Of all the characters in sea folklore, the mermaid is perhaps the most beguiling. From ancient Syrian deities and the sirens of Greek myth through to more recent tales, such as Hans Christian Anderson’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ (subsequently turned into a Disney film) and Helen Dunmore’s popular ‘Ingo’ books today, there has long been a place in worldwide legend for these captivating, sometimes cruel beings.
While many of the stories share similar descriptions of mermaids’ physical attributes - beautiful women with fish-like tails in place of legs - they differ around the globe in terms of the mermaids’ perceived character and intentions. To some peoples, such as Pacific islanders, mermaids were benign, and to see one indicated that good fortune was imminent. Others, including many European mariners, feared that any man who caught sight of a mermaid would be lured into the water and drowned or eaten. Folklore from the British Isles also tells of love between humans and merfolk – these stories often end with the human disappearing into the sea. Cornish legend offers a famous example; it tells of a mermaid who swam upstream from the sea to the village of Zennor, overheard the singing of a chorister, Matthew Trewhella, and fell in love with him. Matthew eventually followed the mermaid back to her watery home, and was never seen again. Curiously, the Church of Saint Senara in Zennor houses a famous wooden chair decorated with a mermaid carving, thought to be about six hundred years old.
If it seems faintly ridiculous that our ancestors believed themselves to have water-breathing, fish-tailed counterparts, bear in mind that planet Earth is nearly three-quarters covered with water. The sea has provided work and food for millions of humans throughout the centuries, and is a deeply engrained part of different cultures throughout the world; understandably, stories, traditions and superstitions about the sea became an important part of everyday life (and survival). For many hundreds of years the crews of ocean-going vessels were nearly always all-male, and they spent long months at sea without female company. It’s easy to see how appealing the mermaid legend would quickly become to these isolated men, surrounded by the vast, beautiful - but lonely – expanses of the ocean.
In ancient times, and even fairly recently, our current deep-water exploration and investigation would have seemed little more than an impossible dream. The ‘uncharted depths’ of the sea retained their mystery, and those who undertook nautical journeys did so without the aid of modern navigation and communication equipment. After many lonely weeks at sea, on limited rations and in challenging conditions, the boundaries between myth and reality were easily blurred. In these circumstances, belief in the existence of mermaids would require no great stretch of the imagination.
Half human, half fish and wholly ‘other’, we may be less inclined to believe in them these days, but mermaids have retained their ability to fascinate and enchant us. Very much present in today’s world, instantly recognisable mermaids appear in books, films and even on coffee cups; it seems that the call of the siren is as irresistible now as ever it was.
This blog post was commissioned by Quba Sails.
