Comparisons of the British mermaid and the Uzbek suv parisi often conclude that the first is a dangerous seductress whose stories end in loss and the second an ideal bride whose stories end in marriage, and they explain the contrast by differences in religion, landscape and family values. This article argues that much of that contrast is produced by genre. Focusing on one plot, the marriage of a mortal man to a woman from the water or the fairy world, it sorts British, Irish and Uzbek–Persianate material into belief legend, ballad, wonder tale, epic and literary reworking, drawing on Bascom's and Lüthi's accounts of genre, Christiansen's migratory legend ML 4080, the tale type ATU 400 and Hatto's study of the bird-maiden tale. In the British and Irish record the plot survives mainly as legend: the seal wife, the merrow of Gollerus, the lake maiden of Llyn y Fan Fach and the Cornish mermaids all leave, because the legend exists to explain a lineage, a place or an object that outlived the union. In the Uzbek and wider Persianate record the plot survives mainly as wonder tale and epic, where the lost bride is sought and recovered, while the belief register treats paris as afflicting spirits that call for a healer. Once genre is held constant, the two traditions look much closer. The differences that remain concern the obstacle to the marriage, which British sources and Victorian poets frame through the Christian soul and the Persianate tradition frames through distance and kinship. The article proposes genre as a required variable in comparative studies of supernatural women.

BETWEEN LEGEND AND WONDER TALE: THE SUPERNATURAL WATER BRIDE IN BRITISH AND UZBEK TRADITIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF GENRE

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