The Sea-Maiden (Scottish Gaelic: A Mhaighdean Mhara) is a Scottish fairy tale collected by John Francis Campbell in Popular Tales of the West Highlands, listing his informant as John Mackenzie, fisherman, near Inverary.
Nearby, the grass was poor, and so were the milk and his wages, but he found a green valley.
The son came again and slept, telling her to rouse him when the creature came; she did, putting an earring of hers on his ear as he said, and they fought, and he cut off the second head.
In Campbell's version, after the sea-maiden's external life is destroyed and it dies, the princess and her husband are walking one day, when the man notices a castle in the distance, in the woods.
The youngest brother's dog attacks the crone, but she uses her "club of magic" on the animal.
They gather the crone's gold and silver as spoils and go back to the king's palace.
The elder son remains with the princess, while his brothers return to their father's house.
Accordingly, the mare and the she-dog give birth to a brood of the same number as the twins, and trees or bushes sprout in the garden (which will serve as the brothers' life token).
Tom Fisher reaches a kingdom that is threatened by a serpent from the sea that demands one of the king's daughters as sacrifice every year.
He builds a hut and is visited by a witch (the true form of the hare), who turns him into a blue stone with a stick.
Back to John Fisher, he notices that his brother is in danger (his token of life, a knife, has rusted), and goes to the princess's kingdom.
John Fisher threatens her, but the witch begs to be spared in exchange for providing the means to rescue the twins' father: the brothers are to find a bull in the king's stables, find a duck inside it, and an egg inside the duck (the egg holds the life of the mermaid that is holding their father hostage).
Now back to the kingdom, the elder twin, Tom Fisher, summons his helpful foxes to kill the bull, so they can use the mermaid's egg as a bargaining chip.
Tom goes to the sea shore and summons the mermaid, demanding his father's return, otherwise he will crush the egg.
[9] Author John Shaw published a similar tale, collected in Cape Breton, with the title Mac an Iasgair Mhóir (The Big Fisherman's Son).
In this tale, a man named Big Fisherman has no luck catching fish, until one day a mermaid "or some other creature" comes out of the water with an offer: he will deliver her his first son in exchange for a plentiful net of fishes.
Despite some reservations, the man agrees and is given three grains to give to wife, his she-dog and his mare.
The elder goes to work as a cowherd in another kingdom, fights three giants, and later rescues a princess from a multi-headed sea monster.
After some time, the man's wife gives birth to three sons, the mare to three foals, the she-dog to three puppies, and three trees sprout in the garden.
The boy finds work as a king's shepherd, fights three giants, one one-headed, the second three-headed and the last nine-headed, and eventually rescues and marries a princess.
The narrator ends the story at the marriage to the princess, but refers to a continuation about the adventures of the two brothers and "how the trees withered".
His version keeps the second part of the original tale, with the episode of a witch petrifying the hero and his middle brother, and both being saved by their cadet.