It sounds like a church bell under
the sea to me. When we lived at Porthkeverne we were close to the lost
land of Lyonesse, and there was a lovely story about a mermaid. They said
she used to come and sit on a broad flat stone outside the church and
listen to the singing; and the priest heard of it, so one day he came out
and talked to her, and asked her if she wouldn't like to be baptized, and
she said she'd think about it. So she swam away; but she came back again
and again, and it was decided that she was to be baptized on Easter
Sunday. But on Good Friday there was a terrible storm, and the waves came
up and swallowed the whole of the village, so that when the poor mermaid
arrived she found the church sunk under the sea, and the priest and all
the people drowned. There was nobody to baptize her, and there never has
been since, and she swims about the water weeping and singing any little
bits of the service that she can remember. The fishermen said if anybody
was at sea and heard her it was bad luck, and a sign he would certainly
be drowned before long.
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