Melusine
Mélusine (French: [melyzin]) or Melusine or Melusina is a figure of European folklore, a female spirit of fresh water in a holy well or river.
The story combines several major legendary themes, such as the Nereids, Naiad, water nymph or mermaid, the earth being (terroir), the genius loci or guardian spirit of a location, the succubus who comes from the diabolical world to unite carnally with a man, or the banshee or harbinger of death.
The French Dictionnaire de la langue française suggests the Latin melus, meaning "melodious, pleasant".
[1] Another theory is that Melusine was inspired by a Poitevin legend of "Mère Lusine," leader of a band of fairies who built Roman edifices throughout the countryside.
He wrote The Romans of Partenay or of Lusignen: Otherwise known as the Tale of Melusine, giving source and historical notes, dates and background of the story.
When Nathas informs his father the news, he breaks his promise, causing Pressine to leave the kingdom with their three daughters and move to the lost Isle of Avalon.
To punish her daughters for killing their own father, Pressine imprisons Palatine in the same mountain as Elinas, seals Melior inside a castle for all her life, and banishes Melusine, the instigator, from Avalon and also cursing her to take the form of a two-tailed serpent from the waist down every Saturday.
However, Raymondin is eventually goaded by his family and grows suspicious of Melusine always spending Saturday by herself and never attending Mass.
[10] Oblique reference to this was made by Sir Walter Scott who told a Melusine tale in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802–1803) stating that "the reader will find the fairy of Normandy, or Bretagne, adorned with all the splendour of Eastern description".
The fairy Melusina, also, who married Guy de Lusignan, Count of Poitou, under condition that he should never attempt to intrude upon her privacy, was of this latter class.
Their harmony was uninterrupted until the prying husband broke the conditions of their union, by concealing himself to behold his wife make use of her enchanted bath.
Hardly had Melusina discovered the indiscreet intruder, than, transforming herself into a dragon, she departed with a loud yell of lamentation, and was never again visible to mortal eyes; although, even in the days of Brantôme, she was supposed to be the protectress of her descendants, and was heard wailing as she sailed upon the blast round the turrets of the castle of Lusignan the night before it was demolished.
[12] When in 963 A.D. Count Siegfried of the Ardennes (Sigefroi in French; Sigfrid in Luxembourgish) bought the feudal rights to the territory on which he founded his capital city of Luxembourg, his name became connected with the local version of Melusine.
Melusine remained trapped in the rock but returns every seven years either as a woman or a serpent, carrying a golden key in her mouth.
Other adaptations and references of Fouqué's story are found in works such as Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Little Mermaid (1837), Antonín Dvořák's opera Rusalka (1901), and Jean Giraudoux's play Ondine (1939).
In a legend set in the forest of Stollenwald, a young man meets a beautiful woman named Melusina who has the lower body of a snake.
According to the chronicler Gerald of Wales, Richard I of England was fond of telling a tale that he was a descendant of an unnamed countess of Anjou.
In this fantastical account, Henry II's wife is not named Eleanor but Cassodorien, and she always leaves Mass before the elevation of the Host.
