THE Mermaid's Vengeance

Here's a little blast from the past. A while back, I posted my version of a traditional folktale which I gave the title A Kiss Of Salt. This was well received - and one of my own favourite pieces - but more recently, my hosts for this podcast did some kind of AI sweep looking for plagiarism among material posted. It turned out that someone had written some song which had nothing to do with my story but which made some reference in its title to a kiss being salty. This also happened with another of my stories Wild Hearts, Warm Hearts - again there was no link between my extended folklore-based story and a reference to hearts in someone's three minute love song but AI, as we all know, is anything but intelligent. As a result both pieces were peremptorily removed from the podcast. I was sent an appeal form but only one form, though two stories had been taken down - and apparently the AI could only process one submission per form. Wild Hearts, Warm Hearts was quickly found "Not Guilty" and restored but not A Kiss Of Salt. Because it was not plagiarised - my source was a public domain folk tale which, in the interest of full disclosure, can be found in Volume 1 of Robert Hunt's 19th century collection Popular Romances Of The West of England or The Drolls, Traditions & Superstitions of Old Cornwall (I was working in Cornwall when I first encountered the story, Hunt's book being the Cornish equivalent of the Brothers Grimm) - I here confidently repost it - but, to save confusion, post it not under my preferred title but under the title Hunt's collection gave it: The Mermaid's Vengeance. That maybe gives more of the game away than i'd like, but I'm proud of the story and performance and my very Arran reinvention of it - so here it is, back again. Enjoy!

You can listen to THE Mermaid's Vengeance online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

THE Mermaid's Vengeance is an episode from Magic Island Storytelling Theatre: Strange Tales From The Isle Of Arran: Ghost & fairy tales & more. by Marty Ross.

This episode is 00:42:50 long.

This episode was published on Feb 20, 2026.

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