to be able to claim descent from the illustrious Melusina[1]; and the Emperor Henry VII. felt no little pride in being able to number the beautiful and mysterious lady among his ancestors. “It does not escape me,” writes the chronicler Conrad Vecerius, in his life of that emperor, “to report what is related in a little work in the vernacular, concerning the acts of a woman, Melyssina, on one day of the week becoming a serpent from her middle downwards, whom they reckon among the ancestors of Henry VII. . . . . But, as authors relate, that in a certain island of the ocean, there are nine Sirens endowed with various arts, such, for instance, as changing themselves into any shape they like, it is no absurd conjecture to suppose that Melyssina came thence[2].”
The story became immensely popular in France, in Germany, and in Spain, and was printed and reprinted. The following are some of the principal early editions of it.
Jean d’Arras, “Le liure de Melusine en frācoys;” Geneva, 1478. The same, Lyons and Paris, without date; Lyons, 4to, 1500, and again 1544;
