A number of tales turning on the same incident are published in
'Cymmrodor,' v. I. In these we have either the taboo on the name, or the
taboo on the touch of iron. In a widely diffused superstition iron
'drives away devils and ghosts,' according to the Scholiast on the
eleventh book of the 'Odyssey,' and the Oriental Djinn also flee from
iron. {82c} Just as water is fatal to the Aryan frog-bride and to the
Red Indian beaver-wife, restoring them to their old animal forms, so the
magic touch of iron breaks love between the Welshman and his fairy
mistress, the representative of the stone age.

In many tales of fairy-brides, they are won by a kind of force. The
lover in the familiar Welsh and German Marchen sees the swan-maidens
throw off their swan plumage and dance naked.. He steals the feather-
garb of one of them, and so compels her to his love. Finally, she leaves
him, in anger, or because he has broken some taboo. Far from being
peculiar to Aryan mythology, this legend occurs, as Mr. Farrer has shown,
{83a} in Algonquin and Bornoese tradition. The Red Indian story told by
Schoolcraft in his 'Algic Researches' is most like the Aryan version, but
has some native peculiarities. Wampee was a great hunter, who, on the
lonely prairie, once heard strains of music. Looking up he saw a speck
in the sky: the speck drew nearer and nearer, and proved to be a basket
containing twelve heavenly maidens. They reached the earth and began to
dance, inflaming the heart of Wampee with love. But Wampee could not
draw near the fairy girls in his proper form without alarming them. Like
Zeus in his love adventures, Wampee exercised the medicine-man's power of
metamorphosing himself. He assumed the form of a mouse, approached
unobserved, and caught one of the dancing maidens. After living with
Wampee for some time she wearied of earth, and, by virtue of a 'mystic
chain of verse,' she ascended again to her heavenly home.