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Mermaid
A mythical
creature with the tail of a fish and the head, arms and trunk of a woman. Its male
counterpart is called a merman. Generally called merfolk.
"From the navel
upward, her back and breasts were like a woman's... her body as big as one of us; her skin
very white; and long hair hanging down behind, of color black; in her going down they saw
her tail, which was like the tail of a porpoise, and speckled like a mackerel."
This remarkable account of the sighting
of a mermaid is taken from the journal of the english navigator Henry Hudson. He was
describing what two of his crew claimed to have seen on June 15, 1608, when looking
overboard from Hudson's ship off the coast of Novaya Zemlya, a group of islands off
northern Russia.
The origins of a half-human, half-fish
creature date back to earliest history. The Babylonian
god of the waters called Oannes was often portrayed as a man with a fish's tail, and a
Syrian moon deity known as Atargatis, filled with
shame after bearing a daughter by a young man, cast herself into a lake, whereupon her
lower half turned into a fish's tail. Images of mermaids, and myths about them, abound in
the art and literature of the world (there are carvings of them in many medieval
cathedrals) — but of particular interest are the various encounters with these
creatures that have been reported throughout history. In 1403, for example, at Edam, in
Holland, some women and their servants claimed to have found a mermaid stranded in
floodwater from the sea. Describing this event in his Speculum Mundi (1635), English
minister John Swan wrote:
"She suffered herself to be
clothed and fed...she learned to spin and perform other petty offices of women...she would
kneel down with her [mistress] before the crucifix, she never spake, but lived dumb and
continued alive (as some say) fifteen years."
On January 4, 1493, Christopher
Columbus, nearing the end of his first voyage of discovery in the Americas, entered in his
journal that, off the coast of Haiti, he and his crew had seen three mermaids rise high
from the sea:
"They were not as beautiful as
they are painted, although to some extent they have a human appearance in the
face...."
Columbus also noted that he had seen
similar creatures on an earlier voyage, off the coast of Guinea, West Africa.
Among the considerable catalog of more
modern alleged sightings, one of the most remarkable is that which took place in about
1830 on the island of Benbecula off northwest Scotland. The account claimed that a woman
washing her feet in the sea saw a mermaid, that the creature escaped (but not before being
hit in the back by a stone), and that a few days later its dead body was washed up on the
shore.The British folklorist Alexander Carmichael heard this story, he reported, from
"persons still living who saw and touched this curious creature." In Carmina
Gadelica (1900) he wrote:
"The upper part of the creature
was about the size of a well-fed child of three or four...with an abnormally developed
breast. The hair was long, dark and glossy, while the skin was white, soft, and tender.
The lower part of the body was like a salmon, but without scales."
The sheriff of the island was said to
have had a coffin made for the mermaid, which was buried on the shore. The mermaid caught
in Belfast Lough in Northern Ireland in AD 558 had an unusual past. Three hundred years
earlier she had been a little girl named Liban, whose family died in a flood. She lived
for a year beneath the waves, gradually being transformed into a mermaid. The mermaid
eventually gave herself away by singing beneath the waves. She was overheard, and a party
of men rowed into the lake and caught her in a net. They called her Murgen, which means
"sea born," and displayed her in a tank of water for everyone to see. She was
baptized, and when she died, she was called St. Murgen. Many miracles were attributed to
her. In I403 another mermaid was stranded on mud flats in the Netherlands. According to a
17th century historian, she was befriended by village women who "cleansed her of the
seamosse, which did stick about her." She never learned to speak but lived for 15
years and was given a Christian
burial in the local churchyard. The beautiful mermaid of the Holy Island of Iona (off
Scotland) daily visited an unknown saint who lived there. She was in love with him and
wanted the soul that mermaids lack. The saint told her that to gain a soul she must
renounce the sea. This was impossible, so she left in despair and never returned. But her
tears remained and formed the gray-green pebbles that are found only on the island.
Mermaids appear in the oldest legends of some of the world's most ancient cultures. The
Philistines and the Babylonians of Biblical times worshipped fishtailed gods. Mermaids
appear on Phoenician and Corinthian coins. Alexander the Great, it was said, had several
adventures with beautiful sea maidens, visiting the bottom of the sea in a glass globe.
The Roman writer Pliny recounts how an
officer of
Augusts Caesar saw many mermaids "cast upon the surds and lying dead"
on a beach in faraway Gaul.
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In folk tradition mermaid stories are
often pathetic. The mermaids are lonely, occasionally taking human form for a night to
join in village fun. Sometimes a man will seize their magic cap or belt, preventing their
return to the sea, often with disastrous consequences. Marriages with humans are seldom
happy, although some coastal people, notably in northwestern Scotland and southeastern
England, claimed they had mermaids for ancestors. In the Middle Ages distinguished French
families tampered with their pedigrees to claim ancestry from the mermaid Melusine, wife
of Raymonde, a relative of the Count of Poitiers. Their love story had a typically tragic
ending. A condition of the marriage was that Raymonde should leave Melusine alone on
Saturdays. For years they lived happily together. But one Saturday, egged on by family
gossip, he peeped at his wife through the bathroom key-hole. She was sitting in the bath,
partially transformed, with a fish's tail. Melusine cried out in dismay and fled through
the window. Raymonde never saw her again, though she would return at night to suckle her
babies. Nurses saw a gleaming figure with a blue and white scaly tail hovering over the
cradles. Sailors returning from far-off lands and seas often told of seeing mermaids and
"sea wives." A detailed description of a "see wyf" found in the East
Indies appears in a lavishly illustrated work on marine life in the Indian seas, published
in Amsterdam in 1718. It reads:
"Zee wyf. A monster resembling a siren, caught near the island of Borneo in the
Department of Amboina. It was 59 inches long and in proportion as an eel. It lived on
land, in a vat full of water, during four days seven hours. From time to time, it uttered
little cries like those of a mouse. It would not eat, though it was offered small fish,
shells, crabs, lobsters, etc."
An African who posed as a mermaid had a
more serious purpose — to save his life. King Chen, a 14th century ruler of Benin
(now part of Nigeria), became paralyzed in his legs — and tribal custom demanded that
Kings who grew old and sickly should be put to death. But the wily King Chen claimed he
was the reincarnation of a sea god and had legs like a mud fish. This gave him an excuse
not to walk and to hide his legs from his subjects' view. There is a statue of him in this
form in the British Museum.
Perhaps no one found the mermaid myth
more profitable than the enterprising London taxidermist who in the 1830's manufactured a
hideous creature he said was half-fish, halfhuman. It was displayed in a London hall and
sold to two Italian brothers for about $50,000. A naturalist of the time complained that
the creature was a monkey stitched onto the skin of a fish. This monkey and fish
combination was also the basis of a flourishing trade in mermaids by which 19th century
Japanese fishermen supplemented their incomes. Many specimens found their way to Europe to
be exhibited in traveling circuses and fairs.
The mermaid legend almost certainly
goes back to the fishtailed gods of early civilizations. But probably it owes most to
those creatures of the sea that seem almost human. In tropical waters sea mammals, such as
the dugong and the manatee, rise up in the water as they suckle their young — perhaps
this is the origin of a constant theme of the mermaid nursing her child. In colder regions
there are the seals that love to bask on the rocks uttering strange cries. Credulity,
wishful thinking, mistaken identity — whatever the origins, the mermaid myth dies
hard. In 1961 the Manx (Isle of Man) Tourist Board offered a prize to anyone who could
bring in a mermaid from the sea — alive, of course.
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Mermaids of the Canary Islands
Ashkar, Tim
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Mermaid Metamorphosis
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A Mermaid
Waterhouse, John William
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Neptunite Sports with Mermaid, Illustration
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Pirates Night Cove
Fries, Jessica
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Dragon Fly
Parkes, Michael
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Illustration of a Girl Talking to Mermaids by Alexandra Day
Day, Alexandra
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Wahine From The Sea
Rapozo, Warren
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Mermaid
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3 Green Mermaids, Retro
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Purple Mermaid
Fries, Jessica
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Mermaid (die cut)
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Mermaid
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Mythological Scene, Triton
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Tropical Paradise
Fries, Jessica
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Mermaid Art Prints and Posters.
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Related videos:
Mermaids.
Mother Nature
Tales of Discovery - Orca Whales & Mermaid Tales.
Click
here for more related
videos.
Related
books:
A Treasury of
Mermaids: Mermaid Tales from Around the World.
From the Deep
Waters: Maidens of Myth and Mystery.
Mermaid Tales
from Around the World.
Mermaids.
Mermaids Tales.
Mermaids: Nymphs
of the Sea.
Sirens: Symbols
of Seduction.
The Feejee
Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History.
The Golden Books
Treasury of Elves and Fairies: With Assorted Pixies, Mermaids, Brownies, Witches, and
Leprechauns.
Click
here for more related
books.
Further info:
Mermaidnet.
Water Spirit Legends.
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