How The Water Spirit Got The Man's Wife From Him – Guiana A man took his wife with him on a fishing expedition. He built a banab on an island in midstream and as night came on told his wife to remain there, while he went to fish. She was very anxious to accompany him in the corial, but he insisted on her remaining and of course she had to obey. Being very tired, she soon afterward fell asleep, and about midnight the Water Spirit paid her a visit. . . . Half-dazed, she woke up, and asked him whether he had done anything to her, and when he told her that he had, recognizing a stranger's voice in place of her husband's, she felt very much ashamed. However, the Water Spirit told her who he was, of his great love for her, and that he would now take her to wife: all she had to do was to tell her previous husband that it was entirely his fault that she had been left alone and taken advantage of, and that henceforth she declined to share his hearth and home. So when the latter returned next morning from his fishing, the wife made a clean breast of everything, for which she blamed him, as he had refused to let her accompany him in the corial, and she told him further that she intended living with him no more. They started now on their way home, and getting into the boat, they paddled a short distance, when the wife said: "After today you will not see me. You must tell all my family to meet me tomorrow at a spot that I will show you." As they traveled along, she showed him the very spot and at the same moment the boat stopped, just as if some one were holding it. She got out, the water coming up to her knees, and the corial continued on its journey. After a while the husband turned around to have a look, and saw his wife with another man, the Water Spirit, just stepping ashore: as he turned the point, the couple were walking together along the river-bank. Now, when he reached home without his wife, all her people wanted to know what had become of her; the mother especially was angry, but became somewhat mollified when he assured her that next day he would take her to the very place where her daughter had left him. He also gave her a message from his late wife that she was to bring the silver nose-ornament and the bead bracelets and necklets which the latter had left behind. So on the following morning he took the mother down to the river-bank, and there sure enough they saw the guilty couple, the daughter and the Water Spirit, behaving in a very friendly manner. As they got quite close, the Spirit suddenly disappeared, leaving the woman by herself. The mother then handed over the beads and ornaments, while her daughter murmured: "Your son-in-law caused this trouble: he would not let me come into the corial with him; and so when I was fast asleep the Water Spirit took advantage of me." Mother and daughter sobbed, and the latter said: "You will see me sometimes, but never distinctly: directly you think you see me clearly, I will disappear." No one knew at the time that the Water Spirit had taken advantage of the man also: but it was this Spirit who had made the husband refuse to let his wife keep him company in the corial, so as the better to carry out his wicked design. An Inquiry into the Animism and Folk-Lore of the Guiana Indians, Walter E. Roth, from the Thirtieth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1908-1909, pp. 103-386, Washington D.C., 1915, and is now in the public domain.[ British Guiana ][ South America ]