In the tale, Li Ban was a daughter of Eochaid, the king whose house stood where Lough Neagh now lies. When the sacred well overflowed and drowned her family, she survived in an air-locked chamber under the waves. After a year she prayed to be transformed into a creature of the water, and became a salmon from the waist down, with the upper body and face of a woman. Her lap-dog became an otter.
For three hundred years she travelled the seas between Ireland and Scotland and was said to sing with unearthly beauty. In the time of St Comgall of Bangor, in the sixth century, a monk named Beoan heard her singing from his boat near what is now Larne on the Antrim coast and reported it to the abbot. A party went to find her, and she agreed to come ashore at a place called Ollarba. There she was baptised Muirgen and died almost at once, going to heaven as a saint, having chosen a short Christian life over another three hundred years of swimming.
Folklore Finder notes that the Dúchas Schools' Collection preserves later oral versions from Antrim and Derry. The story is one of the few early Irish accounts of a mermaid.
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