a tribe of dwarfs, human in aspect but wearing tails. And who has not laughed over the circumstantial stories connected with the sea serpent? Yet, if report speaks true, Prof. Baird has faith in that wily creature, and knows no reason why he should doubt its existence.
NO SPECIMENS.
Unfortunately, we have no living specimen of the mermaid, and no dried ones, for that matter, other than those that have come to us from Japan ; but what more have we of the dodo than the drawing in the British Museum? and if we reject the dragon, of which we have literally nothing but effigies, we throw discredit on the Scriptures—the words put into the mouth of David, and Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, to say nothing of the great red dragon that has so large a place in Revelation. We have no such high authority for the existence of the mermaid during the years that it had a place in the fauna of Europe ; but many interesting narratives of its habits, both at large and in captivity, have come down to us, without taking into account what Pontopidan, that vivacious writer, has to tell his readers. And these narratives are the more interesting in that there are hardly any two of them alike—evidence conclusive that the narrators used their own eyes, and tried to describe what they saw, or thought they saw, when brought face to face with such a fairy-like creature, combing its hair, and surveying itself in a tiny mirror while poised on its scaly tail on the crested waves of an unfrequented shore; for if the creature chanced to be a merman, the impression was quite different.
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AN EXTRAORDINARY CATCH.
There was an extraordinary catch of this kind in the days of Kine John—a merman, taken on the coast of Suffolk, where it was kept in conticement for a time. The body of the creature above the waist (for all below was covered with scales) was hairy, but the crown of the head was bald, which aided much to its human aspect. “He would not, or could not, utter any speeche, although to trye him they hung him up by the heels (rudimentary heels, probably) and miserably tormented him,” But he slept well when left alone, ”and would gette him to his couche at the setting of the sunne, and rise again when it rose.” Through a great piece of imprudence one day they allowed him to bathe in the sea, first taking the precaution to stretch three nets across the mouth of the haven that he might not escape ; but, diving to the bottom, he came up outside of the nets, and was given up for lost; in which, however, they were mistaken, for “he came to them againe of his own accorde, and remayned with them two months after.”
A merman was taken in the same locality in the time of Henry II, and was “ kept by Bartholomew de Glainville, custodian of the castle of Oreford, by the space of six months or more. He spoke not a word. Oftentimes he was brought to church, where he showed no tokens of adoration. At length, when he was not well looked to, he stole away to the sea, and never after appeared.”
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