The Fairy Melusine
...and as the history of the fairy Melusine shows, the sorrow engendered by a fairy marriage - unlike its joy - could last from generation to generation.
To relate the tale of Melusine, it is necessary to begin with the fairy's birth and unhappy early life. She was, in fact, just half an elf: Her mother was a fountain fairy named Pressina and her father, named Elinus, was a mortal King of Albany - the ancient name for Scotland. Pressina agreed to marry the King only after he agreed to the elfin condition, which in her case was that he never see her in childbed.
Her husband broke his vow on the day that Pressina gave birth to three beautiful daughters, Melusine, Melior and Plantina. The fairy had to leave him then. Taking her daughters, she fled to a fairy island said to be Avalon.
Years passed, and as the daughters grew, the lonely mother told them of Elinus and his broken vow, and as she spoke she wept for the love she had lost. When the daughters grew into their full powers, they took revenge. They lured their father into a mountain cave in Northumbria, and with a web of spells they closed the cave, so that Elinus remained a prisoner in the dark for the rest of his life.
When Pressina heard what her daughters had done, she wailed with grief and rage, and she set upon them solemn punishments. The fates of the younger daughters, Melior and Plantina, are not important to the story, but that of Melusine - the eldest and the leader - is. Her mother cast this curse: Every Saturday Melusine was condemned to become a loathsome serpent from the waist down, and to stay that way for twenty-four hours. She was doomed, the mother said, not to know the joys of love, unless she could conceal her periodic deformity by finding a lover who would agree not to visit her on the day of her punishment. If that lover agreed to the condition and then broke his word, the mother added, Melusine would spend eternity as a winged snake in perpetual flight - and perpetual pain.
The tale of Melusine's marriage begins in the sun-washed west of France, where the fairy either had fled or had been sent by her mother to guard a forest fountain sometimes called the Fountain of Thirst and sometimes Lusinia. Melusine whiled away the hours there, occasionally attended by forest fairies. For the most part, she bathed in the fountain and sang fairy songs to herself. On Saturdays she retreated into the trees to hide her shameful punishment from any travelers who might chance by.
But none appeared for many months, until at last a young man strode into the clearing. He saw the fountain and heard the sparkling harmonies of its falling water, and at the fountain's edge, half-hidden by leafy shadows, he saw Melusine and heard her wistful, whispering song.
He was charmed by the beautiful maiden. As for the fairy, her heart was captured, and she mourned her ugly secret. But the young man kneeled beside her, stroked her hand and spoke so sweetly that Melusine was calmed. He understood that she was a fountain fairy, and he offered her both heart and hand.
Melusine agreed and, with some hesitation, told him the condition imposed upon them: that he leave her in seclusion each Saturday. (She did not tell the reason.) The young man had a generous and trusting heart, and he gave his word.
According to chroniclers, that is how the great family of Lusignan was formed: Melusine was to be forebear of countless counts and kings. For the mortal was Raymond, son of the Earl of Forez. When he married Melusine - and marry they did, in splendid fashion - luck came to him. After the marriage he built the fortress of Lusignan, near Poitou. Some said it was constructed in three nights because of the fairy's aid, but it seems unlikely. Others said it was named for the fairy's fountain, Lusinia, and this is possible.
Whatever the truth, the fortress rose high above its forested mountain, bristling with towers and gleaming with gold. Within were all the pleasures of a palace: The walls were painted in the style called mille-fleurs, or 'thousand flowers,' and the archways were hung with tapestries so finely embroidered that only fairies could have made them. Because of the fortress Raymond was thereafter Lord of Lusignan.
He lived happily with Melusine for many years. She was as light and laughing as the waters of her fountain, and gaiety and good fortune followed her dancing footsteps. Throughout those years, Raymond kept his word. Each Friday just before midnight, he left his wife alone in her tower chamber, returning only when the bells tolled the next midnight.
They had but one grief, and that was their children. Perhaps because of her mother's curse, Melusine bore a succession of malformed children. She brought forth only sons. The first had one eye of red and one of blue - not a great disfigurement, but a sign of otherworldly blood. The second had a face as red as fire; the third had one eye lower than the other. The next boy was hideous scarred, bearing a mark on his cheek that resembled a lion's claw; and the boy that followed him had only one eye. The sixth child had a tooth like a boar's tusk that protruded from the side of his mouth; he was called Geoffrey au Grant Dent - Geoffrey Great Tooth. He was followed by a brother named Fromont, who had a monstrous brush of hair bristling from his nose, and another brother who had three eyes. The last two children were normal little boys.
But they were small consolation. As Melusine bore son after deformed son, whispers began, first among her women, then in the palace corridors, and finally throughout the countryside. Harsh voices said the fairy blood was destroying the mortal line; others said that Melusine committed adultery on the Saturdays she kept alone, and so brought forth demons.
At last, Raymond - despairing of his hideous brood - heeded his kinsmen and broke the vow he had given his wife. He left her, as he always did, at midnight on a Friday, but instead of returning to his own chambers, he concealed himself where he might watch her. This was no difficult task, for Melusine trusted him and therefore was careless of locks and bolts.
What Raymond saw that night filled him with sickness. His wife crept into the bath that awaited her. Her shoulders and arms and breasts were as white and lovely as he knew them, but at her waist the skin roughened and took a greenish tinge, and below that gleamed the scaly, coiling tail of a serpent. Melusine lounged in the bath all day, heavy lids drooping over glittering eyes. From time to time, a long tounge flicked between the pretty lips and she gave a hungry, hissing sigh.
Raymond left as quickly as he could and said nothing, for he had betrayed the wife he had loved - and he loved her still. They might have continued this way - Raymond with his secret, Melusine with hers - but for Geoffrey Great Tooth. As brutally vicious as his appearance suggested, Geoffrey crowned a career of murder and pillage by setting fire to the monastery where his brother Fromont had retreated. A hundred monks died.
The news was brought to Raymond as he sat with his wife and courtiers in her chamber. In his despair, he turned on her and cried;
"Go, foul snake, contaminator of my children."
Melusine gasped and whitened and swayed. She sank to the floor, and the courtiers gathered around her. When she gained her senses again, her eyes filled with tears at the betrayal. She walked to a window and set her foot on the stone sill. (The footprint, it is said, stayed there for hundreds of years.) With a last glance at her husband, she leaped into the air.
The courtiers clustered at the window, but no body lay in the courtyard below. They waited in silence, and then they heard the howling cry and saw the shining scales of a great winged snake. It circled the tower three times and disappeared.
Raymond stumbled from the room. No one knews if he ever spoke again; he became a hermit and spent his days not on the field of battle or in the courts of the mighty, but in monastic contemplation.
It is said that Melusine flew to Lusignan in secret to nurse her two youngest sons, and that they survived because of her anxious care. No one knew if that was true. But for centuries after, each Friday before the current Lord of Lusignan was to die, a great snake flew wailing around the battlements of the palace. In this way, Melusine lived out her mother's punishment.
So, once more, an alien pairing failed to hold. Once more, a marriage between fairy and human ended in tragedy. It would not be the last time. As long as fairies showed themselves in human form, their love was avidly sought. And no wonder: Mortals, bound by rules and beset by mundane woes, saw the hope of immortal happiness in those bright beings, shining with gallantry and grace, and swathed in mystery. The rewards seemed worth the risk. Even at the end of their time, when fairies no longer sought to human company, glimpses of them added enchantment to the mortals' measured earth, spinning its stately way through the eternal heavens.
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