Melusine's secret discovered, from Le Roman de Mélusine. One of sixteen paintings by Guillebert de Mets circa 1410. The original is held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

She is usually depicted as a woman who is a serpent or fish (much like a mermaid) from the waist down. She is also sometimes illustrated with wings, two tails or both, and sometimes referred to as a nixie.

Heraldry

Melusine is sometimes used as a heraldic figure, typically in German Coats of arms, where she supports one scaly tail in each arm. She may appear crowned. The Coat of Arms of Warsaw features a siren (identified in Polish as a syrenka) very much like a depiction of Melusine, brandishing a sword and shield. She is the water-spirit from the Vistula who identified the proper site for the city to Boreslaus of Masovia in the late 13th century.

Literary versions

Raymond walks in on his wife, Melusine, in her bath and discovers she has the lower body of a serpent. Illustration from the Jean d'Arras work, Le livre de Mélusine (The Book of Melusine), 1478.

The tale was translated into German in 1456 by Thüring von Ringoltingen, the version of which became popular as a chapbook. It was later translated into the English language c. 1500, and often printed in both the 15th century and the 16th century. There is also a prose version called the Chronique de la princesse.

It tells how Elynas, the King of Albany (an old name for Scotland) went hunting one day and came across a beautiful lady in the forest. She was Pressyne, mother of Melusine. He persuaded her to marry him but she agreed, only on the promise — for there is often a hard and fatal condition attached to any pairing of fay and mortal — that he must not enter her chamber when she birthed or bathed her children. She gave birth to triplets. When he violated this taboo, Pressyne left the kingdom, together with her three daughters, and traveled to the lost Isle of Avalon.

The three girls — Melusine, Melior, and Palatyne — grew up in Avalon. On their fifteenth birthday, Melusine, the eldest, asked why they had been taken to Avalon. Upon hearing of their father's broken promise, Melusine sought revenge. She and her sisters captured Elynas and locked him, with his riches, in a mountain. Pressyne became enraged when she learned what the girls had done, and punished them for their disrespect to their father. Melusine was condemned to take the form of a serpent from the waist down every Saturday.

Raymond of Poitou came across Melusine in a forest in France, and proposed marriage. Just as her mother had done, she laid a condition, that he must never enter her chamber on a Saturday. He broke the promise and saw her in the form of a part-woman part-serpent. She forgave him. Only when, during a disagreement with her, he called her a "serpent" in front of his court, did she assume the form of a dragon, provide him with two magic rings and fly off, never to return.^[1]

In "The Wandering Unicorn" by Manuel Mujica Láinez, Melusine tells her tale of several centuries of existence from her original curse to the time of the crusades.^[2]

Legends

Melusine legends are especially connected with the northern, most Celtic areas of Gaul, and the Low Countries. Sir Walter Scott told a Melusine tale in The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802 -1803) confident that

Melusine by Ludwig Michael von Schwanthaler (1845)

Martin Luther knew and believed in the story of another version of Melusine, die Melusina zu Lucelberg (Lucelberg in Silesia), whom he referred to several times as a succubus (Works, Erlangen edition, volume 60, pp 37?42). Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote the tale of Die Neue Melusine in 1807 and published it as part of Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. The playwright Franz Grillparzer brought Goethe's tale to the stage and Felix Mendelssohn provided a concert overture "The Fair Melusina," his Opus 32.

Melusine is one of the pre-Christian water-faeries who were sometimes responsible for changelings. The "Lady of the Lake", who spirited away the infant Lancelot and raised the child, was such a water nymph. For other European water sprites dangerous to humans, especially men, see Lorelei, Nixie.

"Melusina" would seem to be an uneasy name for a girl-child in these areas of Europe, but Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenburg, Duchess of Kendal and Munster, mistress of George I of Great Britain, was christened Melusine in 1667.

References in the arts

Felix Mendelssohn depicted the character in his overture The Fair Melusina (Zum Märchen von der Schönen Melusine), opus 32.

Marcel Proust's main character compares Gilberte to a Melusine in "Within a Budding Grove." She is also compared on several occasions to the Duchesse de Guermantes who was (according to the Duc de Guermantes) directly descended from the Lusignan dynasty. In the Guermantes Way for example, the narrator observes that the Lusignan family "was fated to become extinct on the day when the fairy Melusine should disappear." (Volume II, Page 5, Vintage Edition.)

Melusine is a recurring metaphor in André Breton's Arcanum 17 and Nadja.

The Melusine legend plays a prominent role in A. S. Byatt's Possession. One of the main characters, Christabel LaMotte, writes an epic poem about Melusina.

Under the inebriating influence of a paradisaical surrounding, the protagonist of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Werther briefly compares himself to Melusina and her sisters with the exclamation that he too is bound by the same mystical charm.

Melusine provides the basis for the story "Greatleaf" in Candy Taylor Tutt's short story collection, Dragon Scales, Dragon Tales.

A modern version of the Melusine character appears as the heroine in Grace Andreacchi's tale The Golden Dolphins.

Notes

References

• Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox, Melusine of Lusignan: foundling fiction in late medieval France. Essays on the Roman de Mélusine (1393) of Jean d'Arras.
• Otto j. Eckert, "Luther and the Reformation," lecture, 1955. e-text
• Proust, Marcel. (C. K. Scott Moncrieff, trans.) Within A Budding Grove. (Page 190)

External links

• Well-translated legends about mermaids and water sprites that marry mortal men, with sources noted, edited by D. L. Ashliman.
• Terri Windling, "Married to Magic: Animal Brides and Bridegrooms in Folklore and Fantasy"
• Homeira Foth, "The Melusine Myth" San José State University: sources, framework, history
• Sir Walter Scott, ''Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border'' (e-text)
• Huysmans, ''The Cathedral'' (e-text)
• Wolfgang Goethe, ''Die Neue Melusine'' (in German)
• Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge (Arlima): (in French) Bibliographies on Coudrette, Jean d'Arras, and the English Melusine
• Melusine Images

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