MERMAIDS

Residents of the Hebridean island of Benbecula were gathering seaweed one day in 1830 when they saw a woman-like creature playing near the sea. Attempting to catch it, a boy threw a stone which struck it.
A dead body was found a couple of days later resembling a well-fed child with developed breasts and long hair. But most puzzling was its salmon-like lower body. Drawing a large crowd, the creature was buried in a long forgotten grave.

MYTHS OF FISH PEOPLE

The above is a classic mermaid encounter – a sighting or story related to a half human, half fish entity. How long such sightings have been made is impossible to tell, but they are popular in mythology.
The Babylonians had the fish-tailed God, Oannes, who lived in the sea but came ashore to teach mankind. His wife, Damkina, had several fish-tailed children.
The Greeks had a variation in the half-woman, half-bird Siren who’s song used to lure seamen to disaster. Ulysses escaped the Siren by putting wax in his companion’s ears and lashing himself to his boat mast.

HISTORIC SIGHTINGS

The navigator Henry Hudson documented a sighting of a mermaid in 1608 by two of his seamen near an island off the northern coast of Russia. The size of a fully developed human, it again had long hair and a tail like a porpoise.
Often, people who disappeared near the sea were said to be victims of the mermaid. Typical was Cornish chorister Matthew Trewhella, who was said to have been lured into the sea, fell in love and had several children to a mermaid.

RATIONAL THEORIES

Such sightings aside, what are we to make of the mermaid phenomenon? Most logical people deny their existence. Rather, sightings are misidentifications of sea cows – the manatees and dugong – which can hold themselves vertically, and suckle their young on clearly visible breasts.
The skin complaint, ichthyosis could also be to blame in the past, creating black fish-like scales on the body. In 1694 the ten year old Italian boy, Peter Consiglio, was displayed in London. He was totally covered in fish-like scales.
Skeletons of supposed mermaids were often put on show in the 19th century. Naturalist Frank Buckland observed one which turned out to be the skull, torso and arms of a monkey fastened to the headless body of a large fish.
One theory supposed to give credence to the mermaid is the idea of Elaine Morgan, who argued mankind developed from an ape-like aquatic animal. Is the mermaid an offshoot of this evolutionary chain?

PSYCHOLOGY

The writer Dorothy Dinnerstein hinted that mermaids and other human/animal hybrids such as the minotaur, were actually distant memories of our evolutionary past. It was a recognition that we are different, yet similar to our animal ancestors.
Some researchers argue the mermaid has a more likely explanation in the psychology of early sailors. As ancient myths show, mermaids and Sirens lured sailors to their doom. Sea journeys in those days took a long time, and without women aboard ship, sexual urges would be strong.
Could mermaids therefore be nothing more than hallucinations based on sexual urges? Possibly, but sightings by people such as Christopher Columbus suggest not. He commented on how absolutely ugly they were.

A MOMENT OF CRISIS

A ballad by Sir Patrick Spens highlights the oft mentioned fact that mermaids often spoke to doomed ships, advising of disaster. Such ideas suggest the mermaid is a harbinger of doom. But why did it become so?
Perhaps a hint can be given by many mentions of mermaids trying to save drowning men, but accidentally drowning them instead. Indeed, Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ advised that they didn’t realize that men cannot breath underwater.
If we relate such information to real life situations, we can imagine a man drowning. In his frenzy he visualizes a woman – the thing he misses so much – attempting to save him. But the task is too much for she isn’t really there – she cannot really help. So disillusion with the vision turns her from a saviour to a killer.
Of course, many men survived a near drowning, and would recall this strange hallucination at the point of death – a hallucination not seen today because sailors are not away from women for so long. And as the tales were recalled and transmitted, the mermaid takes on a life of its own within culture.

© Anthony North, July 2007

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