 A Mermaid by John William Waterhouse |
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| Creature | |
|---|---|
| Grouping | Mythological |
| Sub grouping | Water spirit |
| Similar creatures | Merman Siren Ondine |
| Data | |
| Mythology | World mythology |
| First reported | c. 1000 BC |
| Country | Worldwide |
| Habitat | Ocean, sea |
A mermaid is a mythological aquatic creature with a female human head and torso and the tail of a fish. Mermaids have a broad representation in folklore, literature, and popular culture.
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The word is a compound of mere, the Old English word for "sea", and maid, a woman. The male equivalent is a merman.
Much like sirens, mermaids would sometimes sing to people and gods and enchant them, distracting them from their work and causing them to walk off the deck or run their ships aground. Other stories have them squeezing the life out of drowning men while attempting to rescue them. They are also said to take humans down to their underwater kingdoms. In Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, it is said that they forget that humans cannot breathe underwater, while others say they drown men out of spite.
The sirens of Greek mythology are sometimes portrayed in later folklore as mermaid-like; in fact, some languages use the same word for both bird and fish creatures, such as the Maltese word 'sirena'. Other related types of mythical or legendary creatures are water fairies (e.g., various water nymphs) and selkies, animals that can transform themselves from seals to humans.
The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria, ca. 1000 BC. Atargatis, the mother of Assyrian queen Semiramis, was a goddess who loved a mortal shepherd and in the process killed him. Ashamed, she jumped into a lake to take the form of a fish, but the waters would not conceal her divine beauty. Thereafter, she took the form of a mermaid — human above the waist, fish below — though the earliest representations of Atargatis showed her as being a fish with a human head and legs, similar to the Babylonian Ea. The Greeks recognized Atargatis under the name Derketo. Prior to 546 BC, the Milesian philosopher Anaximander proposed that mankind had sprung from an aquatic species of animal. He thought that humans, with their extended infancy, could not have survived early on. This idea reappeared as the aquatic ape hypothesis in the twentieth century.
A popular Greek legend has Alexander the Great's sister, Thessalonike, turn into a mermaid after she died.[1] She lived, it was said, in the Aegean and when sailors would encounter her, she would ask them only one question: "Is Alexander the king alive?" (Greek: Ζει ο βασιλιάς Αλέξανδρος;), to which the correct answer would be: "He lives and still rules" (Greek: Ζει και βασιλεύiει). Any other answer would spur her into a rage, whereupon she would transform into a Gorgon with certain doom for the ship and every sailor on board.
Lucian of Samosata in Syria (2nd century AD) in De Dea Syria ("Concerning the Syrian Goddess") wrote of the Syrian temples he had visited:
The Arabian Nights (One Thousand and One Nights) includes several tales featuring "Sea People", such as Djullanar the Sea-girl. Unlike the depiction in other mythologies, these are anatomically identical to land-bound humans, differing only in their ability to breathe and live underwater. They can (and do) interbreed with land humans, the children of such unions sharing in the ability to live underwater.
In another Arabian Nights tale, "Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman", the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater submarine society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land, in that the underwater society follows a form of primitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist. Other Arabian Nights tales deal with lost ancient technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and catastrophes which overwhelmed them.[3]
In "The Adventures of Bulukiya", the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality leads him to explore the seas, where he encounters societies of mermaids.[4] "Julnar the Sea-Born and Her Son King Badr Basim of Persia" is yet another Arabian Nights tale about mermaids. When sailors come the mermaids sing, and some men are led straight to their doom. If they follow the mermaids' lovely and beautiful voices, they do not know what they are doing or where they're going.
Mermaids were noted in British folklore as unlucky omens – both foretelling disaster and provoking it.[5] Several variants of the ballad Sir Patrick Spens depict a mermaid speaking to the doomed ships; in some, she tells them they will never see land again, and in others, she claims they are near shore, which they are wise enough to know means the same thing. They can also be a sign of rough weather.[6]
Some mermaids were described as monstrous in size, up to 2,000 feet (610 m).[5]
Mermaids could also swim up rivers to freshwater lakes. One day, in a lake near his house, the Laird of Lorntie saw, as he thought, a woman drowning, and went to aid her; a servant of his pulled him back, warning that it was a mermaid, and the mermaid screamed after that she would have killed him if it were not for his servant.[7]
On occasion, mermaids could be more beneficent, giving humans means of cure.[8]
Some tales raised the question of whether mermaids had immortal souls to answer it in the negative.[9] The figure of Lí Ban appears as a sanctified mermaid, but she was originally a human being transformed into a mermaid; after three centuries, when Christianity had come to Ireland, she came to be baptized.[10]
Mermen were also noted as wilder and uglier than mermaids, but they were described as having little interest in humans.[11]
The mermaid, or syrenka, is the symbol of Warsaw.[12] Images of a mermaid have been used on the crest of Warsaw as its symbol since the middle of the 14th century.[13] Several legends associate Triton of mythology with the city, which may have been where the association with mermaids originated.[14]
Among the Neo-Taíno nations of the Caribbean the mermaid is called Aycayia.[15][16] Her attributes relate to the goddess Jagua, and the hibiscus flower of the majagua tree Hibiscus tiliaceus.[17] Examples from other cultures are the Mami Wata of West and Central Africa, the Jengu of Cameroon, the Merrow of Ireland and Scotland, the Rusalkas of Russia and Ukraine, the Iara from Brazil and the Greek Oceanids, Nereids, and Naiads. One freshwater mermaid-like creature from European folklore is Melusine, who is sometimes depicted with two fish tails, and other times with the lower body of a serpent. It is said in Japan that eating the flesh of a ningyo can grant unaging immortality. In some European legends mermaids are said to be unlucky.
Mermaids and mermen are also characters of Philippine folklore, where they are locally known as sirena and siyokoy, respectively.[18] The Javanese people believe that the southern beach in Java is a home of Javanese mermaid queen Nyi Roro Kidul.
Mermaids are said to be known for their vanity, but also for their innocence. They often fall in love with human men, and are willing to go to great extents to prove their love with humans (see mermaid problem). Unfortunately, especially with younger mermaids, they tend to forget humans cannot breathe underwater. Their male counterparts, mermen, are rarely interested in human issues, but in the Finnish mythology merpeople are able to grant wishes, heal sickness, lift curses, brew magic potions, and sometimes carry a trident. Mermaids share some of the same characteristics.
Claimed sightings of dead or living mermaids have come from places such as Java and British Columbia. There are two Canadian reports from the area of Vancouver and Victoria, one from sometime between 1870 and 1890, the other from 1967.[19][20]
In August 2009, the town of Qiryat Yam in Israel offered a prize of US$1 million for anyone who could prove the existence of a mermaid off its coast, after dozens of people reported seeing a mermaid leaping out of the water like a dolphin and doing aerial tricks before returning to the depths.[21]
According to Dorothy Dinnerstein’s book, The Mermaid and the Minotaur, human-animal hybrids such as the minotaur and the mermaid convey the emergent understanding of the ancients that human beings were both one with and different from animals:
"[Human] nature is internally inconsistent, that our continuities with, and our differences from, the earth's other animals are mysterious and profound; and in these continuities, and these differences, lie both a sense of strangeness on earth and the possible key to a way of feeling at home here."[22]
One influential image was created by John William Waterhouse, from 1895 to 1905, entitled A Mermaid, (see the top of this article). An example of late British Academy style artwork, the piece debuted to considerable acclaim (and secured Waterhouse's place as a member of the Royal Academy), but disappeared into a private collection and did not resurface until the 1970s. It is currently in the collection of Andrew Lloyd-Webber.
The most famous in more recent centuries is Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale The Little Mermaid (1836), which has been translated into many languages. Andersen's portrayal, immortalized with a famous bronze sculpture in Copenhagen harbour, has arguably become the standard and has influenced most modern Western depictions of mermaids since it was published. The mermaid, as conceived by Andersen, appears to represent the Undines of Paracelsus, which also could only obtain an immortal soul by marrying a human being.
The best known musical depictions of mermaids are those by Felix Mendelssohn in his Fair Melusina overture and the three "Rhine daughters" in Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Lorelei, the name of one of the Rhine mermaids, has become a synonym for a siren. A more recent depiction in contemporary concert music is The Weeping Mermaid by Taiwanese composer Fan-Long Ko.
Sue Monk Kidd has written a book called The Mermaid Chair. The title comes from a mermaid who becomes a (fictional) saint.
Movie depictions include the comedy Splash (1984) starring Daryl Hannah. A 1963 episode of the hit television series Route 66, featured an episode The Cruelest Sea about a real mermaid working at Weeki Wachee aquatic park. Mermaids also appeared in the popular supernatural drama television series Charmed, and were the basis of its spin-off series Mermaid. Animated films include Disney's popular musical version of Andersen's tale, and Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo.
In heraldry, the charge of a mermaid is commonly represented with a comb and a mirror, and blazoned as a 'mermaid in her vanity'. Merfolk were used to symbolize eloquence in speech.
A shield and sword-wielding mermaid (Syrenka) is on the official Coat of arms of Warsaw, the capital of Poland. The city of Norfolk, Virginia also uses a mermaid as a symbol, and a civic art project with variously decorated mermaid sculptures has been displayed all over the municipal area. The capital city of Hamilton, Bermuda has the mermaid in its coat of arms, displayed across the city.
The personal coat of arms of Michaëlle Jean, Canada's Governor General, features two Simbi, mermaid-like spirits from Haitian Vodou, as supporters.[23]
During the Renaissance and Baroque eras, dugongs, frauds and victims of sirenomelia were exhibited in wunderkammers as mermaids.
In the 19th century, P. T. Barnum displayed in his museum a taxidermal hoax called the Fiji mermaid. Others have perpetrated similar hoaxes, which are usually papier-mâché fabrications or parts of deceased creatures, usually monkeys and fish, stitched together for the appearance of a grotesque mermaid. In the wake of the 2004 tsunami, pictures of Fiji "mermaids" circulated on the Internet as supposed examples of items that had washed up amid the devastation, though they were no more real than Barnum's exhibit.[24]
Sirenia is an order of fully aquatic, herbivorous mammals that inhabit rivers, estuaries, coastal marine waters, swamps, and marine wetlands. Sirenians, including manatees and the Dugong, have major aquatic adaptations: arms used for steering, a paddle used for propulsion, hind limbs (legs) are two small bones floating deep in the muscle. They appear fat, but are fusiform, hydrodynamic, and highly muscular. Prior to the mid 19th century, mariners referred to these animals as mermaids.[25]
Sirenomelia, also called "mermaid syndrome", is a rare congenital disorder in which a child is born with his or her legs fused together and the genitalia are reduced. This condition is about as rare as conjoined twins, affecting one out of every 100,000 live births[26] and is usually fatal within a day or two of birth because of kidney and bladder complications. Four survivors were known to have been alive as of July 2003.[27]
MERMAIDS and Mermen, in the folk-lore of England and Scotland, a class of semi-human beings who have their dwelling in the sea, but are capable of living on land and of entering into social relations with men and women. 1 They are easily identified, at least in some of their most important aspects, with the Old German Meriminni or Meerfrau, the Icelandic Hafgufa, Margygr, and Marmennill (mod. Marbendill), the Danish Hafmand or Maremind, the Irish Merrow or Merruach, the Marie-Morgan of Brittany and the Morforwyn of Wales;2 and they have various points of resemblance to the vodyany or water-sprite and the rusalka or stream-fairy of Russian mythology. The typical mermaid has the head and body of a woman, usually of exceeding loveliness, but below the waist is fashioned like a fish with scales and fins. Her hair is long and beautiful, and she is often represented, like the Russian rusalka, as combing it with one hand while in the other she holds a looking-glass. For a time at least a mermaid may become to all appearance an ordinary human being; and an Irish legend ("The Overflowing of Lough Neagh and Liban 1 The name mermaid is compounded of mere, a lake, and mczgd, a maid; but, though mere wif occurs in Beowulf, mere-maid does not appear till the Middle English period (Chaucer, Romaunt of the Rose, &c.). In Cornwall the fishermen say merry-maids and merry-men. The connexion with the sea rather than with inland waters appears to be of later origin." The Mermaid of Martin Meer "(Roby's Traditions of Lancashire, vol. ii.) is an example of the older force of the word; and such" meer-women "are known to the country-folk in various parts of England (e.g. at Newport in Shropshire, where the town is some day to be drowned by the woman's agency).
2 See Rhys," Welsh Fairy Tales,"in Y Cymmrodor (1881, 1882).
the Mermaid," in Joyce's Old Celtic Romances) represents the temporary transformation of a human being into a mermaid. The mermaid legends of all countries may be grouped as follows. (a) A mermaid or mermaids either voluntarily or under compulsion reveal things that are about to happen. Thus the two mermaids (merewip) Hadeburc and Sigelint, in the Nibelungenlied, disclose his future course to the hero Hagen, who, having got possession of their garments, which they had left on the shore, compels them to pay ransom in this way. According to Resenius, a mermaid appeared to a peasant of Samsde, foretold the birth of a prince, and moralized on the evils of intemperance, &c. (Kong Fredericks den andens Kronike, Copenhagen, 1680, p. 302). (b) A mermaid imparts supernatural powers to a human being. Thus in the beautiful story of "The Old Man of Cury" (in Hunt's Popular Romances of the West of England, 1871) the old man, instead of silver and gold, obtains the power of doing good to his neighbours by breaking the spells of witchcraft, chasing away diseases, and discovering thieves. (c) A mermaid has some one under her protection, and for wrong done to her ward exacts a terrible penalty. One of the best and most detailed examples of this class is the story of the "Mermaid's Vengeance" in Hunt's book already quoted. (d) A mermaid falls in love with a human being, lives with him as his lawful wife for a time, and then, some compact being unwittingly or intentionally broken by him, departs to her true home in the sea. Here, if its mermaid form be accepted, the typical legend is undoubtedly that of Melusine (q.v.), which, being made the subject of a romance by Jean d'Arras, became one of the most popular folk-books of Europe, appearing in Spanish, German, Dutch and Bohemian versions. (e) A mermaid falls in love with a man, and entices him to go to live with her below the sea; or a merman wins the affection or captures the person of an earthborn maiden. This form of legend is very common, and has naturally been a favourite with poets. Macphail of Colonsay successfully rejects the allurements of the mermaid of Corrievrekin, and comes back after long years of trial to the maid of Colonsay.3 The Danish ballads are especially full of the theme; as "Agnete and the Merman," an antecedent of Matthew Arnold's "Forsaken Merman"; the "Deceitful Merman, or Marstig's Daughter"; and the finely detailed story of Rosmer Hafmand (No. 49 in Grimm)..
In relation to man the mermaid is usually of evil issue if not of evil intent. She has generally to be bribed or compelled to utter her prophecy or bestow her gifts, and whether as wife or paramour she brings disaster in her train. The fish-tail, which in popular fancy forms the characteristic feature of the mermaid, is really of secondary importance; for the true Teutonic mermaid - probably a remnant of the great cult of the Vanir - had no fish-tail; 4 and this symbolic appendage occurs in the mythologies of so many countries as to afford no clue to its place of origin. The Tritons, and, in the later representations, the Sirens of classical antiquity, the Phoenician Dagon, and the Chaldaean Oannes are all well-known examples; the Ottawas and other American Indians have their man-fish and woman-fish (Jones, Traditions of the North American Indians, 1830); and the Chinese tell stories not unlike our own about the sea-women of their southern seas (Dennis, Folklore of China, 1875).
Quasi-historical instances of the appearance or capture of mermaids are common enough, 5 and serve, with the frequent use of the figure on signboards and coats of arms, to show how thoroughly the myth had taken hold of the popular imagination.6 See Leyden's "The Mermaid," in Sir Walter Scott's Border Minstrelsy. 4 Karl Blind, "New Finds in Shetlandic and Welsh Folk-Lore," in Gentleman's Magazine (1882).
6 Compare the strange account of the quasi-human creatures found in the Nile given by Theophylactus, Historiae, viii. 16, pp. 2 99-3 02, of Bekker's edition.
6 See the paper in Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc., xxxviii., 1882, by H. S. Cuming, who points out that mermaids or mermen occur in the arms of Earls Caledon, Howth and Sandwich, Viscounts Boyne and Hood, Lord Lyttelton and Scott of Abbotsford, as well as in those of the Ellis, Byron, Phene, Skeffington and other families. The English heralds represent the creatures with a single tail, the French and German heralds frequently with a double one.
A mermaid captured at Bangor, on the shore of Belfast Lough, in the 6th century, was not only baptized, but admitted into some of the old calendars as a saint under the name of Murgen (Notes and Queries, Oct. 21, 1882); and Stowe (Annales, under date 1187) relates how a man-fish was kept for six months and more in the castle of Orford in Suffolk. As showing how legendary material may gather round a simple fact, the oft-told story of the sea-woman of Edam is particularly interesting. The oldest authority, Joh. Gerbrandus a Leydis, a Carmelite monk (d. 1504), tells (Annales, &c., Frankfort, 1620) how in 1403 a wild woman came through a breach in the dike into Purmerlake, and, being found by some Edam milkmaids, was ultimately taken to Haarlem and lived there many years. Nobody could understand her, but she learned to spin, and was wont to adore the cross. Ocka Scharlensis (Chronijk van Friesland, Leeuw., 1597) reasons that she was not a fish because she could spin, and she was not a woman because she could live in the sea; and thus in due course she got fairly established as a genuine mermaid. Vosmaer, who has carefully investigated the matter, enumerates forty writers who have repeated the story, and shows that the older ones speak only of a woman (see "Beschr. van de zoogen. Meermin der stad Haarlem," in Verh. van de Holl. Maatsch. van K. en Wet., part 23, No. 1786).
The best account of the mermaid-myth is in Baring-Gould's Myths of the Middle Ages. See also, besides works already mentioned, Pontoppidan, who in his logically credulous way collects much matter to prove the existence of mermaids; Maillet, Telliamed <Hague, 1 755); Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, i. 404, and Altdan. Heldenlieder (181 I); Waldron's Description and Train's Hist. and Stat. Acc. of the Isle of Man; Folk-lore Society's Record, vol. ii.; Napier, Hist. and Trad. Tales connected with the South of Scotland; Sebillot, Traditions de la haute Bretagne (1882), and Contes des marins (1882).
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