Unreal Tales 2 - Mermaids
Mermaids - sparkly, iridescent beings whose images line the shelves and racks of every store right now. But what does history say about mermaids? If you missed Part 1 on Selkies and Muckle Men, find it here. In it I also introduce the concept of “blurry creatures” which we’ll revisit for sure. Today, I’m going to flip through my pages and pages of novel research to bring you some interesting tidbits about merfolk.
Since my novel is a modern selkie spin-off, I wanted to familiarize myself with nautical lore so that I could tuck some neat details into the story. I found some interesting, weird and somewhat terrifying stories. For the most part, the stories are not good. Similar to selkies, mermaids were associated with certain sea creatures. In fact, the word for walrus in the 1600s was morse. One author I read, Horace Beck, strongly suggested this came from the Russian word for seamen, morskoi. I even ran into a beginnings story from the indigenous people from the Chukchi province in northeastern Russia in which walruses turned into men.
Many of the oldest tales come from the ancient near-east, though most of our oldest written histories also come from the Mediterranean, so I don’t think that limits their supposed existence to that region. I was surprised to find that a good many mermaid tales are from the north and they became more prevalent as the histories of the British Isles and Northern Europe, Asia & America began to be recorded. I’m guessing northern mermaids wore more than a couple of coconuts.
There are a variety of descriptions of the mermaid, but the most common veins include being part fish (obviously), dark-eyed, possessive and vengeful. More often than not, they carried something with them, such as a comb or shawl (and later on a looking glass). Like seal skins in selkie stories, the rumor was that if you could capture that item, you held power over the mermaid. This would have been risky and often ended poorly. Beck even mentioned one tale of a Canadian man who kept a “sea-wyfe” in his bathtub, but she was messy, noisy and incredibly picky about her diet. Often, you find mermaids being quite deceptive regarding their appearance. In various ways (including magical eye ointment in one story, which I find kind of hilarious), they were able to lure and seduce men as beautiful part-women only to be some kind of monster.
Our modern understanding of the mermaid legend seems to be an amalgamation of the stories from various cultures. Northern mermaids on both sides of the Atlantic appeared to be connected with the gnomes and faerie folk. All are known for their mischief-making, their magical underwater cities and even their name - Marie Morgane, linking them to the faerie queen. In comparison, Greek mermaids are bear association to the belief in water sprites, Cyclops and other monsters and banshee-like forms.
Here’s where it gets interesting. I love finding connections in history and legends. For example, the Mesopotamians had a god named Dagon who was part humanoid and part fish. Interestingly enough, most temple sites to Dagon were located in river & lake areas rather than near a saltwater source. In the Bible, Dagon was mentioned as the God of the Philistines, a tribe of giants presumably descended from the half angelic rephaim.
Ready to get blurry? Two legends, that of the mermaid-like figure Melusina from medieval Europe and Lilith from the ancient Near East, bear many striking resemblances. Both seem to connect a banshee-like ability of the female evil spiritual entity to change form.
There are variances among the stories, but Melusina had a hidden serpentine tale and married a human and bore monstrous children. Her husband peeked at her tail which led her haunt him as a beast.
Lilith was sometimes referred to as a fish because her feet were depicted as bound together. She also had that mermaid-like drive to subjegate and destroy men. She appears in several texts from various cultures in the Near East, from Gilgamesh (a very blurry" text indeed) to the Dead Sea Scrolls. In fact, Isaiah makes a list of evil beasts/beings in chapter thirty-four. One word often translated as “screech owl” is also known as “Lilith”. Beck lists female leviathan (chaos sea monster) as one of Lilith’s titles. Some theologians have suggested that the evil spirit behind Lilith has reappeared as other entities- Asherah, Ishtar, and Isis, to name a few. Lilith is considered to embody all goddesses in the occult. According to Wikipedia, she is considered a goddess of independence. With my most recent post on America’s worship of independence in view, I find that thought-provoking and a little concerning. If you haven't read it, you should because the connection is insane.
It gets weirder. While I was looking for material to aid me in representing various elements of spiritual warfare, I found a (possibly not so reputable) deliverance ministry that did a series of podcasts on mermaid-like sea creatures. Why would exorcists be interested in mermaids? Because apparently, people had made a sort of “deal with the devil” in the form of mermaids and water sprites and it was wrecking their lives and relationships. What on earth? It seems to fit into the Biblical theme of evil and chaos associated with large, untamed bodies of water. But boy, is that weird!
Okay, tell me what you learned! Was any of this news to you? Does it make anyone else look at the mermaid decor a smidge differently now?
