Mermaid Report Room | Lumberwoods

THOUGHTS ON

“ MERMAIDS ”

Mermaid Image Royalty Free Public Domain

The essential notion of a mermaid is a nearly universal one. Stories have been told regarding these remarkable maidens of the depths the world over, with a surprising number of parallels in between. Time and time again, the mermaid is claimed to resemble a human being with the lower extremities of a fish. Habitually, reports do differ on certain details. In some accounts, mermaids may be described as having webbed hands, bluish-gray skin or hair like sea weed. Yet, the general idea of the mermaid remains largely intact.
While one may not generally regard merfolk as having much to do with the western hemisphere, they were actually reported fairly often along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts throughout the better half of the nineteenth century. Frequently, mermaids were reported as being native to North American waters. Other times, it might be purported that a mermaid came imported from far-off areas of the globe.
Canadian author Lily Dougall, in her 1895 novel The Mermaid: A Love Tale, offers a unique description of the “sea maid.” While corresponding roughly to tradition, Dougall's depiction differs significantly in one fundamental regard:

“Yes, he saw her, as he had so often curiously longed to see her, moving over the dry shore—she was going back to her sea. But it was a strange, monstrous thing he saw. From her gleaming neck down to the ground was dank, shapeless form. So a walrus or huge seal might appear, could it totter about erect upon low, fin-like feet. There was no grace of shape, no tapering tail, no shiny scales, only an appearance of horrid quivering on the skin, that here and there seemed glossy in the moonlight.”

Dougall embraces, much like later writers do, a challenge to establish convention. The mermaid is still a figure of curiosity but not necessarily one of beauty. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, carnivals were more than happy to indulge public curiosity for more mermaids. Sideshows were known to exhibit hoaxed mermaids created through a grotesque combination of monkey and fish parts.

Indeed! Cotton, scales and monkey tails that is what little mermaids were made of!

Still, regardless of whatever form our imagination may shape the mermaid, ugly or beautiful, large or small, they still remain perhaps one the closest imaginary figures to humankind. The mermaid is generally depicted as a benign being with the exception of melodious sirens who lure sailors to their demise. A mermaid may eat, speak, comb her hair, marry or perform a number of mundane tasks as people do. Unlike, the goblins or trolls of high fantasy, the mermaid was never known to take up sword and clash with humanity in a declaration of war. Likewise, the idea of a mer-society, with its unique art, architecture, music and other signs of cultivation is not unknown in the realm of folklore and legend.

The tale of “Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman,” can be found in One Thousand and One Nights. In this “Arabian Nights” tale, a fisherman desperately tries to provide for his hungry children. He constantly throws his net out into the deep, blue sea always returning empty handed. Until one day he catches in his net— a merman. At first, the fisherman questions the merman asking, “Art thou not an Ifrit [being of fire] of the Jinn?” But the merman replies that he is, in fact, “a mortal and a believer in Allah and His Apostle,” as well, “of the children of the sea.” In freeing him, the merman bestows the fisherman gifts of pearls, coral and other ocean treasures. Later the fisherman journeys to the underwater kingdom of the merman. The civilization he encounters, while decisively different, still very much mirrors that of our own.

Octopus under the Sea with Ship from George Melies Kingdom of the Faries

Myths in general continue to fascinate readers and arise public interest. Yet, out of all the centaurs, harpies, satyrs, and other multifarious beings of legend, none continues to attract attention and stir our curiosity as does the mermaid. Perhaps, there is a reflection of something very human in the stories of merfolk that continues to resonate with us. More so than any other aspect, likely, this is why tales of mermaids continue to endure long after general belief in them has been put to rest, as if sunken into the watery abysses where they make their homes.