A
mermaid is a legendary aquatic creature with the upper body of a female human and the tail of a
fish.
[1] Mermaids appear in the
folklore of many cultures worldwide, including the Near East, Europe, Africa and Asia. The first stories appeared in ancient
Assyria, in which the goddess
Atargatis
transformed herself into a mermaid out of shame for accidentally
killing her human lover. Mermaids are sometimes associated with perilous
events such as floods, storms, shipwrecks and drownings. In other folk
traditions (or sometimes within the same tradition), they can be
benevolent or beneficent, bestowing boons or falling in love with
humans.
Mermaids are associated with the mythological Greek
sirens as well as with
sirenia, a biological
order comprising
dugongs and
manatees. Some of the historical sightings by sailors may have been misunderstood encounters with these aquatic mammals.
Christopher Columbus
reported seeing mermaids while exploring the Caribbean, and sightings
have been reported in the 20th and 21st centuries in Canada, Israel and
Zimbabwe. The U.S.
National Ocean Service stated in 2012 that no evidence of mermaids has ever been found.
Mermaids have been a popular subject of art and literature in recent centuries, such as in
Hans Christian Andersen's well-known fairy tale "
The Little Mermaid" (1836). They have subsequently been depicted in operas, paintings, books, films and comics.
Etymology and related terms
The word
mermaid is a compound of the
Old English mere (sea), and
maid (a girl or young woman).
[1] The equivalent term in Old English was
merewif.
[2] They are conventionally depicted as beautiful with long flowing hair.
[1] As cited above, they are sometimes equated with the
sirens of Greek mythology (especially the
Odyssey), half-bird
femme fatales whose enchanting voices would lure soon-to-be-shipwrecked sailors to nearby rocks, sandbars or shoals.
[3]
Sirenia
Sirenia is an order of fully aquatic, herbivorous
mammals that inhabit rivers, estuaries, coastal marine waters, swamps and marine wetlands. Sirenians, including
manatees and
dugongs,
possess major aquatic adaptations: arms used for steering, a paddle
used for propulsion, and remnants of hind limbs (legs) in the form of
two small bones floating deep in the muscle. They look ponderous and
clumsy but are actually fusiform, hydrodynamic and highly muscular, and
mariners before the mid-nineteenth century referred to them as mermaids.
[4]
Sirenomelia
Sirenomelia, also called "mermaid syndrome", is a rare
congenital disorder in which a child is born with his or her legs fused together and small
genitalia. This condition is about as rare as
conjoined twins, affecting one out of every 100,000 live births
[5] and is usually fatal within a day or two of birth because of
kidney and
bladder complications. Four survivors were known as of July 2003.
[6]
Folklore
Near East, Ancient Greece
The first known mermaid
stories appeared in
Assyria c. 1000 BC. The goddess
Atargatis, mother of Assyrian queen
Semiramis, loved a mortal (a shepherd) and unintentionally killed him. Ashamed, she jumped into a lake and took 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 —
although the earliest representations of Atargatis showed her as a fish
with a human head and arm, similar to the
Babylonian god
Ea. The Greeks recognized Atargatis under the name Derketo. Sometime before 546 BC,
Milesian philosopher
Anaximander postulated that mankind had sprung from an aquatic animal species. He thought that humans, who begin life with prolonged
infancy, could not have survived otherwise.
A popular Greek legend turned
Alexander the Great's sister,
Thessalonike, into a mermaid after her death,
[7] living in the
Aegean. She would ask the sailors on any ship she would encounter only one question: "Is King Alexander alive?" (
Greek:
"Ζει ο Βασιλιάς Αλέξανδρος;"),
to which the correct answer was: "He lives and reigns and conquers the
world" (Greek: "Ζει και βασιλεύει και τον κόσμο κυριεύει"). This answer
would please her, and she would accordingly calm the waters and bid the
ship farewell. Any other answer would enrage her, and she would stir up a
terrible storm, dooming the ship and every sailor on board.
[8][9]
Lucian of Samosata in
Syria (2nd century A.D.), in
De Dea Syria (
About the Syrian Goddess) wrote of the Syrian temples he had visited:
- "Among them – Now that is the traditional story among them
concerning the temple. But other men swear that Semiramis of Babylonia,
whose deeds are many in Asia, also founded this site, and not for Hera Atargatis but for her own mother, whose name was Derketo."
- "I saw Derketo's likeness in Phoenicia,
a strange marvel. It is woman for half its length; but the other half,
from thighs to feet, stretched out in a fish's tail. But the image in the Holy City
is entirely a woman, and the grounds for their account are not very
clear. They consider fish to be sacred, and they never eat them; and
though they eat all other fowls they do not eat the dove,
for they believe it is holy. And these things are done, they believe,
because of Derketo and Semiramis, the first because Derketo has the
shape of a fish, and the other because ultimately Semiramis turned into a
dove. Well, I may grant that the temple was a work of Semiramis
perhaps; but that it belongs to Derketo I do not believe in any way. For
among the Egyptians some people do not eat fish, and that is not done to honor Derketo."[10]
One Thousand and One Nights
The
One Thousand and One Nights collection includes several tales featuring "sea people", such as "Djullanar the Sea-girl".
[11]
Unlike depictions of mermaids 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, and the children of such unions have the ability to
live underwater. In the tale "
Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman", the
protagonist
Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability to breathe underwater and
discovers an underwater society that is portrayed as an inverted
reflection of society on land. The underwater society follows a form of
primitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist. 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.
[11]
British Isles
16th century
Zennor mermaid chair
The Norman chapel in
Durham Castle, built around 1078 by Saxon stonemasons, has what is probably the earliest artistic depiction of a mermaid in England.
[12] It can be seen on a south-facing capital above one of the original Norman stone pillars.
[13]
Mermaids appear in British folklore as unlucky omens, both foretelling disaster and provoking it. Several variants of the
ballad Sir Patrick Spens
depict a mermaid speaking to the doomed ships. In some versions, she
tells them they will never see land again; in others, she claims they
are near shore, which they are wise enough to know means the same thing.
Mermaids can also be a sign of approaching rough weather,
[15] and some have been described as monstrous in size, up to 2,000 feet (610 m).
Mermaids have also been described as able to swim up
rivers to
freshwater lakes. In one story, the
Laird
of Lorntie went to aid a woman he thought was drowning in a lake near
his house; a servant of his pulled him back, warning that it was a
mermaid, and the mermaid screamed at them that she would have killed him
if it were not for his servant.
[16] But mermaids could occasionally be more beneficent; e.g., teaching humans cures for certain diseases.
Mermen have been described as wilder and uglier than mermaids, with little interest in humans.
According to legend, a mermaid came to the
Cornish village of
Zennor
where she used to listen to the singing of a chorister, Matthew
Trewhella. The two fell in love, and Matthew went with the mermaid to
her home at
Pendour Cove. On summer nights, the lovers can be heard singing together. At the
Church of Saint Senara in Zennor, there is a famous chair decorated by a mermaid carving which is probably six hundred years old.
[19]
Some tales raised the question of whether mermaids had immortal souls, answering in the negative. The figure of
Lí Ban
appears as a sanctified mermaid, but she was a human being transformed
into a mermaid. After three centuries, when Christianity had come to
Ireland, she was baptized. In
Scottish mythology, there is a mermaid called the
ceasg or "maid of the wave",
[22] as well as the
Merrow of
Ireland and
Scotland.
Mermaids from the
Isle of Man, known as
ben-varrey, are considered more favorable toward humans than those of other regions,
[23]
with various accounts of assistance, gifts and rewards. One story tells
of a fisherman who carried a stranded mermaid back into the sea and was
rewarded with the location of treasure. Another recounts the tale of a
baby mermaid who stole a doll from a human little girl, but was rebuked
by her mother and sent back to the girl with a gift of a pearl necklace
to atone for the theft. A third story tells of a fishing family that
made regular gifts of apples to a mermaid and was rewarded with
prosperity.
[23]
Western Europe
Raymond walks in on his wife, Melusine, in her bath, finding she has the lower body of a serpent.
Jean d'Arras,
Le livre de Mélusine, 1478.
A freshwater mermaid-like creature from
European folklore is
Melusine. She is sometimes depicted with two fish tails, or with the lower body of a
serpent.
[24] Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "
The Little Mermaid" was published in 1837. The story was adapted into a Disney film with a
bowdlerized
plot. In the original version, The Little Mermaid is the youngest
daughter of a sea king who lives at the bottom of the sea. To pursue a
prince with whom she has fallen in love, the mermaid gets a sea witch to
give her legs and agrees to give up her tongue in return. Though she is
found on the beach by the prince, he marries another. Told she must
stab the prince in the heart to return to her sisters, she can't do it
out of love for him. She then rises from the ocean and sees ethereal
beings around her who explain that mermaids who do good deeds become
daughters of the air, and after 300 years of good service they can earn a
human soul.
[25]
A
world-famous statue of the Little Mermaid, based on Andersen's fairy tale, has been in
Copenhagen,
Denmark since August 1913, with copies in 13 other locations around the world – almost half of them in North America.
[26][27][28]
Eastern Europe
Rusalkas are the Slavic counterpart of the Greek sirens and
naiads.
[29] Although the Russian word
rusalka is commonly translated as
mermaid,
they lack a fishlike tail. The nature of rusalkas varies among folk
traditions, but according to ethnologist D.K. Zelenin they all share a
common element: they are the restless spirits of the unclean dead.
[29]
They are usually the ghosts of young women who died a violent or
untimely death, perhaps by murder or suicide, and especially by
drowning. Rusalkas are said to inhabit lakes and rivers. They appear as
beautiful young women with long green hair and pale skin, suggesting a
connection with floating weeds and days spent underwater in faint
sunlight. They can be seen after dark, dancing together under the moon
and calling out to young men by name, luring them to the water and
drowning them. The characterization of rusalkas as both desirable and
treacherous is prevalent in southern Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus,
and was emphasized by 19th-century Russian authors.
[30][31][32] The best-known of the great Czech nationalist composer
Antonín Dvořák's operas is
Rusalka.
In
Sadko (
Russian:
Садко), a
Russian medieval epic, the title character—an adventurer, merchant and
gusli musician from
Novgorod—lives
for some time in the underwater court of the "Sea Tsar" and marries his
daughter before finally returning home. The tale inspired such works as
the poem "Sadko"
[33] by
Alexei Tolstoy (1817–75), the
opera Sadko composed by
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and the painting by
Ilya Repin.
China
A 15th-century compilation of quotations from Chinese literature tells of a mermaid who "wept tears which became pearls".
[34] An early 19th-century book entitled
Jottings on the South of China
contains two stories about mermaids. In the first, a man captures a
mermaid on the shore of Namtao island. She looks human in every respect
except that her body is covered with fine hair of many colors. She can't
talk, but he takes her home and marries her. After his death, the
mermaid returns to the sea where she was found. In the second story, a
man sees a woman lying on the beach while his ship was anchored
offshore. On closer inspection, her feet and hands appear to be webbed.
She is carried to the water, and expresses her gratitude toward the
sailors before swimming away.
[35]
Hinduism
Suvannamaccha (lit. golden mermaid) is a daughter of Ravana that appears in the
Cambodian and
Thai versions of the
Ramayana.
She is a mermaid princess who tries to spoil Hanuman's plans to build a
bridge to Lanka but falls in love with him instead. She is a popular
figure of
Thai folklore.
[36]
Africa
Mami Wata
are water spirits venerated in west, central and southern Africa, and
in the African diaspora in the Caribbean and parts of North and South
America. They are usually female, but are sometimes male.
[37] The
Persian word "برایم بمان" or "
maneli" means both "mermaid"
[38] and "stay with me".
[citation needed]
Other
The
Neo-Taíno nations of the
Caribbean identify a mermaid called
Aycayia[39][40] with attributes of the goddess
Jagua and the hibiscus flower of the majagua tree
Hibiscus tiliaceus.
[41] In modern Caribbean culture, there is a mermaid recognized as a Haitian
vodou loa called
La Sirene (lit. "the mermaid"), representing wealth, beauty and the
orisha Yemaya.
Examples from other cultures are the
jengu of
Cameroon, the
iara of
Brazil and the Greek
oceanids,
nereids and naiads. The
ningyo is a fishlike creature from Japanese folklore, and consuming its flesh bestows amazing longevity. Mermaids and
mermen are also characters of
Philippine folklore, where they are locally known as
sirena and siyokoy respectively.
[42] The Javanese people believe that the southern beach in Java is a home of Javanese mermaid queen
Nyi Roro Kidul.
[43]
Reported sightings
In 1493, sailing off the coast of
Hispaniola,
Columbus reported seeing three "female forms" which "rose high out of
the sea, but were not as beautiful as they are represented".
[44][45] The logbook of
Blackbeard,
an English pirate, records that he instructed his crew on several
voyages to steer away from charted waters which he called "enchanted"
for fear of merfolk or mermaids, which Blackbeard himself and members of
his crew reported seeing.
[46]
These sighting were often recounted and shared by sailors and pirates
who believed that mermaids brought bad luck and would bewitch them into
giving up their gold and dragging them to the bottom of the sea. Two
sightings were reported in Canada near
Vancouver and
Victoria, one from sometime between 1870 and 1890, the other from 1967.
[47][48]
In August 2009, after dozens of people reported seeing a mermaid
leaping out of the water and doing aerial tricks, the Israeli coastal
town of
Kiryat Yam offered a
$1 million award for proof of its existence.
[49] In February 2012, work on two reservoirs near
Gokwe and
Mutare
in Zimbabwe stopped when workers refused to continue, stating that
mermaids had hounded them away from the sites. It was reported by
Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, the water resources minister.
[50]
Animal Planet broadcasts
P.T. Barnum's Fiji mermaid (1842)
In May 2012, a
Mermaids: The Body Found, a television
docufiction[51] aired on
Animal Planet which centered around the experiences of former
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists, showing a
CGI
recreation of amateur sound and video of a beached mermaid and
discussing scientific theories involving the existence of mermaids.
[51] In July 2012 in response to public inquiries, the
National Ocean Service (a branch of NOAA) stated that "no evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found".
[52][53]
A year later in May 2013, Animal Planet aired another docu-fiction titled
Mermaids: The New Evidence featuring "previously unreleased video evidence",
[54][55] including what a former
Iceland GeoSurvey scientist witnessed while diving off the coast of
Greenland
in an underwater submersible. The videos provide two different shots of
what appears to be a humanoid creature approaching and touching their
vehicle.
[56] NOAA once again released a statement saying "The person identified as a NOAA scientist was an actor."
[57][58] The actor is separately identified as David Evans
[59] of Ontario, Canada.
Hoaxes
In the middle of the 17th century,
John Tradescant the elder created a
wunderkammer (called Tradescant's Ark) in which he displayed, among other things, a "mermaid's hand".
[60] In the 19th century,
P. T. Barnum displayed a
taxidermal hoax called the
Fiji mermaid in his museum. 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.
[61]
Symbolism
According to
Dorothy Dinnerstein’s book
The Mermaid and the Minotaur,
human-animal hybrids such as mermaids and minotaurs 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."[62]
Art and literature
Famous in more recent centuries is the
fairy tale The Little Mermaid (1836) by
Hans Christian Andersen, whose works have been translated into over 100 languages.
[63] The mermaid (as conceived by Andersen) is similar to
Undine, a water nymph in German folklore who could only obtain an immortal soul by marrying a human being.
[64] Andersen's heroine inspired a bronze sculpture in
Copenhagen harbour and influenced Western literary works such as Oscar Wilde's
The Fisherman and His Soul and
H.G. Wells'
The Sea Lady.
[65] Sue Monk Kidd wrote a book called
The Mermaid Chair loosely based on the legends of Saint Senara and the
mermaid of Zennor.
Sculptures and statues of mermaids can be found in many countries and cultures, with over 130
public art
mermaid statues across the world. Countries with public art mermaid
sculptures include Russia, Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Denmark,
Norway, England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium,
France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, India,
China, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Guam, Australia, New Zealand,
Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, Cayman Islands, Mexico, the United
States (including Hawaii and Virgin Islands) and Canada.
[66]
Some of these mermaid statues have become icons of their city or
country, and have become major tourist attractions in themselves.
The Little Mermaid (statue) in Copenhagen is an icon of that city as well as of Denmark. The
Havis Amanda statue symbolizes the rebirth of the city of Helsinki, capital of Finland. The Syrenka (mermaid) is part of the
Coat of Arms of Warsaw, and is considered a protector of Warsaw, capital of Poland, which publicly displays statues of their mermaid.
Musical depictions of mermaids include 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 a Rhine mermaid immortalized in the
Heinrich Heine poem of that name, has become a synonym for a siren.
The Weeping Mermaid is an orchestral piece by Taiwanese composer
Fan-Long Ko.
[67]
An influential image was created by
John William Waterhouse, from 1895 to 1905, entitled
A Mermaid.
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 once again in the Royal Academy's collection.
[68] Mermaids were a favorite subject of
John Reinhard Weguelin,
a contemporary of Waterhouse. He painted an image of the mermaid of
Zennor as well as several other depictions of mermaids in watercolour.
Film depictions include the romantic comedy
Splash (
1984) and
Aquamarine (
2006). A 1963 episode of the television series
Route 66 entitled "The Cruelest Sea" featured a mermaid performance artist 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. In
She Creature (2001), two carnival workers abduct a mermaid in Ireland c. 1900 and attempt to transport her to America. The film
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
mixes old and new myths about mermaids: singing to sailors to lure them
to their death, growing legs when taken onto dry land, and bestowing
kisses with magical healing properties. Animated films include
Disney's musical version of Andersen's tale,
The Little Mermaid, and
Hayao Miyazaki's
Ponyo. The Australian teen
dramedy H2O: Just Add Water chronicles the adventures of three modern-day mermaids along the Gold Coast of Australia.
Heraldry
In
heraldry, the charge of a mermaid is commonly represented with a comb and a mirror,
[69] and
blazoned as a "mermaid in her vanity".
[70] In addition to vanity, mermaids are also a symbol of eloquence.
[71]
A shield and sword-wielding mermaid (
Syrenka) is on the official
coat of arms of Warsaw.
[72] Images of a mermaid have symbolized Warsaw on its arms since the middle of the 14th century.
[73] Several legends associate
Triton of Greek mythology with the city, which may have been the origin of the mermaid's association.
[74]
The city of
Norfolk, Virginia also uses a mermaid as a symbol. The personal coat of arms of
Michaëlle Jean, a former
Governor General of Canada, features two mermaids as supporters.
[75]
Mermaid fandom
Interest in mermaid costuming has grown alongside the popularity of fantasy
cosplay
as well as the availability of inexpensive monofins used in the
construction of mermaid costumes. These costumes are typically designed
to be used while swimming, in an activity known as
mermaiding. Mermaid fandom conventions have also been held.
[76][77]
Human divers
The
Ama
are Japanese skin divers, predominantly women, who traditionally dive
for shellfish and seaweed wearing only a loincloth and who have been in
action for at least 2,000 years.
[78] Starting in the twentieth century, they have increasingly been regarded as a tourist attraction.
[79]
They operate off reefs near the shore, and some perform for sightseers
instead of diving to collect a harvest. They have been romanticized as
mermaids.
[80]
Professional female divers have
performed as mermaids at Florida's
Weeki Wachee Springs since 1947. The state park calls itself "The Only City of Live Mermaids"
[81] and was extremely popular in the 1960s, drawing almost one million tourists per year.
[82] Most of the current performers work part-time while attending college, and all are certified
Scuba
divers. They wear fabric tails and perform aquatic ballet (while
holding their breath) for an audience in an underwater stage with glass
walls. Children often ask if the "mermaids" are real. The park's PR
director says "Just like with
Santa Claus or any other mythical character, we always say yes. We're not going to tell them they're not real".
[83]
Gallery
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English carved decoration by James Richards on Prince Frederick's Barge, 1731–1732
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The Little Mermaid's Sisters by Anne Anderson (circa 1910)
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Illustration of The Little Mermaid by E. S. Hardy (circa 1890)
