable winds, storms, or deathlike stillness when the ship couldn’t move, behind the diseases that attacked the men at sea, such as scurvy, or after leaving a foreign place, and other vagaries of seafaring, but driven to find a cause for everything, they imagined the sea ruled by beings who were fickle and incomprehensible to humans. But as the sea remained unchanged, while human civilizations came and went, its masters and mistresses were believed to be immortal and sometimes holding the secret of immortality. Naturally they were also very powerful, and those who dared defy them usually did so to their peril.

The second kind of tales usually involves either drowned seamen, whose spirit was believed to be restless because their bodies hadn’t received a proper burial and were moved to and fro by the currents of the sea, or a ship full of zombies or ghosts of seamen who’d done or suffered some wrong and thus couldn’t rest in peace either. Seeing such ghosts or zombies was nearly always bad luck for the living who generally didn’t live long afterwards.

In short, while the tales in the Fairies and elves book were a mixed bag, the ones in this one almost invariably have unhappy endings. The sea could be a bounty to those who dared venture there – and the sea kingdoms were always portrayed as lands of plenty in legends – but it did extol a very heavy toll from the mariners too. ( )

These type books are undoubtedly interesting, but I have always found the format used a bit distracting the way the boxed excerpts interfere with the chapter being read. One must finish reading the chapter before going back to read what is in the boxes, or read through those sections first & then go back to the beginning to read the chapter in full. ( )

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