to death. Water sprites in that country are imagined to be the ghosts of still-born and unbaptised children or of drowned persons. They light the mysterious jack-o’-lantern. Sometimes they raise storms, and ordinarily they have much influence upon the luck of fishermen.
Columbus described three mermaids which he himself saw floating on the waves. Many other early navigators give similar accounts. In the writings of Hendrik Hudson that bold mariner says: “One of are company looking overboard saw a mermaid. She came close to the ship’s side, looking earnestly at the men. Soon after a sea came and overturned her. From the navel up her back and breasts were like a woman’s, her body as big as one of us, and long black hair hanging down behind. When she dived we saw her tail, which was like that of a porpoise, speckled like mackerel.” Undoubtedly these mermaids, beheld by old-time voyagers were dugongs and manatees. Seals and walrus seen by persons unfamiliar with those animals have given rise to many such tales.
Scoresby says that the front view of a young walrus without tusks resembles a human face so remarkably that it required very little stretch of the imagination to mistake the head reared above the water for that of a human being. The French call the manatee “sea woman.” and the dugong is named by the Dutch “little man.” Stories of mermaids singing or talking may have arisen from hearing the cries of seals, which resemble those of children somewhat.
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A MERMAID ON SHORE.
In a learned report respecting a mermaid caught in Denmark, who was taught to knit. Dr. Kerschur describes the creature as having a pretty face, mild eyes a small nose, fingers joined by cartilage like a goose’s foot and breasts round and hard. He asserted that mermaids and mermen constitute a submarine population, which, partaking of the skill of the ape and the beaver, build grottoes of stone in places inaccessible to divers. In 1611 a sea woman was taken alive near the island of Boro. She was five feet long. After surviving four days she died, not having eaten anything. Her head was like that of a woman, the eyes light blue and the hair sea green. The upper parts of her body were almost as white as a woman’s, but the lower part was like the tail of fish.
IN CAPTIVITY.
It is related that in 1493 a mermaid swimming in the Zuyder Zee during a period of tempest and very high tides was carried through a hole in a broken dyke and could not find her way out again. She was captured and taken to the town of Edam, where she wan washed and cleansed from the sea moss which had grown about her. She then appeared like any woman of the land, adopting proper dress an partaking of ordinary food. She tried often to escape and to make her way to the water, but was closely guarded. People came from great distances to see her. Supposing this story to be true, the woman was either a fraud or a demented outcast. In the Faroe Islands it is believed that on every ninth night the seals cast off their skins, assume human forms and dance on the beach. But if they lose their sealskins in any way they cannot resume the shapes of seals.
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