A mermaid with beautiful golden hair was said to live in the waterman’s palace. The older fishermen told their sons to watch particularly out for her, because she would rise, choose one of them and lure him into the water by singing him the most tempting songs. Although the young men didn’t really believe these stories, many of them vanished in the deep waters of the Danube.
When during the winter months the Danube’s waters were covered with a thick layer of ice so that the fishermen could not go fishing, they stayed in their huts near the river to mend their nets and boats for the coming season. One day a fisherman was just telling his son about a beautiful mermaid he had once seen in the distance, when suddenly the door was opened by a mermaid. They both stared at her in shock, thinking that she had come to get them. The mermaid however, told them not to be afraid, she had only come to warn them that the weather would be changing suddenly, melting the ice and flooding all the villages along the river. They should warn their neighbours and flee inland as far as they could.
A few days later the land alongside the river was in fact completely flooded, but the fishermen’s lives had been saved since they had followed the mermaid’s warning. They returned after the waters had retreated and rebuilt their villages, feeling happily convinced that the mermaid was in fact their good fairy who would protect them.
The young man, who had seen her, however was very sad and longed to meet her again. He stayed on the river for hours, staring into the water and searching for her. This made his father very sad, because he felt that he was losing his son to the mermaid’s spell.
When other fishermen found his son’s empty boat on the river, he knew that his son had found the mermaid and she had taken him to her water-palace forever.
