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The
mermaid and merman legends begin with the worship of gods as have many
mythologies. This information has been divided into three different catagories
to help save time in your browsing and to establish simple guidelines to see
different periods in the mythology of mermaids. The earliest representations
and descriptions of these now well known creatures can be traced back as far
as the eighth century BC. . .
Merfolk
as Gods - a look at the birth of the mermaid mythology and how it began as
pagan water deities and supernatural female water beings.
Merfolk
and Christianity - the role of the mermaid mythology changed significantly
with the growth of the Chirstian Church, this is a look at how and why the
myth survived when so many other pagan deities didn't and what the new role of
the mermaid was.
Merfolk
and the Rise of Science - for a long time the mermaid was believed to have
existed even by educated men, with the rise of science and the Enlightenment
the tides turned back to try and disprove the existence of such a creature as
the mermaid. This being done the role of mermaids changed yet again.
The
Babylonians were known to worship a sea-god called Oannes, or Ea. Oannes was
reputed to have risen from the Erythrean Sea and taught to man the arts and
sciences. In the Louvre today can be seen an eighth century wall-scene
depicting Oannes as a merman, with the fish-like tail and the upperbody of a
man.
The
Syrians and the Philistines were also known to have worshipped a Semitic
mermaid moon-goddess. The Syrians called her Atargatis while the Philistines
knew her as Derceto. It is not unusual or surprising that this moon-goddess
was depicted as a mermaid as the tides ebbed and flowed with the moon then as
it does now and this was incorporated into the god-like personifications that
we find in their art and the ancient literature. Atargatis is one of the first
recorded mermaids and the legend says that her child Semiramis was a normal
human and because of this Atargatis was ashamed and killed her lover.
Abandoning the infant she became wholly a fish.
However,
not all ancient water gods or spiritual personifications took on the form of a
mermaid or a merman all of the time. Water-nymphs for example can be mistaken
for mermaids, they are beautiful in their appearance and are also musically
talented, which mermaids are well known for, be it their singing or playing of
a musical instrument. Sirens too are forever being mistaken for mermaids. Even
the ancient writers and medieval Bestiary writers would get the two confused
or mention only one when infact both have to be mentioned to make sense of the
literatures and archaeological evidence. This is discussed again below, where
one can also see the result of a siren/mermaid illustration. The Siren and the
Mermaid are two seperate entities, one having the upperbody of a young woman
and the lowerbody of a bird, the other the upperbody of a young woman and the
lower body of a fish.
The
Indians, amongst their many gods, worshipped one group of water-gods known as
the Asparas,who were celestial flute-playing water-nymphs.
In
Japanese and Chinese legends there were not only mermaids but also sea-dragons
and the dragon-wives. The Japanese mermaid known as Ningyo was depicted as a
fish with only a human head; where as the POLYNESIAN mythology includes a
creator named Vatea who was depicted as half-human form and half-porpoise.
Greek
and Roman Mythology is often placed together as the two are very similar and
it is in the literature from these cultures that one finds the first literary
description of the mermaid, and indeed the mermen. Homer mentions the Sirens
during the voyage of Odysseus but he fails to give a physical description. The
image seen here shows an old black and white film of Homer's tale depicting
the sirens in mermaid form. Ovid on the other hand writes that the mermaids
were born from the burning galleys of the Trojans where the timbers turned
into flesh and blood and the 'green daughters of the sea'.
Posiedon
and Neptune were often depicted as half-man and half-fish but the most popular
motif of the ancient world that depicts mermen was the representations of the
tritons, TRITON being the son of the powerful sea-god. A detail of the vase
shown and other typical triton motifs can be seen from these periods in the
Art Gallery. Besides the vase is the trident, known to have been carried by
the sea-god and thought to be magical, the figure of Poseidon in the film
Jason and the Argonauts, 1973 is shown with the trident. Specimens of tritons
in classical times were said to be found at Tanagara and Rome, according to
Pausanias, it is presumed by scholars today that they were fakes, just like
those mermaid remains that one could find in the later nineteenth century
freakshows, but more information on these later. The Nereids, who were the
daughters of Nereus and the Oceanides, who were associated with Ocean and the
Naiads who lived in the fresh waters of the ancient world, while being water
creatures were depicted as humans and not merpeople.
The
British isles too had their fair share of merfolk mythology. The Cornish knew
mermaids as Merrymaids; the Irish knew them as Merrows or Muirruhgach and some
sources write that they lived on dry land below the sea and had enchanted caps
that allowed them to pass through the water without drowning, while the women
were very beautiful the men had red noses, were piggy eyed, with green hair
and teeth and a penchant for brandy. Other sources write that the Merrow were
believed to forebode a coming storm and W. B. Yeats wrote in his Irish
Folkstories and Fairytales:
It
was rather annoying to Jack that,
In
the Shetlands the mermaid is known as the Sea-trow who are able to take off
their animal skin that allows them to swim through the water like a fish, and
then walk on land like humans.
The
neck are to be found in Scandanavia, along with the Havfrue (merman) and the
Havmand (mermaid), the neck however were able to live in both salt- and
fresh-water. The Norwegian mermaid known as Havfine were believed to have very
unpredictable tempers. Some were known to be kind, others to be incredibly
cruel; it was considered unlucky to view one of these havfine.
The
German mythologies of mermaids are plenty. There are the Meerfrau; the Nix and
the Nixe who were the male and female fresh-water inhabitants and it was
believed that they were treacherous to men. The nixe lured men to drown while
the nix could be in the form of an old dwarfish character or as a
golden-haired boy and in Iceland and Sweden could take the form of a centaur.
The nix also loved music and could lure people to him with his harp, if he was
in the form of a horse he would tempt people to mount him and then dash into
the sea to drown them. While he sometimes desired a human soul he would often
demand annual human sacrifices. There was also a more elvin kind of Nixies
that would sometimes appear in the market, she could be identified by the
corner of her apron being wet. If they paid a good price it would be an
expensive year but if they paid a low price the prices for that year would
remain cheap. In the Rhine were to be found the Lorelei from which the town
took its name. The Germans also knew the Melusine as a double-tailed mermaid
as did the British heraldry as well. There is a double-tailed mermaid to be
found in the Art Gallery.
Russian
mermaid mythology includes the daughters of the Water-King who live beneath
the sea; the water-nymph that drowns swimmers known as the Rusalka and the
male water-spirit known as the Vodyany who followed sailors and fishermen.
The
Africans believed the tales of a fish-wife and river-witches.
What
we have seen here is the beginings of the mermaid mythology that starts with
the merman depictions of water-deities and other such pagan identies. The
stories of mermaids as one may think of today, were formed after the rise of
Christianity.
There
is a theory that during the suppression of pagan deities the mermaid and other
minor supernatural beings were not seen as a threat to the growth and
popularity of Christian beliefs. Some writers even go so far as to believe
that the Church actually believed in the mermaid mythology, and for two
particular reasons; the first is that the mermaid served as a moral emblem of
sin, the femme fatale label we know so well was nurtured with this form of
thinking; and the second was the quality of evidence from contemporary and
ancient authors on the existence of mermaids added to this 'belief' the Church
found in mermaids.
The
symbol of the mermaid with her comb and mirror in hand seems to first be
depicted during the Middle Ages. This came to represent to the Church vanity
and female beauty which could cause the destruction of men. And so the mermaid
mythology turned from that of near godlike status, including the fear that the
sirens brought, to one of aesthetic values. The mermaid became a focus for
misogynists and as thus rather than causing fear in the laity the mermaid
became even more fascinating.
The
bestiaries of the early middle ages included the siren and not the mermaid. As
the two creatures became confused in popular beliefs and cultures so too did
the bestiary writers confuse the two, as can be seen in this illustration of
the siren, complete with a mermaids tail. Mermaids were well known in the
bestiaries of Physiologus and his predecessors, where they compiled the
zoological information of 'real' animals. Mermaid were believed to exist even
by the most educated men.
In
1403 a mermaid was apparently found stranded in the mud after a storm in West
Friesland. She was then taken, clothed and fed ordinary food. Some say that
she lived for fifteen years in capture, trying to escape constantly; she was
also taught to kneel before the crucifix and spin but she was never able to
speak.
Raphael
Holinshed, in his chronicles of
1587 wrote that in the reign of either John or Henry II, some fishers of
Oreford in Suffolk, caught a man-shaped fish, who would not or could not speak,
ate fish be it raw or cooked and finally escaped after two months, back to the
sea. There are detailed accounts of recorded sightings that are mostly from
the 1800's that can be read in the Sightings page.
In
literature the mermaid began to be used as a description of women, rather than
an identification of the creature herself. The mermaid had become a metaphor!
Chaucer takes the mermaid and uses her as a scholarly metaphor for beautiful
but dangerous song. Shakespeare is known to have used such a divice; Comedy of
Errors for example III. ii, Antipholus of Syracuse to Luciana:
O,
train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,
Oberon's
vision of a mermaid in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream II.i, is not
however used as a metaphor, it is not however seen on stage either:
Once
I sat upon a promontory,
John Donne however uses the mermaid as myth in his sceptical Song where he
doubts constancy in women. More likely than finding this constancy in women he
believes would be to:
Goe,
and catche a falling starre,
Faerie
Queen, by Edmund Spense, contains five mermaids who try to tempt the Knight of
Temperance, Guyon. The five mermaids represent the temptations to temperance
on the five senses, book 2, canto 12. This does nothing to elevate the moral
view of the mermaid as one can imagine.
Merfolk
and the rise of science
With
the growth of science the fantasic became childish amongst the writers of the
growing educated, especially during the eighteenth century, but began to
flourish again with the Romantic movement at the turn of this century. It was
also the time however for the scientifically minded to do their utmost to
dispel the myth of the mermaid, claiming that all the recorded sightings were
simply men who'd been at sea too long and wanting to believe, and so when a
seal, porpoise,dugong or manatee was spotted from the ship they'd swear they'd
seen a mermaid.
It is from the 19th century that
the reported sightings are so numerous. The sightings page shows where the
sightings were and also the accompanying reports. Prominent, well- respected
people writing in prominent papers conflict with the scientists apathy to the
existence of such a fantastical creature.
Children's
stories are filled with mermaids again, and this time they are written down
and published. The mermaid figures in art once again allowing the artist to
portray the division within human nature of the "animal" sexual
nature and the intellectual thinking; represented by the tail of the mermaid
and that human part of her that wishes to gain a soul. This is the first
period the mention of the mermaid longing for a human soul is found in the
history of the mermaid. The prime example being The Little Mermaid by Hans
Andersen found in the Faerietales page, where the young mermaid gains a souls
through her faithfulness. The mermaid is also seen as an elemental being and
other water-beings are written about, such as The Water Babies by Charles
Kingsley. The theme of mermaids longing for a mortal man is continued and
broadened which can be seen especially in the plays of Peter Blackmore,
Miranda and the sequel Mad About Men which were adapted to film and starred
Glynis Johns.
It is also the time of frauds
and there were many in America during the 1920's and 1930's, with the most
famous one being the Feeggee Mermaid. Japanese freakshows too were notorious
for their "mermaids", that merely consisted of the torso of a monkey and the
tail of a fish stiched together and advertised as "mermaid corpses".
It
is not until the 20th century that the mermaid is tossed back and forth
between those that believe, or want to believe, and those that stand behind
their logic and scientific proof that a creature such as the mermaid simply
cannot exist. A wonderful film of these two meeting is the film Splash, with
Daryl Hannah and Tom Hanks. The mermaid becomes a symbol of fun and fantasy
rather than an accepted part of cultural tradition and awe. She is seen as a
figure of eroticism mixed with fear of the unkown, or the animal side of her
nature. It is a great marketing tool for toys, cartoons, soft-porn, and
women's swimwear. No matter how the mermaid is used or what role she plays she
will always retain her mysterious air. Perhaps the next move is a more
feminine one, bringing back the myth of the mermaid protecting women, or the
soul of the woman drowned before her natural time of death. Source: Mermaids |
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