KALEVALA

Kalevala, first published in 1835,with a larger edition being published in 1849. Kalevala is a Finnish national epos that comprised Finnish folk stories gathered together by Elios Lonnrot. It tells of the weaknesses and spiritual strength of ancient heroes, and has been translated into over thirty languages with many artists having received inspiration from it. Books four and five deal with the story of Aino, a young maiden who drowned herself and joined the muses rather than marry an obnoxious, old man. Here is an example of a watery female figure, or mermaid, that was thought in ancient Finland to be the spirit of a drowned woman.

The History of Mermaids

Stories of Mermaids have been told for centuries, be it in the form of folklores, legends or faerietales. Images of this creature have plagued artists and writers in their efforts to bring to life the mystery, beauty, and yes, eroticism of the mermaid to their audiences. The role of mythology is ever changing in our human society and it is with this in mind that the time has come for a stocktake of these mediums to establish the different roles the mermaid has played in human development. . .

Within the following your senses will be taken back to the beginings of the mermaid mythology. The mermaid was not always portrayed the way it is today so the information you are about to see is an attempt to trace the mythology of mermaids and to discover why the myth survived the centuries.

With the use of four seperate categories you are able to access the basic mediums that are used to spread the legends and folklores. The most available medium was oral, word of mouth. Art and literature follow close by, for as civilisation developes, so too does the mermaid.

Painting by © Sirpa Bister 2005 aka Dreamer

Folklores & Legends

The mermaid and merman legends begin with the worship of gods as have many mythologies. This information has been divided into three different catagories to see different periods in the mythology of mermaids. The earliest representations and descriptions of these now well known creatures can be traced back as far as the eighth century BC. . .

THE THREE STAGES OF MERMAIDS MYTHOLOGY

Merfolk as Gods - a look at the birth of the mermaid mythology and how it began as pagan water deities and supernatural female water beings.

Merfolk and Christianity - the role of the mermaid mythology changed significantly with the growth of the Chirstian Church, this is a look at how and why the myth survived when so many other pagan deities didn't and what the new role of the mermaid was.

Merfolk and the Rise of Science - for a long time the mermaid was believed to have existed even by educated men, with the rise of science and the Enlightenment the tides turned back to try and disprove the existence of such a creature as the mermaid. This being done the role of mermaids changed yet again.

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MERFOLK AS GODS

THE BABYLONIANS were known to worship a sea-god called Oannes, or Ea. Oannes was reputed to have risen from the Erythrean Sea and taught to man the arts and sciences. In the Louvre today can be seen an eighth century wall-scene depicting Oannes as a merman, with the fish-like tail and the upperbody of a man.

THE SYRIANS AND THE PHILISTINES were also known to have worshipped a Semitic mermaid moon-goddess. The Syrians called her Atargatis while the Philistines knew her as Derceto. It is not unusual or surprising that this moon-goddess was depicted as a mermaid as the tides ebbed and flowed with the moon then as it does now and this was incorporated into the god-like personifications that we find in their art and the ancient literature. Atargatis is one of the first recorded mermaids and the legend says that her child Semiramis was a normal human and because of this Atargatis was ashamed and killed her lover. Abandoning the infant she became wholly a fish.

HOWEVER, NOT ALL ancient water gods or spiritual personifications took on the form of a mermaid or a merman all of the time. Water-nymphs for example can be mistaken for mermaids, they are beautiful in their appearance and are also musically talented, which mermaids are well known for, be it their singing or playing of a musical instrument. Sirens too are forever being mistaken for mermaids. Even the ancient writers and medieval Bestiary writers would get the two confused or mention only one when infact both have to be mentioned to make sense of the literatures and archaeological evidence. This is discussed again below, where one can also see the result of a siren/mermaid illustration. The Siren and the Mermaid are two seperate entities, one having the upperbody of a young woman and the lowerbody of a bird, the other the upperbody of a young woman and the lower body of a fish.

THE INDIANS, amongst their many gods, worshipped one group of water-gods known as the Asparas,who were celestial flute-playing water-nymphs.

IN JAPANESE AND CHINESE legends there were not only mermaids but also sea-dragons and the dragon-wives. The Japanese mermaid known as Ningyo was depicted as a fish with only a human head; where as the POLYNESIAN mythology includes a creator named Vatea who was depicted as half-human form and half-porpoise.

GREEK AND ROMAN MYTHOLOGY is often placed together as the two are very similar and it is in the literature from these cultures that one finds the first literary description of the mermaid, and indeed the mermen. Homer mentions the Sirens during the voyage of Odysseus but he fails to give a physical description. The image seen here shows an old black and white film of Homer's tale depicting the sirens in mermaid form. Ovid on the other hand writes that the mermaids were born from the burning galleys of the Trojans where the timbers turned into flesh and blood and the 'green daughters of the sea'.

Posiedon and Neptune were often depicted as half-man and half-fish but the most popular motif of the ancient world that depicts mermen was the representations of the tritons, TRITON being the son of the powerful sea-god. A detail of the vase shown and other typical triton motifs can be seen from these periods in the Art Gallery. Besides the vase is the trident, known to have been carried by the sea-god and thought to be magical, the figure of Poseidon in the film Jason and the Argonauts, 1973 is shown with the trident. Specimens of tritons in classical times were said to be found at Tanagara and Rome, according to Pausanias, it is presumed by scholars today that they were fakes, just like those mermaid remains that one could find in the later nineteenth century freakshows, but more information on these later. The Nereids, who were the daughters of Nereus and the Oceanides, who were associated with Ocean and the Naiads who lived in the fresh waters of the ancient world, while being water creatures were depicted as humans and not merpeople.

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THE BRITISH ISLES too had their fair share of merfolk mythology. The Cornish knew mermaids as Merrymaids; the Irish knew them as Merrows or Muirruhgach and some sources write that they lived on dry land below the sea and had enchanted caps that allowed them to pass through the water without drowning, while the women were very beautiful the men had red noses, were piggy eyed, with green hair and teeth and a penchant for brandy. Other sources write that the Merrow were believed to forebode a coming storm and W. B. Yeats wrote in his Irish Folkstories and Fairytales:

It was rather annoying to Jack that,

though living in a place where the

merrows were as plenty as lobsters,

he never could get a right view of one.

In the Shetlands the mermaid is known as the Sea-trow who are able to take off their animal skin that allows them to swim through the water like a fish, and then walk on land like humans.

THE NECK ARE to be found in Scandanavia, along with the Havfrue (merman) and the Havmand (mermaid), the neck however were able to live in both salt- and fresh-water. The Norwegian mermaid known as Havfine were believed to have very unpredictable tempers. Some were known to be kind, others to be incredibly cruel; it was considered unlucky to view one of these havfine.

THE GERMAN MYTHOLOGIES OF mermaids are plenty. There are the Meerfrau; the Nix and the Nixe who were the male and female fresh-water inhabitants and it was believed that they were treacherous to men. The nixe lured men to drown while the nix could be in the form of an old dwarfish character or as a golden-haired boy and in Iceland and Sweden could take the form of a centaur. The nix also loved music and could lure people to him with his harp, if he was in the form of a horse he would tempt people to mount him and then dash into the sea to drown them. While he sometimes desired a human soul he would often demand annual human sacrifices. There was also a more elvin kind of Nixies that would sometimes appear in the market, she could be identified by the corner of her apron being wet. If they paid a good price it would be an expensive year but if they paid a low price the prices for that year would remain cheap. In the Rhine were to be found the Lorelei from which the town took its name. The Germans also knew the Melusine as a double-tailed mermaid as did the British heraldry as well. There is a double-tailed mermaid to be found in the Art Gallery.


RUSSIAN MERMAID MYTHOLOGY includes the daughters of the Water-King who live beneath the sea; the water-nymph that drowns swimmers known as the Rusalka and the male water-spirit known as the Vodyany who followed sailors and fishermen.

THE AFRICANS BELIEVED the tales of a fish-wife and river-witches.

What we have seen here is the beginings of the mermaid mythology that starts with the merman depictions of water-deities and other such pagan identies. The stories of mermaids as one may think of today, were formed after the rise of Christianity.

MERFOLK AND CHRISTIANITY

THERE IS A THEORY THAT during the suppression of pagan deities the mermaid and other minor supernatural beings were not seen as a threat to the growth and popularity of CHRISTIAN beliefs. Some writers even go so far as to believe that the Church actually believed in the mermaid mythology, and for two particular reasons; the first is that the mermaid served as a moral emblem of sin, the femme fatale label we know so well was nurtured with this form of thinking; and the second was the quality of evidence from contemporary and ancient authors on the existence of mermaids added to this 'belief' the Church found in mermaids.

THE SYMBOL OF THE MERMAID with her comb and mirror in hand seems to first be depicted during the MIDDLE AGES. This came to represent to the Church vanity and female beauty which could cause the destruction of men. And so the mermaid mythology turned from that of near godlike status, including the fear that the sirens brought, to one of aesthetic values. The mermaid became a focus for misogynists and as thus rather than causing fear in the laity the mermaid became even more fascinating.

THE BESTIARIES OF the early middle ages included the siren and not the mermaid. As the two creatures became confused in popular beliefs and cultures so too did the bestiary writers confuse the two, as can be seen in this illustration of the siren, complete with a mermaids tail. Mermaids were well known in the bestiaries of Physiologus and his predecessors, where they compiled the zoological information of 'real' animals. Mermaid were believed to exist even by the most educated men.

IN 1403 A MERMAID was apparently found stranded in the mud after a storm in West Friesland. She was then taken, clothed and fed ordinary food. Some say that she lived for fifteen years in capture, trying to escape constantly; she was also taught to kneel before the crucifix and spin but she was never able to speak.

RAPHAEL HOLINSHED, IN HIS CHRONICLES OF 1587 wrote that in the reign of either John or Henry II, some fishers of Oreford in Suffolk, caught a man-shaped fish, who would not or could not speak, ate fish be it raw or cooked and finally escaped after two months, back to the sea. There are detailed accounts of recorded sightings that are mostly from the 1800's that can be read in the Sightings page.

IN LITERATURE THE MERMAID began to be used as a description of women, rather than an identification of the creature herself. The mermaid had become a metaphor! Chaucer takes the mermaid and uses her as a scholarly metaphor for beautiful but dangerous song. Shakespeare is known to have used such a divice; Comedy of Errors for example III. ii, Antipholus of Syracuse to Luciana:

O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,

To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears:

Sing, siren, for thyself and I will dote.

Oberon's vision of a mermaid in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream II.i, is not however used as a metaphor, it is not however seen on stage either:

Once I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath

That the rude sea grew civil at her song

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,

To hear the sea-maid's music.

John Donne however uses the mermaid as myth in his sceptical Song where he doubts constancy in women. More likely than finding this constancy in women he believes would be to:

Goe, and catche a falling starre,

Teach me to heare Mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envies stinging.

Here is a gift to you, from Translators Garden, created with love *S*

All material, webset, graphics & creations were made by © Sirpa Bister 2005 aka Dreamer at DDezign's. The research for material on this page; by Sirpa Bister aka Dreamer, Assistante Head Translator of WOSIB. All is made at the behalf of WOSIB Translators Garden for to celebrate the 5th year of WOSIB, and may not be copied, duplicated or used without restrict permission of the respective owner.

Some of the beautiful tubes used on the graphics created on this page, are from Outlaw by Dezign