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Mermaid

March 21, 2023

This article is about fish-bodied female merfolk. For the males, see merman. For the people, see merfolk. For other uses, see Mermaid (disambiguation).

In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish.[1] Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Mermaid
John William Waterhouse, A Mermaid (1900).
GroupingMythological
Sub groupingWater spirit
CountryWorldwide

Mermaids are sometimes associated with perilous events such as floods, storms, shipwrecks, and drownings. In other folk traditions (or sometimes within the same traditions), they can be benevolent or beneficent, bestowing boons or falling in love with humans.

The male equivalent of the mermaid is the merman, also a familiar figure in folklore and heraldry. Although traditions about and sightings of mermen are less common than those of mermaids, they are generally assumed to co-exist with their female counterparts. The male and the female collectively are sometimes referred to as merfolk or merpeople.

The Western concept of mermaids as beautiful, seductive singers may have been influenced by the Sirens of Greek mythology, which were originally half-birdlike, but came to be pictured as half-fishlike in the Christian era. Historical accounts of mermaids, such as those reported by Christopher Columbus during his exploration of the Caribbean, may have been sightings of manatees or similar aquatic mammals. While there is no evidence that mermaids exist outside folklore, reports of mermaid sightings continue to the present day.

Mermaids have been a popular subject of art and literature in recent centuries, such as in Hans Christian Andersen's literary fairy tale "The Little Mermaid" (1836). They have subsequently been depicted in operas, paintings, books, comics, animation, and live-action films.

Etymologies

 
The Fisherman and the Syren, by Frederic Leighton, c. 1856–1858

The English word "mermaid" is not very old, with the earliest attestation in Middle English (Chaucer, Nun's Priest's Tale, c. 1390). The compound word is formed from "mere" (sea), and "maid".[1][2]

Mermin

See § Scandinavian folklore for the modern Danish havfrue, modern Swedish hafsfru, etc.

Another English word "†mermin" (headword in the OED) for 'siren or mermaid' is older, though now obsolete.[3] It derives from Old English męremęnen, ad. męre 'sea' + męnen 'female slave',[3] earliest attestation mereminne, as a gloss for "siren", in Corpus Glossary (c. 725).[3]

Middle English example mereman in a bestiary (c. 1220?;[3] MS. now dated to 1275–1300[4]) is indeed 'mermaid', part maiden,[3] part fish-like.[5][a][6]

Its Old High German cognate merimenni[b] is known from biblical glosses[7][9][c] and Physiologus.[10]

The Middle High German cognate merminne,[3] (mod. German "meerweib"), "mermaid", is attested in epics,[11] and the one in Rabenschlacht is a great-grandmother;[d] this same figure is in an Old Swedish text a haffru,[15][18][e] and in Old Norse a sjókona (siókona [sic.]; "sea-woman").[20][13][21]

Old Norse marmennill, -dill, masculine noun, is also listed as cognate to "†mermin", as well as ON margmelli, modern Icelandic marbendill, and modern Norwegian marmæle.[3]

Merewif

Old English męrewif is another related term,[2] and appears once in reference not so much to a mermaid but a certain sea hag,[22][23] and not well-attested later.[2][f]

Its MHG cognate merwîp, also defined as "meerweib" in modern German[8] with perhaps "merwoman"[24] a valid English definition.[25] The word is attested, among other medieval epics, in the Nibelungenlied,[26] and rendered "merwoman",[27], "mermaid", "water sprite", or other terms;[28] the two in the story[29] are translated as ON sjókonur ("sea-women").[28]

Origins

The siren of Ancient Greek mythology became conflated with mermaids during the medieval period. Some European Romance languages still use cognate terms for siren to denote the mermaid, e.g., French sirène and Spanish and Italian sirena.[30]

Some commentators have sought to trace origins further back into § Ancient Middle Eastern mythology.

Sirens

In the early Greek period, the sirens were conceived of as human-headed birds,[31][32] but by the classical period, the Greeks sporadically depicted the siren as part fish in art.[33][g]

Medieval sirens as mermaids

Sirens in Physiologus and bestiaries
 
Siren and onocentaur.
―Bern Physiologus. Berner Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 281, fol. 13v[38]
 
Siren in a Second Family bestiary
―British Library MS Add. 11283, fol. 20v.[39]
 
Sirens swimming in sea.
―Bestiary (Bodl. 764), fol. 74v
© Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

The siren's part-fish appearance became increasingly popular during the Middle Ages.[35] And the traits of the classical sirens, such as using their beautiful song as a lure as told by Homer, has often been transferred to mermaids.[40]

These change of the medieval siren from bird to fish were thought by some to be the influence of Teutonic myth, later expounded in literary legends of Lorelei and Undine;[35] though a dissenting comment is that parallels are not limited to Teutonic culture.[41]

Textual attestations

The earliest text describing the siren as fish-tailed occurs in the Liber Monstrorum de diversis generibus (7th–mid 8th cent.), which described sirens as "sea girls" (marinae pullae) whose beauty in form and sweet song allure seafarers, but beneath the human head and torso, have the scaly tail-end of a fish with which they can navigate the sea.[43][45]

"Sirens are mermaids" (Old High German/Early Middle High German: Sirêne sínt méremanniu) is explicit in the aforementioned Old German Physiologus (11th century[46]).[10][48][h]

The Middle English bestiary (mid-13th century) clearly means "mermaid" when it explains the siren to be a mereman,[3][49] stating that she has a body and breast like that of a maiden but joined, at the navel, by a body part which is definitely fish, with fins growing out of her.[5][50][6]

Old French verse bestiaries (e.g. Philipp de Thaun's version, written c. 1121–1139) also accommodated by stating that a part of the siren may be bird or fish.[51]

Iconographic attestations

In a 9th century Physiologus manufactured in France (Fig., top left),[38] the siren was illustrated as a "woman-fish", i.e., mermaid-like, despite being described as bird-like in the text.[53][54]

The Bodleian bestiary dated 1220–12 also pictures a group of fish-tailed mermaid-like sirens (Fig. bottom), contradicting its text which likens it to a winged fowl (volatilis habet figuram) down to their feet.[59]

In the interim, the siren as pure mermaid was becoming commonplace, particularly in the so-called "Second Family" Latin bestiaries, as represented in one of the early manuscripts classified into this group (Additional manuscript 11283, c. 1170–1180s. Fig., top right).[60]

(Mirror and comb)

While the siren holding a fish was a commonplace theme,[60] the siren in bestiaries were also sometimes depicted holding the comb,[61][63] or the mirror.[65]

The comb and mirror became an persistent symbol of the siren-mermaid.[66][67]

In the Christian moralizing context (e.g the bestiaries), the mermaid's mirror and comb were held as the symbol of vanity.[67][i]

Other Greek mythical figures

The sea-monsters Scylla and Charybdis, who lived near the sirens, were also female and had some fishlike attributes. Though Scylla's violence is contrasted with the sirens' seductive ways by certain classical writers,[72] Scylla and Charybdis lived near the sirens' domain.[73][j] In Etruscan civilization before the 6th century BC, Scylla was portrayed as a mermaid-like creature with two tails.[73] Some have argued that the two-tailed Melusine of later European art is traceable to this Etruscan Scylla.[76] A sporadic example of sirens as mermaids (tritonesses) in Early Greek art (3rd century BC), can be explained as the contamination of the siren myth with Scylla and Charybdis.[77]

The female oceanids, nereids and naiads are mythical water nymphs or deities, although not depicted with fish tails. "Nereid" and "nymph" have also been applied to actual mermaid-like marine creatures purported to exist, from Pliny (cf. §Roman Lusitania and Gaul) and onwards. Jane Ellen Harrison (1882) has speculated that the mermaids or tritonesses of Greek and Roman mythology may have been brought from the Middle East, possibly transmitted by Phoenician mariners.[35]

The Greek god Triton had two fish tails instead of legs, and later became pluralized as a group. The prophetic sea deity Glaucus was also depicted with a fish tail and sometimes with fins for arms.

Ancient Middle Eastern mythology

Kulullû

Depictions of entities with the upper bodies of humans and the tails of fish appear in Mesopotamian artwork from the Old Babylonian Period onwards, on cylinder seals. These figures are usually mermen (kulullû),[78] but mermaids do occasionally appear. The name for the mermaid figure may have been *kuliltu, meaning "fish-woman".[79] Such figures were used in Neo-Assyrian art as protective figures[79] and were shown in both monumental sculpture and in small, protective figurines.[79]

Syrian mermaid goddess

Main article: Atargatis
 
Atargatis depicted as a fish with a woman's head, on a coin of Demetrius III

A mermaid-like goddess, identified by Greek and Roman writers as Derceto or Atargatis, was worshipped at Ashkelon.[80][81] In a myth recounted by Diodorus in the 1st century BCE, Derceto gave birth to a child from an affair. Ashamed, she abandoned the child in the desert and drowned herself in a lake, only to be transformed into a human-headed fish. The child, Semiramis, was fed by doves and survived to become a queen.[82]

In the 2nd century AD, Lucian described seeing a Phoenician statue of Derceto with the upper body of a woman and the tail of a fish. He noted the contrast with the grand statue located at her Holy City (Hierapolis Bambyce), which appeared entirely human.[84][85]

In the myth, Semiramis's first husband is named Onnes. Some scholars have compared this to the earlier Mesopotamian myth of Oannes,[86] one of the apkallu or seven sages described as fish-men in cuneiform texts.[87][90] While Oannes was a servant of the water deity Ea, having gained wisdom from the god,[87] English writer Arthur Waugh understood Oannes to be equivalent to Ea,[91] and proposed that surely "Oannes had a fish-tailed wife" and descendants,[92] with Atargatis being one deity thus descended, "through the mists of time".[92]

Diodorus's chronology of Queen Semiramis resembles the feats of Alexander the Great (campaigns to India, etc.), and Diodorus may have woven the Macedonian king's material via some unnamed source.[82] There is a mermaid legend attached to Alexander the Great's sister, but this is of post-medieval vintage (see below).[93]

Rational attempts at explanation

Further information: § Reported sightings, § Hoaxes and show exhibitions, and § Scientific inquiry

Sometime before 546 BC, Milesian philosopher Anaximander postulated that mankind had sprung from an aquatic animal species, a theory that is sometimes called the Aquatic Ape Theory. He thought that humans, who begin life with prolonged infancy, could not have survived otherwise.[94][95]

There are also naturalist theories on the origins of the mermaid, postulating they derive from sightings of manatees, dugongs or even seals.[96][97]

Still another theory, tangentially related to the aforementioned Aquatic Ape Theory, is that the mermaids of folklore were actually human women who trained over time to be skilled divers for things like sponges, and spent a lot of time in the sea as a result. One proponent of this theory is British author William Bond, who has written several books about it.[98][99]

Medieval literature

Merwomen in Germanic literature

Nibelungenlied
 
Hagen unloads Nibelungen treasure where the Rhine mermaids await. Adventure 19.
 
Hagen with the prophetic mermaids, Hadeburg and Sigelind. Adventure 25.
—Pfizer ed. (1843) Nibelungen noth. Wooodcuts by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and Eugen Napoleon Neureuther.

Nibelungenlied

Two prophetic merwomen (MHG pl.: merwîp), Sigelinde (MHG: Sigelint) and her maternal aunt[100] Hadeburg (MHG: Hadeburc) are bathing in the Danube River[k] when Hagen von Tronje encounters them (Nibelungenlied, Âventiure 25).[29][27][28]

They are called sjókonar ("sea woman") in the Old Norse Þiđreks saga.[28] There is a swan maiden tale motif[103] involved here (Hagen robs their clothing), but Grimm thought they must have actually been swan maidens, since they are described as hovering above water.[104]

In any case, this brief segment became the "foundational" groundwork of subsequent water-nix lore and literature that developed in the Germanic sphere.[103]

They are a probable source of the three Rhine maidens in Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold.[105] Though conceived of as swan-maidens in Wagner's 1848 scenario, the number being a threesome was suggested by the woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and Eugen Napoleon Neureuther in the Pfizer edition of 1843 (fig. on the left).[106]

Rabenschlacht

Middle High German mereminne 'mermaid' is mentioned, among other epics, in the Rabenschlacht[11][107] ("Battle of Ravenna", 13th cent.) of the Dietrich cycle. The mermaid (or undine[17]) is named Wâchilt and is the ancestress[l] of the traitorous Wittich who carries him off at the time of peril to her "submarine home".[17][21][14]

This material has been found translated as a medieval Þiðreks saga only in a late, reworked Swedish version,[14] i.e., one of the closing chapters of Ðiðriks saga (15th century,[15] also known as the "Swedish epilogue".[108]).[109][16] The mermaid/undine is here translated as Old Swedish haffru.[15]

The Old Norse Þiðreks saga proper[19][110] calls the same mermaid a sjókona (siókona [sic.])[13][14] or "sea-woman".[21][111]

The genealogy is given in the saga: the sea-woman and Villcinus (Vilkinus), king of Scandinavia together had a son, Vaði (Wade) of (Sjóland=Sjælland, Zealand) who was a giant (risi); whose son was Velent (Wayland the Smith), whose son after that was Viðga Velentsson (Wittich or Witige),[19][112][14][21][13] who became a companion/champion of King Þiðrekr (Dietrich von Bern).

The frequently mentioned Sjælland, Denmark is interpreted to the divided portion of Villcina-land inherited by the bastard prince Vaði/Wade.[113] The Swedish epilogue transposed the location of the crucial battle where the mermaid appeared, from Ravenna, Northern Italy (supposedly, in the original German epic Rabenschlacht), to Gronsport, somewhere on the Moselle, in Northern Germany,[114][115] then transported Viðga back to Sjælland.[16]

Folklore of the British Isles

The Norman chapel in Durham Castle, built around 1078, has what is probably the earliest surviving artistic depiction of a mermaid in England.[116] It can be seen on a south-facing capital above one of the original Norman stone pillars.[117]

 
Mermaid carving on a bench end
―Zennor, Cornwall.

Mermaids appear in British folklore as unlucky omens, both foretelling disaster and provoking it.[118] Several variants of the ballad Sir Patrick Spens depict a mermaid speaking to the doomed ships. In some versions, she tells them they will never see land again; in others, she claims they are near shore, which they are wise enough to know means the same thing. Mermaids can also be a sign of approaching rough weather,[119] and some have been described as monstrous in size, up to 2,000 feet (610 m).[118]]

In another short ballad, "Clerk Colvill" (Child ballad No. 42), the mermaid seduces the title character and foretells his doom. It has been surmised that in the original complete version, the man was being penalized for spurning her, though the Scandinavian counterparts that tells the complete story feature an elf-woman or elf queen rather than mermaid.[120]

Mermaids have been described as able to swim up rivers to freshwater lakes. In one story, the Laird of Lorntie went to aid a woman he thought was drowning in a lake near his house; his servant pulled him back, warning that it was a mermaid, and the mermaid screamed at them that she would have killed him if it were not for his servant.[121] But mermaids could occasionally be more beneficent; e.g., teaching humans cures for certain diseases.[122] Mermen have been described as wilder and uglier than mermaids, with little interest in humans.[123]

According to legend a mermaid came to the Cornish village of Zennor, where she used to listen to the singing of a chorister, Matthew Trewhella.[124] The two fell in love, and Matthew went with the mermaid to her home at Pendour Cove. On summer nights, the lovers can be heard singing together. The legend, recorded by folklorist William Bottrell, stems from a 15th-century mermaid carving on a wooden bench at the Church of Saint Senara in Zennor.[70][125]

Some tales raised the question of whether mermaids had immortal souls, answering in the negative.[126]

In Scottish mythology, a ceasg is a freshwater mermaid, though little beside the term has been preserved in folklore.[127]

Mermaids from the Isle of Man, known as ben-varrey, are considered more favorable toward humans than those of other regions,[128] with various accounts of assistance, gifts and rewards. One story tells of a fisherman who carried a stranded mermaid back into the sea and was rewarded with the location of treasure. Another recounts the tale of a baby mermaid who stole a doll from a human little girl, but was rebuked by her mother and sent back to the girl with a gift of a pearl necklace to atone for the theft. A third story tells of a fishing family that made regular gifts of apples to a mermaid and was rewarded with prosperity.[128]

In Irish lore, Lí Ban was a human being transformed into a mermaid. After three centuries, when Christianity came to Ireland, she was baptized.[129] The Irish mermaid is called merrow in tales such as "Lady of Gollerus" published in the 19th century.

Scandinavian folklore

Haffrue

The mermaid corresponds to Danish and Bokmål Norwegian havfrue, whereas merman answers to Danish/Norwegian havmand.[130][131]{{Refn|group="lower-alpha"|Tracing this etymologically to Old Norse is elusive. Old Swedish haffru was used as a tanslation word in the Sweidish saga of Didrik (14 cent.) as mentioned under §Etymologies. A supposed Old Norse haffrú is the etymological source of Norman French havette for a man-snatching water-sprite, according to one linguist.[133]

As a side-note, Norman French havette is a possible derivative.[134][m]

An early description of the Havfrue, and her mate Havmand, was given by the Dano-Norwegian Bishop Pontoppidan (1753).[136][137] They were considered the mating female and male of the creature, inhabiting the North Sea,[138][139] and their offspring was called marmæle (var. marmæte),[140][141] as repeated by later commentators.[142][143]

Though he was aware of fabulous fables being told about them,[n][144][139] he was convinced such creature existed. But as they were non-human, he argued the term Havmand (merman) should be avoided, in favor of some coined term such as sea-ape (Danish: hav-abe).[o][145][146] He also knowingly employed Old Norwegian/Old Norse maryge [sic.] and hafstrambe [sic.][p] as the Norwegian names of the mermaid and merman respectively.[147][148]

Havfrue cognates

The Icelandic cognate form is haffrú with several synonyms,[q][149][150] though instead of these the commonly used term today is hafmey.[151]

The Faroese forms are havfrúgv (havfrúg).[152][153] The Swedish form is hafsfru,[154] with other synonyms such as sjöjungfru,[153][r] or sjörå[154] ('sea-fairy', the maritime counterpart of the forest skogsrå).[156]

Other aliases

The terms margýgur or havgýgur as aliases for mermaid were apparently current among the populace in modern-age Iceland, according to Jón Árnason[157][149][150] alongside the marbendill (modern Icelandic for ON marmennill)[158]

Benjamin Thorpe (1851) writing on Norwegian folklore gave margygr for mermaid (and marmennill for merman) as Norwegian folk terms,[143][s] but these are interpolations, which the source, Andreas Faye's Norske sagn (1833),[159] only side-noted as occurrences of old terms in medieval literature.[160]

General characteristics

The beautiful havfrue of Scandinavia may be benevolent or malicious, and legends about her abducting maidens (cf. infra) is given as a case of point for her malice.[161]

It is said the havfrue will avenge harm done to it, as in the Norwegian anecdote of one who was lured near the ship, and had her hand cruelly lopped off on the gunwale. She caused a storm that nearly drowned the wicked sailor.[162]

Omen, prophecy and wisdom

The appearance/sighting alone betides an impending storm.[161] Norwegians do not wish to see the havfrue, as she heralds storm or bad weather (Norway).[163][143] The appearance of the sjörå forebodes a storm or poor catch in Swedish tradition, much as the appearance of the skogsrå (wood-nymph) presages poor catch for the hunter.[161][156] According to the superstitions of Swedish fishermen, if one saw a sjörå　who was harbinger of tempest and bad catch, one should not tell his comrades but stike flint against steel to light a spark.[156]

In other cases the Scandinavian mermaid is considered to be prophetic.[161]

The tale type "The Mermaid's Message" (Norwegian: Havfruas spådom, ML 4060) is recognized as a Migratory Legend [no], i.e., a group of tales found in Scandinavia with parallels found elsewhere, according to the scheme devised by Reidar Thoralf Christiansen.[164] This may not necessarily involve the mermaid's spaeing, and in the following example of this ML type tale, she merely imparts wisdom: A fisherman who performs favors and earns the privilege to pose three questions to a mermaid. He inquires about the most suitable material for a flail, to which she answers calf's hide, of course, and tells him he should have asked about how to brew water (into beer), which would have benefited him more greatly.[165]

Merfolk as abductors

The Swedish ballad "Hafsfrun"[166] (≈Havsfruns tärna [sv], SMB 23, TSB A 51[167]) is an instance where a mermaid kidnaps a human girl at age fifteen, and when the girl's brother accomplishes the rescue, the mermaid declares she would have cracked[t] her neck if she knew she would be thus betrayed.[169] The Swedish merman Hafsman[nen] steals a human woman to become his bride according to folklore.[170][u]

Marmaele

As aforementioned, the mermaid (Norwegian: havfrue) takes the merman (Norwegian: havmand) for husband, and produce children called marmæler (sing. Norwegian: marmæle, "sea-talkers"). which the fishermen sometimes bring home to gain insight into the future.[172]

Early sources say that Norwegian fishermen who capture the marmæte or marmæle may bring them home but do not dare keep it for more than 24 hours before turning them back into the sea whence they found it.[173]

Margýgr

Jón Árnason describes the margýgur as yellow-haired woman who is fish from the waist down, who drags careless seamen to the depths of the sea.[149][150]

 
The margýgr (she has a fish-like tail but is cropped in this view) vs. St. Olaf[v]
―Flateyjarbk fol. 79r[174]

However, margygr literally means something like "mer-troll",[150] and in medieval tradition, the margygr is more of a "sea monster"[175] or "sea-ogress".[176][179]

According to a version of the Saga of St. Olaf (Olaf II of Norway) the king encountered a margygr whose singing lulled voyagers to sleep causing them to drown[143][180] and whose high-pitched shrieks drove men insane.[175][180] Her physical appearance is described thus: "She has a head like a horse, with ears erect and distended nostrils, big green eyes and fearful jaws. She has shoulders like a horse and hands in front; but behind she resembles a serpent".[180][178] This margygr was also said to be furry like a seal, and gray-colored.[180][177]

Western European folklore

 
Raymond discovers Melusine in her bath, Jean d'Arras, Le livre de Mélusine, 1478.

Melusine is a mermaid-like character from European folklore, cursed to take the form of a serpent from the waist down. Later depictions sometimes changed this to a fish tail, and in heraldry her name was sometimes used for a mermaid with two tails.[181]

The alchemist Paracelsus's treatise A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits (1566) spawned the idea that the water elemental (or water sprite) could acquire an immortal soul through marriage with a human; this led to the writing of De la Motte Fouqué's novella Undine, and eventually to the famous literary mermaid tale, Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, "The Little Mermaid".[182]

During the Romanesque period, mermaids were often associated with lust.[183][184]

Byzantine and Ottoman Greek folklore

The conception of the siren as both a mermaid-like creature and part bird-like persisted in Byzantine Greece for some time.[185] The Physiologus began switching the illustration of the siren as that a mermaid, as in a version dated to the 9th century.[75] The 10th century Byzantine Greek dictionary Suda still favored the avian description.[186][187]

There is a modern Greek legend that Alexander the Great's sister Thessalonike turned into a mermaid (Greek: γοργόνα) after her death, living in the Aegean. She would ask the sailors on any ship she encountered only one question: "Is King Alexander alive?",(Greek: "Ζει ο Βασιλεύς Αλέξανδρος;") to which the correct answer was: "He lives and reigns and conquers the world" (Greek: "Ζει και βασιλεύει και τον κόσμον κυριεύει").[93] This answer would please her, and she would accordingly calm the waters and bid the ship farewell. Any other answer would enrage her, and she would stir up a terrible storm, dooming the ship and every sailor on board.[188] This legend derives from an Alexander romance entitled the Phylláda tou Megaléxandrou (Φυλλάδα του Μεγαλέξανδρου) dating to the Ottoman Greece period,[93] first printed in 1680.[189]

Eastern Europe

 
Ilya Repin, Sadko (1876)

Rusalkas are the Slavic counterpart of the Greek sirens and naiads, often seducing sailors to their doom.[190][191] The nature of rusalkas varies among folk traditions, but according to ethnologist D.K. Zelenin they all share a common element: they are the restless spirits of the unclean dead.[191] They are usually the ghosts of young women who died a violent or untimely death, either by murder or suicide, before their wedding, especially by drowning. Rusalkas are said to inhabit lakes and rivers. They appear as beautiful young women with long pale green hair and pale skin, suggesting a connection with floating weeds and days spent underwater in faint sunlight. They can be seen after dark, dancing together under the moon and calling out to young men by name, luring them to the water and drowning them. The characterization of rusalkas as both desirable and treacherous is prevalent in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, and was emphasized by 19th-century Russian authors.[192][193][194][195] The best-known of the great Czech nationalist composer Antonín Dvořák's operas is Rusalka.

In Sadko (Russian: Садко), an East Slavic epic, the title character—an adventurer, merchant, and gusli musician from Novgorod—lives for some time in the underwater court of the "Sea Tsar" and marries his daughter, Chernava, before finally returning home. The tale inspired such works as the poem Sadko[196] by Alexei Tolstoy (1817–75), the opera Sadko composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and the painting Sadko by Ilya Repin.

Chinese folklore

Further information: Merfolk § China

A merfolk race called the Di people [zh] are described as populating its own nation in the Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) compilation of Chinese geography and mythology, dating from the 4th century BC.[197][198] The ancient work also included several types of human-headed fish, such as the chiru [zh] or "red ru fish";[199][198] as well as creature with some humanlike qualities like the renyu (人魚) or "human-fish".[200][198]

Note that these are not of a specific gender, so they are not really conducive to being called "mermaids", though some English (European) writers might use "mermaid" as shorthand.

There is also an account of the hairenyu [ja](海人魚; "sea human fish"), given in the Taiping guangji compilation, sourced from the work entitled Qiawenji (洽聞記). The female of its kind had a head like beautiful woman's, with hair like a horse's tail, and white skin like jade without scales, covered with multicolored downy hair (or peach fuzz), and legless. The male and female had sexual organs like humans, so that widows and widowers would keep them in their ponds, and the creatures could perform sexual intercourse normally as a human would.[201][202][w]

An anecdote considered relevant[205] concerns a renyu ("human fish") allegedly seen by the ship carrying Zha Dao (査道), and emissary to Korea. She had a unkempt hairdo and scarlet mane extending to the back of her elbows. Zha ordered the crew to bring her aboard with poles, but she escaped. Zha explained that she was a renyu, adept at fornicating with humans, and was a type of human dwelling in the sea. The anecdote is included in another leishu compilation called Gujin tushu jicheng (古今圖書集成 "Comprehensive Compendium of Illustrations and Books, Ancient and Modern").[206][205][207][208]

Korean folklore

Korea is bound on three sides by the sea. In some villages near the sea in Korea, there are mysterious stories about mermaids. Mermaids have features just like humans. Kim Dam Ryeong, a mayor of the town[specify], saved four captured mermaids from a fisherman, as recorded in the Eou yadam (unofficial histories).[209] In Dongabaek Island of Busan is a tale of Princess Hwang-ok from Naranda, a mythical undersea kingdom of mermaids; this tale is based on the historical Heo Hwang-ok from India.[210] Another tale concerns a mermaid named Sinjike (Korean: 신지끼) who warned fishermen of impending storms by singing and throwing rocks into the sea from Geomun Island. The island's residents believed her to be a goddess of the sea and that she could predict the weather.[211]

Japanese folklore

Main article: Ningyo
 
"Ningyo no zu": A flier of a mermaid, dated 5th month of Bunka 2 (1805).

The Japanese equivalent is ningyo (人魚, literally "human-fish"[212]). According to one dictionary, ningyo oftentimes refers to a "half-woman and half-fish fabulous creature", i.e., mermaid, though not necessarily female, i.e., includes mermen.[213]

Despite the dictionary stating it has the appearance of half-woman half-fish, the creature has been pictorialized rather as a being with a human female head sitting on a body which is entirely fish-like (see fig. right).[212]

Ningyo flesh

The ningyo's flesh was purported to be an elixir, and consuming its flesh said to bestow remarkable longevity.

A famous ningyo legend concerns the Yao bikuni [ja] who is said to have partaken of the flesh of a merfolk and attained miraculous longevity and lived for centuries. It is not discernible whether the flesh was a female; a pair of translators call it "flesh of a mermaid" in one book,[214] but merely a "strange fish with a human face" in another.[215]

As yōkai

A ningyo might be counted as a yōkai since it is included in Toriyama Sekien's Hyakki Yagyō series.[216] Gender is unclear, as it is only described as a being with "a human face, a fish body". However, Sekien's ningyo picture actually represents a "human-fish" that lives in Western China, also known as the Di people Diren [zh], according to the inscription printed alongside.[216] They are described in the Classic of Mountains and Seas and translated as the "Low People"[217][218] or the "Di People".[197]

Indian folklore

In Hinduism, Suvannamaccha (lit. golden mermaid) is a daughter of Ravana who appears in the Cambodian and Thai versions of the Ramayana. She is a mermaid princess who tries to spoil Hanuman's plans to build a bridge to Lanka, but falls in love with him instead. She is a popular figure in Thai folklore.[219]

Southeast Asia and Polynesia

In Thailand, Suvannamaccha is a daughter of Tosakanth appearing in the Thai and other Southeast Asian versions of Ramayana.[220] She is a mermaid princess who tries to spoil Hanuman's plans to build a bridge to Lanka but falls in love with him instead.[221]

In Cambodia, she is referred as Sovanna Maccha, a favorite for Cambodian audiences.[222]

Indonesia

In the Javanese culture of Indonesia, Nyai Roro Kidul is a sea goddess and the Queen of the Southern Seas; the mermaid queen is said to inhabit the southern beach in Java.[223] She has many forms; in her mermaid form, she is called Nyai Blorong.[224]

Philippines

In the Tagalog language mermaids are nown as sirena and siyokoy respectively.[225] The general term for mermaid among all ethnic groups is Sirena.[226]

In the Philippines, mermaid concepts differ per ethnic group. Among the Pangasinense, the Binalatongan mermaid is a Queen of the sea who married the mortal Maginoo Palasipas and ruled humanity for a time.[227] Among the Ilocano, mermaids were said to have propagated and spread through the union of the first Serena and the first Litao, a water god.[227] Among the Bicolano, mermaids were referred as Magindara, known for their beautiful voice and vicious nature.[228] Among the Sambal, mermaids called Mambubuno are depicted as having two fins, instead of one.

New Zealand

Mermaids and mermen are also characters of The myth of "Pania of the Reef", a well-known tale of Māori mythology, has many parallels with stories of sea-people in other parts of the world.

African folklore

Mami Water (Lit. "Mother of the Water") are water spirits venerated in West, Central and southern Africa, and in the African diaspora in the Caribbean and parts of North, Central and South America. They are usually female, but are sometimes male. They are regarded as diabolical beings, and are often femme fatales, luring men to their deaths.[229] The Persian word "پری دریایی" or "maneli" means "mermaid".[230]

In Zimbabwe mermaids are known as "njuzu". They are believed to be solitary and occupy one body of water. Individual njuzu may be benevolent or malicious. Angry njuzu may be blamed for unexpected misfortunes, such as bad weather or the sudden disappearance of people. Benevolent njuzu are thought to reside in peaceful lakes or rivers. If a person goes missing near such lakes or rivers, they may have been taken by the njuzu. To obtain the person's release, local elders will brew beer as a propitiatory offering, and ask the njuzu to return the person alive. Those seeking the person's release are not supposed to cry or shed tears. If the njuzu releases the person, they will become or be regarded as a n'anga, or traditional healer, with knowledge of herbs, medicinal plants, and cures.[citation needed]

Examples from other cultures are the jengu of Cameroon.[citation needed]

Arabian folklore

One Thousand and One Nights

The One Thousand and One Nights collection includes several tales featuring "sea people", such as "Jullanâr the Sea-born and Her Son King Badr Bâsim of Persia".[231] Unlike depictions of mermaids in other mythologies, these are anatomically identical to land-bound humans, differing only in their ability to breathe and live underwater. They can (and do) interbreed with land humans, and the children of such unions have the ability to live underwater. In the tale "Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman", the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land. The underwater society follows a form of primitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist. In "The Adventures of Bulukiya", the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality leads him to explore the seas, where he encounters societies of mermaids.[231]

American folklore

The Neo-Taíno nations of the Caribbean identify a mermaid called Aycayia[232][233] with attributes of the goddess Jagua and the hibiscus flower of the majagua tree Hibiscus tiliaceus.[234] In modern Caribbean culture, there is a mermaid recognized as a Haitian vodou loa called La Sirene (lit. "the mermaid"), representing wealth, beauty and the orisha Yemaya.[citation needed]

Iara and Ipupiara

In Brazilian folklore, the iara, also known as mãe-d'agua ("lady/mother of the water") is a water-dwelling beauty whom fishermen are prone to fall prey to.[235][236] "Iara is a beautiful white woman who lives in a river and seduces men as she sings with her hypnotizing and enchanting voice . Once the man is seduced he is drawn into the river to be gone forever".[237] she is reputedly golden-haired,[236] though the blond, blue-eyed image was not attested until after mid-19th century, to the best knowledge of Camara Cascudo.[x][238] Cascudo in his earlier writing contended that though the Iara was rooted in two indigenous beings, the water-devil Ipupiara (cf. below) and the Cobra-Grande, he also saw the combining of the Portuguese lore of the Enchanted Moura (moorish girl), who was obviously dark-skinned.[239][y] The Iara became increasingly to be regarded as a woman-fish, after the image of the European sirens/mermaids.[240][241]

It is often argued that the legends of the Iara developed around the 18th century out of the indigenous myth of the Ipupiara [pt] among the Tupinambá people. The Ipupiara was originally conceived of as a male water-dweller that carried fishermen to the bottom, devouring their mouths, nose, fingertips and genitals.[235] European writers during the age of exploration disseminated the myth, but the Gandavo [pt] (1576)[z] included an illustration of "Hipupiàra" with female breasts. Subsequently the Jesuit Cardim [pt][aa] wrote that the "Igpupiàra" also consisted of females that look like women with long hair.[242] Though somewhat vague in the case of Gandavo, Cardim had clearly injected Christian opinion which would readily relegate the role of emasculating men to the female kind.[243] Later with the introduction of African slaves, the Yoruba myth of Iemanjá was admixed into the telling.[235]

Reported sightings

Roman Lusitania and Gaul

In his Natural History 9.4.9–11, Pliny the Elder, remarked that a triton (merman) was seen off the coast of Olisipo (present-day Lisbon, Portugal),[244] and it bore the physical appearance in accordance with common notion of the triton, according to a deputation from Lisbon who reported it to Emperor Tiberus. One nereid was sighted earlier on the same (Lisbon) coast. Pliny remarks that contrary to popular notion, the true nereids are not smooth-skinned in their human-like portions, but covered with scales all over the body.[247] Their mournful song at death have also been heard by the coastal inhabitants. Also, multiple nereids had washed up on the shore according to the legatus/governor of Gaul, who informed the late Emperor Augustus about it in a letter.[244][249][246][ab]

16th century Swedish writer Olaus Magnus quotes the same passage from Pliny, and further notes that the nereid are said to utter "dismal moans (wailings) at the hour of her death", thus observing a connection to the legend of sea-nymphs[250] and the sister Fates whose clashing cymbals and flute tunes could be heard on shore.[251][252][250] Olaus in a later passage states that the nereids (tr. "mermaids") are known to "sing plaintively",[253][254] in general.[ac]

It has been conjectured that these carcasses of nereids washed up on shore were "presumably seals".[244][256]

Age of Exploration Americas and polar frontiers

In 1493, sailing off the coast of Hispaniola, Christopher Columbus spotted three sirens or mermaids (Spanish: serenas) which he said were not as beautiful as they are represented, due to some masculine features in their faces, but these are considered to be sightings of manatees.[257][258]

During Henry Hudson's second voyage on 15 June 1608, members of his crew reported sighting a mermaid in the Arctic Ocean, either in the Norwegian or Barents Seas.[259]

Dutch explorer David Danell during his expeditions to Greenland in 1652–54 claimed to have spotted a mermaid with "flowing hair and very beautiful", though the crew failed to capture it.[260]

Colonial Brazil

 
Bartholin's siren (1654). He came into the possession of its hand and ribs (shown right).

Danish physician and natural historian Thomas Bartholin wrote about a mermaid specimen caught in Brazil (probably a manatee [261]) and subsequently dissected at Leiden.[262][264] Though referred to in the text as a "sea-man" (homo marinus) from Brazil, the account was accompanied by an engraved drawing captioned "Sirene", whose appearance was that of a humanoid female with bared breasts (a mermaid).[265][263] The specimen's body was deformed and "without the sign of a tail",[266] matching the drawing. And "a membrane [that] join [the fingers] together"[266] is also reflected in the drawing as well (as her webbed pair of hands/forepaws).[265][ad]

The specimen's account and illustration was later reproduced by Linnaeus, who captioned the beast "Siren Bartholini",[267][268] hence "Bartholin's Siren".

Bartholin was actually not the sole proprietor of the specimen, but he came into possession of its hand and ribs, which he also illustrated in his book (figures above).[269][ae] Based on the illustration, the "hand" has been determined to be the front flipper belonging to a manatee by a team of researchers.[261]

Bartholin himself had argued that it was a sea mammal closely related to seals (phocae).[266][262][af] His rationale was that since there are several marine counterparts to land mammals e.g. "sea-horses",[ag] the possibility of a marine creature with striking likeness to humans could not be ruled out,[263] though they should all be classified among seal-kind.[266]

Erasmus Francisci (Erasmus Finx, 1668) associated this Brazilian specimen with the local native lore of the "Yupiapra" (Ipupiara).[ah][270][271]

Colonial Southeast Asia

17th century Visayas

 
Anthropomorphos
―Johannes Jonston Historia naturalis in Latin, 1657[272]

A type of mermaid referred to as "anthropomorphus"[273] or "woman-fish" (Spanish: peche mujer[274]) allegedly inhabited the Spanish-ruled Philippines, particularly in the waters around the Visayan Islands, according to contemporary writings from the 17th century.[283]

The accounts are found in several books, on various topics from magnetism, to natural history, to ecclesiastical history.[284]

These books refer to the mermaid/merman as "piscis anthropomorphos" (Dutch: Anthropomorphus),[ai] and emphasize how human-like they appear in their upper bodies, as well as providing woodcut or etchings illustrating the male and female of the part-human part-fish creature.[275][273]

The "woman-fish" (or peche mujer in modern Spanish[274])[aj]) was the name given to the creature among the Spaniards, but the sources also state it was called "duyon" by the indigenous people.[275][272][ak] and it is assumed the actual creature was a dugong (according to modern translators' notes).[282][286][al]

Several of these sources mention the medical use of the woman-fish to control the flow of blood (or the four humours). It was effective for staunching the bleeding, i.e., effective against hemorrhages, according to Jonston.[289] Other sources mention the ability to stop bleeding, e.g. Colín,[290] who also thought that the Philippine woman-fish tasted like fatty pork.[291] The bones were made into beads (i.e., strung together), as it was believed effective against defluxions (of the humours).[292]

18th century Moluccas

Renard's illustrated book of marine life
 
"Monster or Siren (mermaid)"[293]
―Louis Renard Poissons, ecrevisses et crabes.. autour des isles Moluques et sur les côtes des terres Australes, 2nd edition, 1754[294]
 
A dugong (ditto book)

Allegedly captured in the Moluccas in the 17th century was the so-called "Amboina mermaid" (after the then Dutch Province of Ambon),[295][am] which its leading researcher has referred to as Samuel Fallours's "Sirenne", after the man who came into possession of it and made an original painting of it in full color.[297]

The painting was reproduced by Louis Renard on the "Fish" of the region, first published in 1719,[302]

It was supposedly caught Boeren in Ambon Province (Buru, in present-day Maluku Province),[303] presumably around the years 1706–1712,[301] or perhaps the year 1712 precisely.[305] During this period, Fallours served briefly as soldier for the VOC (Dutch East India Company) starting June 1706, but turned associate curate (Krankbezoeker) for the Dutch Reformed Church (September 1706 to June 1712).[306]

Fallour's mermaid with additional details were described by François Valentijn in a 1726 book.[307][ao]

The mermaid was 59 Dutch inches (duimen) long, or 5 feet in Rhineland measures. She reportedly survived 4 days 7 hours in a water tank, and died after refusing food it was given, having uttered no intelligible sound,[305][298] or issuing sounds like screechings of a mouse (French: souris).[294] Something like a straw cape (Japanese mino) appears wrapped around her waist in the painting according to one commentator,[310] but Fallours revealed in his notes that he lifted the front and back fins and "[found] it was shaped like a woman".[311]

The mermaid was suspected to be a dugong in reality, even by contemporary scholars such as Georg Rumphius, although Valentijn was unable to believe they were the one and the same.[312] Leading researcher Theodore W. Pietsch[ap] concurs with the dugong identification, but an ichthyologist has opined that "I could more easily accept a small oar-fish, or another eel-like fish, rather than a dugong as a partial basis for the drawing", noting that Renard's book carries an illustration of a plausibly realistic dugong as well.[298]

Qing dynasty China

The Yuezhong jianwen (Chinese: 粵中見聞; Wade–Giles: Yueh-chung-chieh-wen; "Seens and Heards", or "Jottings on the South of China", 1730) contains two accounts concerning mermaids. In the first, a man captures a mermaid (海女 "sea woman") on the shore of Lantau Island (Wade–Giles: Taiyü-shan). She looks human in every respect except that her body is covered with fine hair of many colors. She cannot talk, but he takes her home and marries her. After his death, the mermaid returns to the sea where she was found. In the second story, a man sees a woman lying on the beach while his ship was anchored offshore. On closer inspection, her feet and hands appear to be webbed. She is carried to the water, and expresses her gratitude toward the sailors before swimming away.[313][314]

U.S. and Canada

Two sightings were reported in Canada near Vancouver and Victoria, one from sometime between 1870 and 1890, the other from 1967.[315][316] A Pennsylvania fisherman reported five sightings of a mermaid in the Susquehanna River near Marietta in June 1881.[317]

21st century

In August 2009, after dozens of people reported seeing a mermaid leaping out of Haifa Bay waters and doing aerial tricks, the Israeli coastal town of Kiryat Yam offered a $1 million award for proof of its existence.[318]

In February 2012, work on two reservoirs near Gokwe and Mutare in Zimbabwe stopped when workers refused to continue, stating that mermaids had hounded them away from the sites. It was reported by Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, the water resources minister.[319]

Hoaxes and show exhibitions

See also: Merman § Hoaxes and sideshows

Manufactured merfolk specimens

Main article: Feejee mermaid

A celebrated example of mermaid hoax was the Fiji mermaid exhibited in London in 1822[aq] and later in America by P. T. Barnum in 1842,[ar][323] in this case an investigator claims to have traced the mermaid's manufacture to a Japanese fisherman.[324]

 
An alleged ningyo or merman/mermaid specimen (side view) ―Baien's sketch (1825)

Fake mermaids made in China and the Malay archipelago out of monkey and fish parts were imported into Europe by Dutch traders since the mid-16th century, and their manufactures are thought to go back earlier.[325] The manufacture of mermaids from monkey and fish parts also occurred in Japan, especially in the Kyūshū region,[326] as a souvenir industry targeting foreigners.[327][as] Mōri Baien painted full color illustrations of such a compositely manufactured ningyo specimen in his ichthyological tract (1825).[327][329] For much of the Edo Period, Nagasaki (in Kyūshū) was the only trade port open to foreign countries, and the only place where non-Japanese aliens could reside. Jan Cock Blomhoff, the Dutch East India Company director stationed in Dejima, Nagasaki is known to have acquired merfolk mummies; these and other specimens are now held in the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, Netherlands.[330][331][332]

 
A mummified "Sea Devil" (Persian: شیطان دریا) fish, Mashhad Museum, Iran.

The equivalent industry in Europe was the Jenny Haniver made from dried rays.[333]

In the middle of the 17th century, John Tradescant the elder created a wunderkammer (called Tradescant's Ark) in which he displayed, among other things, a "mermaid's hand".[334]

Mermaid shows

Scantily clad women placed in watertanks and impersonating mermaids performed at the 1939 New York World's Fair. It was part of the "Dream of Venus" installation by Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí. The mermaid interacted with Oscar the Obscene Octopus, and the ongoings were portrayed in E. L. Doctorow's novel World's Fair.[335]

Professional female divers have performed as mermaids at Florida's Weeki Wachee Springs since 1947. The state park calls itself "The Only City of Live Mermaids"[336] and was extremely popular in the 1960s, drawing almost one million tourists per year.[337] Most of the current performers work part-time while attending college, and all are certified Scuba divers. They wear fabric tails and perform aquatic ballet (while holding their breath) for an audience in an underwater stage with glass walls. Children often ask if the "mermaids" are real. The park's PR director says, "Just like with Santa Claus or any other mythical character, we always say yes. We're not going to tell them they're not real".[338]

The Ama are Japanese skin divers, predominantly women, who traditionally dive for shellfish and seaweed wearing only a loincloth and who have been in action for at least 2,000 years.[339] Starting in the twentieth century, they have increasingly been regarded as a tourist attraction. They operate off reefs near the shore, and some perform for sightseers instead of diving to collect a harvest. They have been romanticized as mermaids.[340]

Scientific inquiry

The topic of mermaids in earnest has arisen in several instances of scientific scrutiny, including a biological assessment of the unlikelihood of the supposed evolutionary biology of the mermaid on the popular marine science website DeepSeaNews. Five of the primary reasons listed as to why mermaids do not fit current evolutionary understanding are:

  • thermoregulation (adaptations for regulating body heat);
  • evolutionary mismatch;
  • reproductive challenges;
  • digestive differences between mammals and fish;
  • lack of physical evidence.[341]

Mermaids were also discussed tongue-in-cheek in a scientific article by University of Washington emeritus oceanographer Karl Banse.[342] His article was written as a parody,[343] but mistaken as a true scientific exposé by believers as it was published in a scientific journal.

Myth interpretations

According to Dorothy Dinnerstein's book The Mermaid and the Minotaur, human-animal hybrids such as mermaids and minotaurs convey the emergent understanding of ancient peoples that humans were both one with and different from animals:

[Human] nature is internally inconsistent, that our continuities with, and our differences from, the earth's other animals are mysterious and profound; and in these continuities, and these differences, lie both a sense of strangeness on earth and the possible key to a way of feeling at home here.[344]

Arts, entertainment, and media

See also: Mermaids in popular culture
 
Arthur Rackham, Rhinemaidens, from The Rhinegold & The Valkyrie (1910).
 
An illustration of Vanity Fair's Becky Sharp as a man-killing mermaid, by the work's author William Thackeray.

Literature

The best-known example of mermaids in literature is probably Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, "The Little Mermaid", first published in 1837.[182] The title character, youngest of the Merman-king's daughters, falls in love with a human prince[at] and also longs for an eternal soul like humans, despite the shorter lifespan. The two cravings are intertwined: only by achieving true love will her soul bind with a human's and become everlasting. But the mermaid's fish-tail poses an insurmountable obstacle for enticing humans, and a sea-witch offers a potion to transform into human form, at a price (the mermaid's tongue and beautiful voice). The mermaid endures the excruciating pain of having human legs, and despite her inability to speak, almost succeeds in wedding the prince, but for a twist of fate.[au] The mermaid is doomed unless she stabs the prince with a magic knife on his wedding night. She refuses to harm him and dies the mermaid way, dissolving into foam. However, her selflessness has earned her a second chance at salvation, and she is resurrected as an air spirit.[345]

Andersen's works has been translated into over 100 languages.[346] One of the main literary influences for Andersen's mermaid was Undine, an earlier German novella about a water nymph who could only obtain an immortal soul by marrying a human.[347] Andersen's heroine inspired a bronze sculpture in Copenhagen harbour and influenced Western literary works such as Oscar Wilde's The Fisherman and His Soul and H.G. Wells' The Sea Lady.[348]

Sue Monk Kidd wrote a book called The Mermaid Chair loosely based on the legends of Saint Senara and the mermaid of Zennor.

Art and Music

Sculptures and statues of mermaids can be found in many countries and cultures, with over 130 public art mermaid statues across the world. Countries with public art mermaid sculptures include Russia, Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Denmark, Norway, England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, India, China, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Guam, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, the Cayman Islands, Mexico, Saudi Arabia (Jeddah), the United States (including Hawaii and the U.S. Virgin Islands) and Canada.[349] Some of these mermaid statues have become icons of their city or country, and are major tourist attractions in themselves. The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen is an icon of that city as well as of Denmark. The Havis Amanda statue symbolizes the rebirth of the city of Helsinki. The Syrenka (mermaid) is part of the coat of Arms of Warsaw, and is considered a protector of Warsaw, which publicly displays statues of their mermaid.

An influential image was created by the Pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse, from 1895 to 1905, entitled A Mermaid (Cf. figure, top of page). An example of late British Academy-style artwork, the piece debuted to considerable acclaim (and secured Waterhouse's place as a member of the Royal Academy), but disappeared into a private collection and did not resurface until the 1970s. It is currently once again in the Royal Academy's collection.[350] Waterhouse's mermaid grooms her hair with comb and mirror, the stereotypical implements of the mermaid, likely designed to portray her as temptress,[351] and her red hair (auburn hair[351]) is a match for the hair colour of Venus.[352][av] Waterhouses's The Siren (1900) also depicts the siren as a mermaid of sorts, representing the femme fatale [353] drawing men to destruction. In the modern age of course, the word "siren" is used as a synonym of femme fatale.[352]

Mermaids were a favorite subject of John Reinhard Weguelin, a contemporary of Waterhouse. He painted an image of the mermaid of Zennor as well as several other depictions of mermaids in watercolour.

Musical depictions of mermaids include those by Felix Mendelssohn in his Fair Melusina overture and the three "Rhine daughters" in Richard Wagner's opera Der Ring des Nibelungen. Lorelei, the name of a Rhine mermaid immortalized in the Heinrich Heine poem of that name, has become a synonym for a siren. The Weeping Mermaid is an orchestral piece by Taiwanese composer Fan-Long Ko.[354]

Motion pictures

Film depictions include Miranda (1948), Night Tide (1961), the romantic comedy Splash (1984), and Aquamarine (2006). A 1963 episode of the television series Route 66 entitled "The Cruelest Sea of All" featured a mermaid performance artist working at Weeki Wachee aquatic park. Mermaids also appeared in the popular supernatural drama television series Charmed, and were the basis of its spin-off series Mermaid. In She Creature (2001), two carnival workers abduct a mermaid in Ireland c. 1900 and attempt to transport her to America. The film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides mixes old and new myths about mermaids: singing to sailors to lure them to their death, growing legs when taken onto dry land, and bestowing kisses with magical healing properties.

Disney's musical animated version of Andersen's tale, The Little Mermaid, was released in 1989.[355][356] Notable changes to Andersen's story include removing the religious aspects of the fairy tale, including the mermaid's quest to obtain an immortal soul. The sea-witch herself replaces the princess to whom the prince becomes engaged, using the mermaid's voice to prevent her from obtaining the prince's love. However, on their wedding day the plot is revealed and the sea-witch is vanquished. The knife motif is not used in the film, which ends with the mermaid and the prince marrying.[357]

Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo is an animated film about a ningyo who wants to become a human girl with the help of her human friend Sosuke.

The Australian teen dramedy H2O: Just Add Water chronicles the adventures of three modern-day mermaids along the Gold Coast of Australia.

The Starbucks coffee logo is a melusine.[citation needed]

Heraldry

 
Arms of Warsaw

In heraldry, the charge of a mermaid is commonly represented with a comb and a mirror,[358][359] and blazoned as a "mermaid in her vanity".[360] In addition to vanity, mermaids are also a symbol of eloquence.[361]

Mermaids appear with greater frequency as heraldic devices than mermen do. A mermaid appears on the arms of the University of Birmingham, in addition to those of several British families.[359]

A mermaid with two tails is referred to as a melusine. Melusines appear in German heraldry, and less frequently in the British version.[359]

A shield and sword-wielding mermaid (Syrenka) is on the official coat of arms of Warsaw.[362] Images of a mermaid have symbolized Warsaw on its arms since the middle of the 14th century.[363] Several legends associate Triton of Greek mythology with the city, which may have been the origin of the mermaid's association.[364]

The Cusack family crest includes a mermaid wielding a sword, as depicted on a memorial stone for Sir Thomas Cusack (1490–1571).[365]

The city of Norfolk, Virginia also uses a mermaid as a symbol. The personal coat of arms of Michaëlle Jean, former Governor General of Canada, features two mermaids as supporters.[366]

Fandom

Interest in mermaid costuming has grown with the popularity of fantasy cosplay, as well as the availability of inexpensive monofins used in the construction of these costumes. The costumes are typically designed to be used while swimming, in an activity known as mermaiding. Mermaid fandom conventions have also been held.[367][368]

Gallery

See also

Explanatory notes

  1. ^ And despite the misleading spelling not a variant of "merman" (first used 17th cent.)[3]
  2. ^ The word occurs variously as OHG merimenni, merimeni, meriminni, meriminnun, meriminna, merminno.[7] Schade's dictionary uses OHG "meremanni" as headword.[8]
  3. ^ They are glosses to sirenes at Isiah 13:21 where Hebrew ya'anah (יִעֲנָה), mod. Eng. bibl. tr. "ostriches" was translated as sirens by the Septuagint and Vulgate.[7]
  4. ^ She is Wâchilt, whose great-grandson (German: Urenkel) is Wittich.[12] In other words she is Velent/Wieland's grandmother.[13] or "Wittich's father's father's mother",[14] in the Dietrich Cycle.
  5. ^ She is deemed an 'undine' by one modern commentator.[17]
  6. ^ That is, the OED's entry for gave "cf. OE męrewif and Mermin [in small capitals]", meaning there is an entry for the latter but not the former.
  7. ^ The Megarian bowl, 3rd century BC, with a scene from the Odyssey, with sirens depicted as fish-tailed "tritonesses", to use art jargon.[34] Harrison names a clay lamp, possibly from the Roman period.[35][36] A terracotta "mourning siren", 250 BC, is the oldest representation of siren as mermaid familiar to Waugh.[37]
  8. ^ But upon reflection, since the OHG word only means "sea-woman", it is not assured that a fish-tailed being is meant.
  9. ^ In the bestiaries. And that is generally accepted to be the intended symbolism in ecclesiastical art, such as church carvings of mermaids,[37][68] but this church view has been derided as misogynistic from a modern perspective,[69] and it has been noted that the mirror and comb were originally the accoutrements of the love goddess Venus in Classical Times.[70][71]
  10. ^ In The Odyssey, after Odysseus' encounter with the sirens, he headed for the place where Scylla and Charybdis dwelled.[74]
  11. ^ But perhaps not too far from the meadows opposite the Rhine River where they pitched camp in an earlier passage in the Nibelungenlied,[29] and occurs at the confluence of the Rhine and the Danube in Þiðreks saga,[101] hence Wagner's reinvention of them as Rhinemaidens.[102]
  12. ^ MHG: ane; modern German: Ahn.
  13. ^ The initial "h" is an aspirated h here could very well be pronounced, even in modern Normandy, especially for words borrowed from the Germanic, as Gorog points out elsewhere.[135] Wartburg (Gorog tr.) glosses navette" as "sort of water-sprite (ondine) which attracts passers-by at night.. and plunges in with them", adding that in the patois of Valognes, it is used as a bugbear to frighten children from approaching water.
  14. ^ And documented some of these fables, as the mermaid purportedly foretelling the birth of Christian IV.
  15. ^ Or even the eccentric "Sea-Quoyas Morrov", after apparently the native Angolan name for some ape, because a mermaid capture in Angola was also documented.
  16. ^ Recté margýgr and hafstrambr, as described below
  17. ^ margýgur, hafgygur ('mer-troll'), haffrú ('sea-maid'); mey-fiskr ('maiden-fish').
  18. ^ In Sweden also and sjö-kona (sjö-kuna in the dialect of Ruhnu, Estonia).[155]
  19. ^ And also Bassett (1892), p. 172
  20. ^ The original text gives knäckt (i.e. cracked), rather than kneckt[161] or knackt.[168]
  21. ^ The Swedish ballad "Hafsmannen" is based on the abduction theme, and recounts the same myth as Danish ballad "Rosmer Havmand".[171]
  22. ^ Facsimiles of the miniature painting are found in Fridtjof Nansen's book[158] and Dubois's paper.[174]
  23. ^ The anecdote is set in Donghai or "Eastern Sea" which designates "East China Sea" on a modern atlas (and this is given in Magnani's translation), but is "Eastern Sea" given by Groot translating this passage.[203] Historically, the name could apply to the Sea of Japan.[204]
  24. ^ The authority in question, Cascudo sees the influence of Gonçalves Dias's "romantic indigenization".
  25. ^ Cascudo's Dicionario do folclore brasileiro (1954) explores numerous other contributing European lore and indigenous water-myth.
  26. ^ Pero de Magalhães Gandavo. História da Província de Santa Cruz (1576)
  27. ^ Do clima e terra do Brasil, 1584
  28. ^ Pliny follows with an account of a "sea-man" witnessed on the Gulf of Gades (Gulf of Cádiz).[248]
  29. ^ i.e., not qualifying they do so at the hour of death.
  30. ^ Bartholin subsequently provides a textual description of a neckless siren with lactating breasts,[262] however, that is the description from an entirely different specimen caught in the River Cuama off the Cape of Good Hope, quoted from Bernardinus Ginnarus.[266]
  31. ^ Bartholin describes in detail that it was caught off of Brazil by merchants of the (Dutch) West India Company, the GWC, and the dissection conducted in Leiden by Petrus Pavius (Pieter Pauw), attended by Johannes de Laet (who was director of th GWC); Bartholin was given a hand and few ribs from de Laet, as a token of friendship.[266]
  32. ^ Bartholin writes Phocae,[266] which is the genus, but perhaps he intended pinnipeds[262] more broadly.
  33. ^ A "sea-horse" in reality was either walrus or sea-unicorns/narwhals, both sources for marine ivory. For water-horse as sea-unicorn, see Francisci (1668), opposite p. 1406, Plate XLVII.
  34. ^ cf. §Iara and Ipupiara, supra.
  35. ^ Kircher's Latin text actually resorts to writing out "piscis ανθρωπόμορφος" partly in Greek (Greek ligature is used for the final omicron-sigma).[275] Jonston's Latin version uses "anthropomorphos"; the Dutch translator changed this to "-morphus" in the text, though the caption remained "-phos" in the engraving.[273]
  36. ^ In the primary sources, variously spelt in Middle Spanish as peche muger,[275] pez muller, pexe muller,[279] etc.
  37. ^ The word is "duyong" in the Ilongo (Hiligaynon) or Palawano language of the Bisayans.[285]
  38. ^ According to Navarrete, an indigenous man had confessed to having nightly sexual intercourse with a piscis mulier or pexemulier "said to resemble a woman from the breasts down" .[281][286]
  39. ^ Later it was no longer a Dutch Province. Bassett (1892) renamed her the "Molucca siren",[296] but that name does not seem to have wide circulation.
  40. ^ color illustrations engraved copper plates, hand-painted in color.
  41. ^ Valentijn was also a minister of the church, mostly in the employ of the VOC; he was minister in Ambon at age 19 from 1685 for a decade, and was stationed again in Java 1705–1714.[308] but was minister in Dorchrecht, Netherlands by 1916 when Renard corresponded with him seeking help for his book,[309] and he compiled his own book while in the Netherlands.[308]
  42. ^ And editor of the English edition of Renard's work.
  43. ^ This specimen had been on display inside a jar at the Turf Coffee-house, St. James's Street as illustrated in an etching of it was made by artist George Cruikshank.
  44. ^ Although the exhibitors called it "mermaid", the gender (as to the monkey port or fish part used) is probably unclear, and one newspaper renames it "Barnum's merman".[320][321][322]
  45. ^ Marine biologist Hondo comments that the Japanese souvenirs tended to use a group of fish shaped like the suzuki (Japanese sea bass), and asserts that in Canton, China, the type of fish used were Cyprinids (carp family), Nibea mitsukurii, and the giant mottled eel.[327] The mermaid drawn by Cruikshank (i.e., the Fiji mermaid) is speculated to be "concocted from a blue-faced monkey and a salmon".[328]
  46. ^ The prince remains unacquainted with her, despite being saved by her from a shipwreck. The mermaid had brought him ashore unconscious and then hid behind rocks and covered herself in foam to hide.
  47. ^ The prince is betrothed to a princess, who turns out to be the girl he mistakenly believed to be his rescuer (due to the mermaid's concealment).
  48. ^ And the comb and mirror were originally associated with Aphrodite/Venus, as Fraser points out here.

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b "Mermaid". Dictionaries. Oxford. Archived from the original on 20 November 2018. Retrieved 16 April 2012.
  2. ^ a b c "mermaid". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.); Murray, James A. H. ed. (1908) A New Eng. Dict. VI, s.v."mermaid"
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i "mermin". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.); Murray, James A. H. ed. (1908) A New Eng. Dict. VI, s.v."mermin"
  4. ^ "Detailed record for Arundel 292". British Library. Retrieved 19 September 2022., fol. 8v "Natura Sirene"
  5. ^ a b British Library Arundel MS 292, fol. 8 verso[6]
  6. ^ a b c Morris, Richard, ed. (1872). Natura Sirene [The Mermaid]. An Old English miscellany containing a bestiary, Kentish sermons, Proverbs of Alfred, religious poems of the thirteenth century. E.E.T.S. Original series 49. Early English Text Society. pp. 18–19. With marginal synopsis.
  7. ^ a b c Pakis (2010), p. 126, n40.
  8. ^ a b Schade, Oskar (1866). "meremanni ahd. st. M. mhd. mereminne / merewîp, merwîp". Altdeutsches Wörterbuch (in German). Vol. II. Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses. p. 394.
  9. ^ Bain, Frederika (1879). Steinmeyer, Elias von; Sievers, Eduard (eds.). Die althochdeutschen Glossen. Vol. 1. Berlin: Weidmann. p. 602.
  10. ^ a b Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek ms. 223, fol. 32r.[47] Maurer (1967) ed.Der altdeutsche Physiologus [note 37], 92, apud Pakis (2010), p. 126, n37. (olim MS Philol. 244), von der Hagen, F.H. (1824) ed., pp. 52–53.
  11. ^ a b Lexer (1872) Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, s.v. "mer-minne"
  12. ^ Paul, Hermann (1893). Grundriss der germanischen Philologie. Vol. 2. Trübner. p. 55.
  13. ^ a b c d e Buchholz, Peter (1980). Vorzeitkunde: mündliches Erzählen u. Überliefern im mittelalterlichen Skandinavien nach d. Zeugnis von Fornaldarsaga u. eddischer Dichtung (in German). Wachholtz. p. 85. ISBN 9783529033131. Nach der Þiðreks saga 36 ( 46 ) ist der Riese Vaði der Sohn einer siókona (Meerfrau)
  14. ^ a b c d e f Davidson, H. R. Ellis (September 1958). "Weland the Smith". Folklore. 63 (3): 149–150. JSTOR 1258855.
  15. ^ a b c d Hyltén-Cavallius, Gunnar Olof ed. (1854). Sagan om Didrik af Bern Kap. 383, p. 300. Den gamla svenska bearbetningen af Didriks saga is dated as ifrån 1400-talet (15th century or later), p.xxiii
  16. ^ a b c Paff (1959), p. 71: "The Swedish epilogue (II, 395) purports to know the true story of the death of Viðga and þíðrikr: after þíðrikr chased Viðga into the sea (see Musulá) Viðga's great-grandmother, an undine, conveyed him to Sjælland. Cf. Paff (1959), pp. 51–53, 129.
  17. ^ a b c d Paff (1959), p. 129.
  18. ^ Þiðreks saga or "Dietrich's saga". But the great-grandmother's involvement is only known from the Swedish version[14][16] (Swedish epilogue[17]), from the 15th century Swedish reworking.[15]
  19. ^ a b c Bertelsen, Henrik ed. (1905). Þiđriks saga af Bern Kap. 841 (57), I:73: "Vaðe rise ier asiolande svnr villcinus konongs ok siokononar ..."
  20. ^ Earlier portion of the Old Norse Þiðreks saga.[19]
  21. ^ a b c d Bashe, E. J. (1923). "Some Notes on the Wade Legend". Philological Quarterly. 2: 283.
  22. ^ Bosworth-Toller (1882), s.v. "mere-wíf"
  23. ^ Beowulf, Klaeber ed. (2008) [1936]. v. 1519
  24. ^ "merwoman". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.); Murray, James A. H. ed. (1908) A New Eng. Dict. VI, s.v."merwoman", "name for the mermaid when older or wedded".
  25. ^ As "merwoman" is used for merwîp, e.g., at Grimm & Stallybrass tr. (1883), p. 490 re the Nibelungenlied example.
  26. ^ Lexer (1872) Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, s.v. "mer-wîp"
  27. ^ a b Grimm & Stallybrass tr. (1883), p. 490.
  28. ^ a b c d Lionarons, Joyce Tally (1998). "The Otherworld and its Inhabitants in the Nibelungenlied". In McConnell, Winder (ed.). A Companion to the Nibelungenlied. Camden House. p. 168–169. ISBN 9781571131515.
  29. ^ a b c Bartsch ed. (1905), 5th ed., Das Nibelungenlied, XXV. Âventiure, Str. 1533–1544; Edwards, Cyril tr. (2020). The Nibelungenlied: The Lay of the Nibelungs. "Twenty-fifth Adventure" Str. 1532–1543, Oxford University Press
  30. ^ Mittman, Asa Simon; Dendle, Peter J (2016). The Ashgate research companion to monsters and the monstrous. London: Routledge. p. 352. ISBN 9781351894326. OCLC 1021205658.
  31. ^ Holford-Strevens (2006), pp. 17–18.
  32. ^ Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica IV, 891–919. Seaton, R. C. ed., tr. (2012), p. 354ff. "and at that time they were fashioned in part like birds and in part like maidens to behold".
  33. ^ Milliken (2014), p. 125, citing Benwell & Waugh (1965); Waugh (1960)
  34. ^ Rotroff, Susan I. (1982). Hellenistic Painted Potter: Athenian and Imported Moldmade Bowls, The Athenian Agora 22. American School of Classical Studies at Athens. p. 67, #190; Plates 35, 80. ISBN 978-0876612224.
  35. ^ a b c d Harrison, Jane Ellen (1882). Myths of the Odyssey in Art and Literature. London: Rivingtons. pp. 169–170, Plate 47a.
  36. ^ Benwell & Waugh (1965), p. 46 and Fig. 3a
  37. ^ a b Waugh (1960), p. 77.
  38. ^ a b The Bern Physiologus. fol. 13v. Rubric: "De natura serena et honocentauri". Produced c. 830, Hautvillers Abbey near Reims, France.[52]
  39. ^ "British Library Add MS 11283". British Library. Retrieved 6 September 2022., fol. 20v.
  40. ^ Waugh (1960), pp. 78–79.
  41. ^ Mustard (1908), p. 22.
  42. ^ McCulloch, Florence (1962) [1960]. Mediaeval Latin and French Bestiaries (revised ed.). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. p. 167. ISBN 9780807890332. Edmond Faral has called attention to what he believes is the first mention of this new type of siren.151 It is contained in the late seventh or early eighth century Liber monstrorum
  43. ^ Faral (1953), pp. 441ff., cited by McCulloch (1962) [1960], p. 167.[42]
  44. ^ Orchard, Andy (tr.), ed. (2003a). Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf Manuscript. University of Toronto Press. pp. 262–263. ISBN 9780802085832.
  45. ^ Pakis (2010), p. 137 and n89;Holford-Strevens (2006), p. 29 (both quote from the Orchard (2003) translation.[44]).
  46. ^ a b "Handschriftenbeschreibung 11043. Wien, Österr. Nationalbibl., Cod. 223". Handschriftencensus. Philipps-Universität Marburg; Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz. Retrieved 12 September 2022.
  47. ^ a b "5. [De sirenis et onocentauris.]". Physiologus (OHG). TITUS Project. Retrieved 12 September 2022., with the apparatus to load image (Cod. 223, fol. 32r)
  48. ^ Pakis (2010), p. 126, note 39 gives "Siręne sint meremanniu" citing Maurer ed. (1967), the Titus Project transcription is verifiable against the image of the manuscript, fol. 32r.[47][46]
  49. ^ Pakis (2010), pp. 126–127, note 42, though the remark is shorthanded, stating that the "same word" as the Old High German term is used.
  50. ^ Armistead tr. (2001) vv, 391–462, pp. 85–86
  51. ^ Holford-Strevens (2006), p. 34.
  52. ^ "Bern, Burgerbibliothek / Cod. 318 – Physiologus Bernensis". e-codices. Retrieved 11 September 2022., facsimile, fol. 13v
  53. ^ Woodruff, Helen (September 1930). "The Physiologus of Bern: A Survival of Alexandrian Style in a Ninth Century". The Art Bulletin. 12 (3). Fig. 22 and p. 249. JSTOR 3050780.
  54. ^ Leclercq, Jacqueline (February 1989). "De l'art antique à l'art médièval. A propos des sources du bestiaire carolingien et de se survivances à l'époque romane" [From ancient to mediaeval Art. On the sources of Carolingian bestiaries and their survival in the romance period]. Gazette des Beaux-Arts. 113: 82, 88. doi:10.2307/596378. JSTOR 596378. Physiologus de Berne.. En contradiction avec le texte qui dépeint une Sirène-oiseau, c'est une Sirène - poisson qui , dans l'illustration , apparaît face au centaure. (in French); Leclercq-Marx, Jacqueline (1997). La sirène dans la pensée et dans l'art de l'Antiquité et du Moyen Âge: du mythe païen au symbole chrétien. Classe des beaux-arts, Académie royale de Belgique. p. 62ff. ISSN 0775-3276. The chapter devoted to the Siren and the Centaur is an excellent example of this because the Siren is represented as a woman-fish whereas she is described in the form of a woman-bird..
  55. ^ "Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 764". Oxford University, the Bodleian Libraries. Retrieved 9 September 2022., fol. 074v.
  56. ^ Hardwick (2011), p. 92.
  57. ^ Holford-Strevens (2006), pp. 31–32, Fig. 1.4
  58. ^ Barber, Richard, ed. (1993). "Sirens". Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford M.S. Bodley 764 : with All the Original Miniatures Reproduced in Facsimile. Boydell Press. p. 1150. ISBN 9780851157535.
  59. ^ Oxford, MS Bodley 764, fol. 74v.[55][56][57][58]
  60. ^ a b Clark, Willene B. (2006). A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-family Bestiary: Commentary, Art, Text and Translation. Boydell Press. p. 57 and n50. ISBN 9780851156828.
  61. ^ a b George & Yapp (1991), p. 99.
  62. ^ "Ms. 100 (2007.16), fol. 14. Sirens. about 1250–1260". Getty Museum. Retrieved 10 September 2022.. "serene" fol. 20v
  63. ^ Cf. three sirens with two holding fish and third a mirror, as in Getty MS. 100 (olim Alnwick ms.)[62]
  64. ^ "Detailed record for Royal 2 B VII (Queen Mary Psalter)". British Library. Retrieved 6 September 2022., fol. 96v
  65. ^ British Library Ms. Royal 2.B.Vii, fol. 96v.[61][64]
  66. ^ Holford-Strevens (2006), p. 36.
  67. ^ a b Peacock, Martha Moffitt (2020), Classen, Albrecht (ed.), "The Mermaid of Edam and the Emergence of Dutch National Identity", Imagination and Fantasy in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time: Projections, Dreams, Monsters, and Illusions, Walter de Gruyter, p. 684, ISBN 9783110693782
  68. ^ Chunko-Dominguez, Betsy (2017). English Gothic Misericord Carvings: History from the Bottom Up. BRILL. pp. 82–84. ISBN 9789004341203.
  69. ^ Bacchilega & Brown (2019), p. xiv.
  70. ^ a b Wood (2018), p. 68.
  71. ^ Warner, Marina From the Beast to the Blonde, p. 406 apud Fraser (2017), Chapter 1. § Prehistory: Mermaids in the West: "comb and mirror.. probably inherited from the goddess of love, Aphrodite".
  72. ^ Xenophon, citing Socrates possibly spuriously, apud Holford-Strevens (2006), p. 22
  73. ^ a b Holford-Strevens (2006), p. 29.
  74. ^ Holford-Strevens (2006), pp. 20.
  75. ^ a b Bain, Frederika (2017). The Tail of Melusine: Hybridity, Mutability, and the Accessible Other. Melusine's Footprint: Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth. BRILL. pp. 25–26. ISBN 9789004355958.
  76. ^ Bain (2017), citing Terry Pearson and Françoise Clier-Colombani.[75]
  77. ^ Thompson, Homer A. (July–September 1948). "The Excavation of the Athenian Agora Twelfth Season" (PDF). Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. 17 (3, The Thirty-Fifth Report of the American Excavation in the Athenian Agora): 161–162 and Fig. 5. doi:10.2307/146874. JSTOR 146874.
  78. ^ Ornan, Tallay; et al. (Israel Exploration Society) (2005), The Triumph of the Symbol: Pictorial Representation of Deities in Mesopotamia and the Biblical Image Ban, Orbis biblicus et orientalis 213, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, p. 127, ISBN 9783525530078
  79. ^ a b c Black, Jeremy; Green, Anthony (1992). Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary. The British Museum Press. pp. 131–132. ISBN 0-7141-1705-6.
  80. ^ Macalister, R. A. Stewart (1913). The Philistines : their history and civilization. London: Pub. for the British Academy by H. Milford. pp. 95–96.
  81. ^ Ringgren, Helmer (1969), Bleeker, C. Jouco; Widengren, Geo (eds.), "The Religion of Ancient Syria", Historia Religionorum I: Religions of the Past, E. J. Brill, p. 208
  82. ^ a b Grabbe, Lester L. (2003). Like a Bird in a Cage: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BCE. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 122–123. ISBN 9780567207821.
  83. ^ Hasan-Rokem, Galit (2014), Fine, Steven; Koller, Aaron (eds.), "Leviticus Rabbah 16, 1 – "Odysseus and the Sirens" in the Beit Leontis Mosaic from Beit She'an", Talmuda de-Eretz Israel: Archaeology and the Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine, Studia Judaica 73, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, p. 182, ISBN 9781614512875
  84. ^ Lucian. De Dea Syria 14. Lightfoot ed., tr. (2003). Cited and translation quoted by Hasan-Rokem (2014), p. 182.[83]
  85. ^ De Dea Syra, 14 apud Cowper (1865), pp. 9–10
  86. ^ Smith, W. Robertson (1887), p. 313–314.
  87. ^ a b Breucker, Geert de (2021), Hokwerda, Hero (ed.), "Berossos and the Construction off a Near Eastern Cultural History in Response to the Greeks", Constructions of Greek Past: Identity and Historical Consciousness from Antiquity to the Present, BRILL, pp. 28–29, ISBN 9789004495463
  88. ^ Goodman, Ailene S. (2021). The Extraordinary Being: Death and the Mermaid in Baroque Literature. BRILL. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 261. ISBN 9789004487895.
  89. ^ Waugh (1960), p. 73.
  90. ^ Oannes was later described by the Babylonian writer Berossus as having an extra human head beneath the head of its fish body.[88][89]
  91. ^ Waugh (1960), p. 73: "the first merman in recorded history is the sea-god Ea, or in Greek, Oannes",
  92. ^ a b Waugh (1960), pp. 73–74.
  93. ^ a b c Russell, Eugenia (2013). Literature and Culture in Late Byzantine Thessalonica. A&C Black. p. xxii. ISBN 978-1-441-16177-2.
  94. ^ Evans, James. "Anaximander". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  95. ^ Bell, Jacob (30 March 2019). . Classical Wisdom Weekly. Archived from the original on 14 January 2020. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
  96. ^ Waugh (1960), pp. 77–78.
  97. ^ Jøn, A. Asbjørn (1978), Dugongs and Mermaids, Selkies and Seals, p. 95, these 'marine beasts' have featured in folk tradition for many centuries now, and until relatively recently they have maintained a reasonably standard set of characteristics. Many folklorists and mythographers deem that the origin of the mythic mermaid is the dugong, posing a theory that mythologised tales have been constructed around early sightings of dugongs by sailors.
  98. ^ "William Bond". Goodreads. Retrieved 29 April 2022.
  99. ^ Bond, William; Suffield, Pamela (2012). "The Origins of the Mermaid Myth". barnesandnoble.com. Retrieved 29 April 2022.
  100. ^ Lexer (1872) Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, s.v. "muome swf.".. mutterschwester
  101. ^ Paff 1959, p. 214: "at a point near ' where the Rhine and Danube [Dúná] join"
  102. ^ Magee (1990), p. 65.
  103. ^ a b Kemmis, Deva F. (2017). 'Listening Down the Hall': An Epistemological Consideation of the Encounter with Melusine in the Germanic Literary Tradition. Melusine's Footprint: Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth. BRILL. pp. 326–327 n11. ISBN 9789004355958.
  104. ^ Grimm apud Magee (1990), p. 63 and Grimm & Stallybrass tr. (1883), p. 490
  105. ^ Müller, Ullrich [UM] [in German] (2011) [2002]. "Rhine Maidens". In Gentry, Francis G.; Wunderlich, Werner; McConnell, Winder; Mueller, Ulrich (eds.). The Nibelungen Tradition: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp. 167–168. ISBN 0-8153-1785-9.
  106. ^ Millington, Barry; Spencer, Stewart (1993). "Notes on the translation". Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung: A Companion. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0500771464.
  107. ^ Martin, Ernst ed. (1866 ). Str.964. Str. 969
  108. ^ Paff (1959), p. 71.
  109. ^ Haymes tr. (1988), p. 270: "The End of Vidga and Thidrek, according to the Swedish Chronicle of Thidrek", Ch. 439. Vidga takes up residence in Sjaland.
  110. ^ The so-called Vilkinasaga ends before this chapter, according to Bertelsen's notes. But Þiðreks saga was frequently referred to as Vilkina saga by early commentators.
  111. ^ Or Ger. Meerfrau.[13]
  112. ^ Paff (1959), p. 53.
  113. ^ Paff (1959), pp. 53, 217
  114. ^ Paff (1959), pp. 35, 73, 85.
  115. ^ Identification of Gronsport with a specific modern city has not been made; von Der Hagens tr. (1855) Wilkina- und Niflunga-Saga oder Dietrich von Bern und die Nibelungen, III: 267n states he doesn't know.
  116. ^ Wood, Rita (March 2010). (PDF). Northern History. XLVII (1): 31. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 February 2014. Retrieved 25 July 2012.
  117. ^ . Architecture. Durham World heritage. Archived from the original on 9 May 2012. Retrieved 11 May 2012.
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  119. ^ Child, Francis James (1965), The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, vol. 2, New York: Dover, p. 19.
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  131. ^ Brynildsen, John, ed. (1917). "Hav (-frue 'mermaid, maiden'; -mand 'merman')". Norsk-engelsk ordbog (in Norwegian) (2 ed.). Kristiania: H. Aschehoug & Company. p. 325.
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  133. ^ Wartburg, Walther von (1922-) Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, XVI: 112, searchable index, translated by Gorog, in his supplementary list of Norman words borrowed from Old Norse which were missed by Fries, Jan de (1962). Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch.[132]
  134. ^ Wartburg (1922-), XVI:112 apud Gorog[132] (op. cit.) Cf. explanatory footnote, supra.
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  140. ^ Pontoppidan (1753a), pp. 304, 312, 317.
  141. ^ Pontoppidan (1755), pp. 187, 192, 195.
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  145. ^ Pontoppidan (1753a), p. 306.
  146. ^ Pontoppidan (1755), p. 188.
  147. ^ Pontoppidan (1753a), p. 302n; p. 304.
  148. ^ Pontoppidan (1755), p. 183; p. 186n.
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  157. ^ Though he is clearly dependent on past written literature also, e.g. Jón Guðmundsson the Learned (d. 1658), who also classified the mermen/mermaids among elves.
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  247. ^ Reads "the portion of the body that resembles the human figure is still rough all over with scales" ub Bisticj and Riley's translation.[245] This is given as "bristling with hair", in Rackham's (Loeb Classical Library translation, but squama here is probably 'scales' and the emendation is given in Hansen's rendering.[246]
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  254. ^ Olaus Magnus (1998). Foote, Peter (ed.). Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus: Romæ 1555 [Description of the Northern Peoples : Rome 1555]. Fisher, Peter;, Higgens, Humphrey (trr.). Hakluyt Society. p. 1081. ISBN 9780904180435. There are also sea-creatures, like mermaids, which sing plaintively and are similar in shape to human beings; and there are mermen; e-book (unpaginated)
  255. ^ Pliny the Elder (1963). Natural History, Vol. 8. Loeb classical library. W. Heinemann. p. 589 (index). ISBN 9780674994607.
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  261. ^ a b Senter, Phil; Snow, Venretta B. (September 2015), "Solution to a 300-year-old zoological mystery", Archives of Natural History, 40 (2): 257–262, doi:10.3366/anh.2013.0172. Abstract
  262. ^ a b c d Broedel, Hans Peter (2018), "2. The Mermaid of Edam Meets Medical Science: Empiricism and the Marvelous in Seventeenth-Century Zoological Thought", in Byars, Jana; Broedel, Hans Peter (eds.), Monsters and Borders in the Early Modern Imagination, Routledge, ISBN 9780429878855
  263. ^ a b c Bartholin, Thomas (1654). "Historia XI. Sirenis se Marini Hominis Anatome". Thomae Bartholini historiarum anatomicarum rariorum centuria (I et )II (in Latin). Copenhagen: typis academicis Martzani, sumptibus Petri Hauboldt bibl. pp. 186–191., and Plate.
  264. ^ Bartholin: "prope Brasiliam.. captus suit homo marinus..",[263] but Webster: "a Sea-Man taken by the Merchants of the West-India Company..", the latter omits mention of Brazil.
  265. ^ a b Scribner (2020): "'Sirene'.. with certain popular features of a mermaid (exposed breasts and a humanoid face.. odd, webbed hands, buttocks at the front)"
  266. ^ a b c d e f g Bartholin (1654), loc. cit.: this passage translated in Webster, John (1677). "Chap. XV. Of divers Creatures that have a real existence in Nature, and yet by reason of their wonderous properties, or seldom being seen, have been taken for Spirits, and Devils". The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft. London: J. M. pp. 285–286.
  267. ^ Linné, Carl von (1769). Caroli Linnæi ... Amoenitates academicæ, seu dissertationes variæ physicæ, medicæ, botanicæ antehac seorsim editæ, nunc collectæ et auctæ cum tabulis æneis. Vol. 7. Leiden: Apud Godefredum Kiesewetter. p. 324.
  268. ^ Scribner, Vaughn (29 September 2021). "Mermaids and Tritons in the Age of Reason". Public Domains Review. Retrieved 27 July 2022.
  269. ^ Scribner (2020).
  270. ^ Francisci, Erasmus (1668). "Von den Meer-Menschen". Erasmi Francisci Ost- und West-Indischer wie auch Sinesischer Lust- und Stats-Garten. Nuremburg: Endter. p. 1412 and Plate XLVII**.
  271. ^ "1. Meer Mensch filier So bey Bragefanger Die Riepe Die abgefleischte hand 2. Schwimmende Firer (from Erasmi Francisci Ost-und West-indischer, 1668)". JCB Archive of Early American Images. John Carter Brown Library. Retrieved 27 July 2022.
  272. ^ a b c Jonston, Johannes (1657). "Titulus III. Caput. 1. De pisce ανθρωπόμορφω & Remoranti". Historiae naturalis de piscibus et cetis libri 5. Amstelodamum: Ioannem Iacobi fil. Schipper. pp. 146–147, Tab. XL.
  273. ^ a b c d Jonston, Johannes (1660). "Boek. I. / III. Opschrift./ I. Hooft-St.: Van de visch Anthropomorphus, oft die een menschen-gestalte heeft, en van de Remorant". Beschryvingh van de Natuur der Vissen en bloedloze Water-dieren. Amsterdam: I. I. Schipper. p. 168, Tab. XL.
  274. ^ a b c Ojeda, Alfonso (2020). Cinco historias de la conexión española con la India, Birmania y China: Desde la imprenta a la igualdad de género. Los Libros De La Catarata. ISBN 9788413520643.
  275. ^ a b c d e f Kircher, Athanasius (1654) [1641]. "Lib. III. Pars VI. Caput II. §VI. : De Pisce Anthropomorpho, seu Syrene sanguinem trahente". Magnes sive De arte magnetica opus tripartitum (3 ed.). Rome: Deuersin et Zanobius Masotti. pp. 531–532.
  276. ^ Jacob, Alexander, ed. (1987). Henry More. The Immortality of the Soul. Springer/Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. p. 431, n293/7. ISBN 978-94-010-8112-2.
  277. ^ Prichard, James Cowles (1847). Researches Into the History of Mankind: History of the Oceanic and American nations. Sherwood, Gilbert & Piper. p. 58.
  278. ^ Jongh, Eddy de (2004). Fish: Still Lifes by Dutch and Flemish Masters 1550-1700. Centraal Museum. p. 167. ISBN 9789059830059.
  279. ^ a b c Colín, Francisco [in Spanish] (1663). "Lib. I. Cap. XVII. Algunas cosas naturales, proprias, y otras notables destas Islas. § II. Peces, y animales [marginalia: Pez Muller et seqq.]". Labor Evangelica, Ministerios Apostolicos de los Obreros de la Compañia de Jesus, Fundacion, y Progressos de su Provincia en las Islas Filipinas. Vol. Parte I. Madrid: Por Joseph Fernandez de Buendia. pp. 80–.
  280. ^ Bräunlein, Peter [in German]; Lauser, Andrea (1993). Leben in Malula: ein Beitrag zur Ethnographie der Alangan-Mangyan auf Mindoro (Philippinen). Centaurus-Verlagsgesellschaft. p. 438, n29. ISBN 9783890857916.
  281. ^ a b c d Churchill, Awnsham; Churchill, John, eds. (1704). "Chapter V. His Stay in Manila". An Account of the Empire of China, Historical, Political, Moral and Religious.. (in: A Collection of Voyages and Travels, Some Now First Printed from Original Manuscripts. Others Translated Out of Foreign Languages and Now First Publish'd in English). Vol. 1. Black Swan in Pater-Noster-Row. p. 249.
  282. ^ a b c d Cummins, J. S., ed. (2017). "Book VI:The Author's Travels [1646–1674]. Chapter IV. The Author's Stay at Manila". The Travels and Controversies of Friar Domingo Navarrete, 1616-1686: Volume I. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781317013419.
  283. ^ The incidents of capture and localities are as follows (the actual sources/authors will be elaborated in the citation footnotes to follow.):
    • In Kircher and Jonston's writings, the place of capture is given as the Insulas Pictorum near the Visayas,[275][272] namely, the "Island[s] of the Artist[s]".[276] A group of islands within the Visayas (including e.g. (Mindoro) was known as the Islas de los Pintados ('Islands of the Painted People').[277] Therefore referring to the locality as somewher within the present-day Visayas[274] The Dutch translation rendered the islands, not as "the Islands of the Painted/Painters", but as "the Picten Islands", in turn understood to mean "the Islands of the Picts".[278]
    • Colin identified the habitat as the Philippine waters and Malacca (Strait of Malacca).[279]
    • Nvarette while visiting Mindro (aforementioned island),[280] writes of the abundance of fish and the presence of "woman-fish" under the heading o NanboanNanboan[281] (namely Nauján).[282]).
  284. ^ Athanasius Kircher Magnes sive De arte magnetica (1641),[275] whose account is reiterated in Johannes Jonston Historiae naturalis de piscibus et cetis libri 5 (in Latin, 1657; Dutch translation Beschryvingh van de Natuur der Vissen en bloedloze Water-dieren, 1660).[273] Also Francisco Colín [es] (1663) Labor evangelica,[279] Domingo Fernández Navarrete Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China (1676).[281][282]
  285. ^ Polistico, Edgie (2017). "dugong". In Haase, Donald (ed.). Philippine Food, Cooking, & Dining Dictionary. Mandaluyong: Anvil Publishing, Inc. ISBN 9786214200870.
  286. ^ a b Blair, Emma Helen; Robertson, James Alexander, eds. (1906). "Manila and the Philippines about 1650 (concluded). Domingo Fernandez Navarrete, O. P.; Madrid, 1675 [From his Tratados historicos.]". The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803: Explorations. Vol. 38. Edward Gaylord Bourne, notes. A. H. Clark Company. p. 29.
  287. ^ Castiglioni (2021), p. 22.
  288. ^ Otsuki Gentaku (1786) Rokumotsu shinshi, fols. 24–25
  289. ^ Appropriating "remedy for hemorrhages" which is Castiglioni's paraphrase[287] of Ōtsuki Gentaku [ja] writing shiketsu (止血/血を止む, 'stop the bleeding') in his Japanese translation of Johnston.[288]
  290. ^ Cummins (2017), p. 82, footnote.
  291. ^ Colín, on the "Pez Muller" (marginalia) or "Pexe Muller/Duyon" (text): "me pareciò su carne como de torcino gordo"
  292. ^ Navarrete, Cummins tr.: "singular virtue against Defluxions".[282][281]
  293. ^ Pietsch (1991), p. 7–9.
  294. ^ a b Renard, Louis (1754). "monstre ou sirenne". Poissons, ecrevisses et crabes, de diverses couleurs et figures extraordinaires: que l'on trouve autour des isles Moluques et sur les côtes des terres Australes: peints d'après nature ... Ouvrage ... quit contient un trr̀e grand nombre de poissons les plus beaux & les plus rares de la Mer des Indes. Baltazar Coyett, Adrien van der Stell (2 ed.). Amsterdam: Chez Reinier & Josué Ottens. Planche LVII, Nº 240.（ミシガン大学蔵本）
  295. ^ e.g. Carrington (1957), pp. xi, 11
  296. ^ Bassett, 1892 & p191.
  297. ^ Pietsch (1991), pp. 12–13.
  298. ^ a b c Burr, Brooks M. (18 February 1997). "Reviewed Work(s): Fishes, Crayfishes, and Crabs. Louis Renard's Natural History of the Rarest Curiosities of the Seas of the Indies by Theodore W. Pietsch". Copeia. 1997 (1): 241–243. doi:10.2307/1447871. JSTOR 1447871.
  299. ^ a b Pietsch (1991), pp. 5, 7.
  300. ^ Hayward, Philip (2018b). "Chapter 5. From Dugongs to Sinetrons: Syncretic Mermaids in Indonesian Culture". In Hayward, Philip (ed.). Scaled for Success: The Internationalisation of the Mermaid. Indiana University Press. pp. 89–106. ISBN 978-0861967322.
  301. ^ a b Hayward (2018), pp. 93–94,[300] citing Pietsch (1991)
  302. ^ Louis Renard（1678/79–1746).[298]Poissons, ecrevisses et crabes, de diverses couleurs et figures extraordinaires: que l'on trouve autour des isles Moluques et sur les côtes des terres Australes ('Fish, [Lobsters], Crabs, in Various Colors and Extraordinary Shapes, as Found in the Moluccas and on the Coasts of Australia', first edition 1719, second edition 1754.[299][301][an] of various marine organisms of the Moluccas region, including this mermaid.[299]
  303. ^ Pietsch (1991), pp. 7, 13.
  304. ^ a b Valentyn, François (1726). "Verhandling der Water-Dieren: 3de Hoofdstuck. I. Van de Zee-Menschen" [Treatise on the Aquatic Animals of Ambon]. Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (in Dutch). Vol. 3. Dordrecht/Amsterdam: Johannes van Braam/Gerard onder de Linden. pp. 330–332. ISBN 9789051942286., Pl.; (Internet Archive)
  305. ^ a b According to Valentijn/Valentyn (1726), Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën, 3, Part 1, pp. 331–332[304] quoted in English translation in Pietsch (1991), p. 7.
  306. ^ Pietsch (1991), pp. 1, 15.
  307. ^ François Valentyn, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën, vol. 3.[304]
  308. ^ a b Suarez, Thomas (2012). "Chapter 15. The Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. § François Valentijn and Johannes van Keulen". Early Mapping of Southeast Asia: The Epic Story of Seafarers, Adventurers, and Cartographers Who First Mapped the Regions Between China and India. Tuttle Publishing. pp. 232–. ISBN 9781462906963.
  309. ^ Pietsch (1991), p. 7.
  310. ^ Yoshioka, Ikuo [in Japanese] (September 1993). "Ningyo no shinka" 人魚の進化 (PDF). Comparative folklore studies: for folklore studies of Asia. Tsukuba University (8): 38. ISSN 0915-7468. URI
  311. ^ Hayward (2018a), p. 93; Pietsch (1991), p. 5: "I had the curiosity to lift its fins in front and in back and [found] it was shaped like a woman. Mr. Van der Stel asked me for it and I gave it to him . I think he sent it to Holland". (English tr.)
  312. ^ Pietsch (1991), p. 12.
  313. ^ Dennys, Nicholas Belfield (1876). The Folk-Lore of China, and Its Affinities with That of the Aryan and Semitic Races. Trübner and Co. pp. 114–115.
  314. ^ Fan, Duan'ang 范端昂, ed. (1988). Yuezhong jianwen 粤中见闻. Guangdong: Guangdonggaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe. p. 134. ISBN 9787536100862.
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  328. ^ Patten, Robert L. (1992), "Chapter 15. Thorough-bred Artist", George Cruikshank's Life, Times and Art:

March 21, 2023
mermaid, this, article, about, fish, bodied, female, merfolk, males, merman, people, merfolk, other, uses, disambiguation, folklore, mermaid, aquatic, creature, with, head, upper, body, female, human, tail, fish, appear, folklore, many, cultures, worldwide, in. This article is about fish bodied female merfolk For the males see merman For the people see merfolk For other uses see Mermaid disambiguation In folklore a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish 1 Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide including Europe Asia and Africa MermaidJohn William Waterhouse A Mermaid 1900 GroupingMythologicalSub groupingWater spiritCountryWorldwideMermaids are sometimes associated with perilous events such as floods storms shipwrecks and drownings In other folk traditions or sometimes within the same traditions they can be benevolent or beneficent bestowing boons or falling in love with humans The male equivalent of the mermaid is the merman also a familiar figure in folklore and heraldry Although traditions about and sightings of mermen are less common than those of mermaids they are generally assumed to co exist with their female counterparts The male and the female collectively are sometimes referred to as merfolk or merpeople The Western concept of mermaids as beautiful seductive singers may have been influenced by the Sirens of Greek mythology which were originally half birdlike but came to be pictured as half fishlike in the Christian era Historical accounts of mermaids such as those reported by Christopher Columbus during his exploration of the Caribbean may have been sightings of manatees or similar aquatic mammals While there is no evidence that mermaids exist outside folklore reports of mermaid sightings continue to the present day Mermaids have been a popular subject of art and literature in recent centuries such as in Hans Christian Andersen s literary fairy tale The Little Mermaid 1836 They have subsequently been depicted in operas paintings books comics animation and live action films Contents 1 Etymologies 1 1 Mermin 1 2 Merewif 2 Origins 2 1 Sirens 2 1 1 Medieval sirens as mermaids 2 1 2 Textual attestations 2 1 3 Iconographic attestations 2 2 Other Greek mythical figures 2 3 Ancient Middle Eastern mythology 2 3 1 Kulullu 2 3 2 Syrian mermaid goddess 2 4 Rational attempts at explanation 3 Medieval literature 3 1 Merwomen in Germanic literature 3 1 1 Nibelungenlied 3 1 2 Rabenschlacht 4 Folklore of the British Isles 5 Scandinavian folklore 5 1 Haffrue 5 1 1 Havfrue cognates 5 2 Other aliases 5 3 General characteristics 5 4 Omen prophecy and wisdom 5 5 Merfolk as abductors 5 6 Marmaele 5 7 Margygr 6 Western European folklore 7 Byzantine and Ottoman Greek folklore 8 Eastern Europe 9 Chinese folklore 10 Korean folklore 11 Japanese folklore 11 1 Ningyo flesh 11 2 As yōkai 12 Indian folklore 13 Southeast Asia and Polynesia 13 1 Indonesia 13 2 Philippines 13 3 New Zealand 14 African folklore 15 Arabian folklore 15 1 One Thousand and One Nights 16 American folklore 16 1 Iara and Ipupiara 17 Reported sightings 17 1 Roman Lusitania and Gaul 17 2 Age of Exploration Americas and polar frontiers 17 2 1 Colonial Brazil 17 3 Colonial Southeast Asia 17 3 1 17th century Visayas 17 3 2 18th century Moluccas 17 4 Qing dynasty China 17 5 U S and Canada 17 6 21st century 18 Hoaxes and show exhibitions 18 1 Manufactured merfolk specimens 18 2 Mermaid shows 19 Scientific inquiry 20 Myth interpretations 21 Arts entertainment and media 21 1 Literature 21 2 Art and Music 21 3 Motion pictures 21 4 Heraldry 22 Fandom 23 Gallery 24 See also 25 Explanatory notes 26 References 26 1 Citations 26 2 General and cited references 27 External linksEtymologies The Fisherman and the Syren by Frederic Leighton c 1856 1858 The English word mermaid is not very old with the earliest attestation in Middle English Chaucer Nun s Priest s Tale c 1390 The compound word is formed from mere sea and maid 1 2 Mermin See Scandinavian folklore for the modern Danish havfrue modern Swedish hafsfru etc Another English word mermin headword in the OED for siren or mermaid is older though now obsolete 3 It derives from Old English meremenen ad mere sea menen female slave 3 earliest attestation mereminne as a gloss for siren in Corpus Glossary c 725 3 Middle English example mereman in a bestiary c 1220 3 MS now dated to 1275 1300 4 is indeed mermaid part maiden 3 part fish like 5 a 6 Its Old High German cognate merimenni b is known from biblical glosses 7 9 c and Physiologus 10 The Middle High German cognate merminne 3 mod German meerweib mermaid is attested in epics 11 and the one in Rabenschlacht is a great grandmother d this same figure is in an Old Swedish text a haffru 15 18 e and in Old Norse a sjokona siokona sic sea woman 20 13 21 Old Norse marmennill dill masculine noun is also listed as cognate to mermin as well as ON margmelli modern Icelandic marbendill and modern Norwegian marmaele 3 Merewif Old English merewif is another related term 2 and appears once in reference not so much to a mermaid but a certain sea hag 22 23 and not well attested later 2 f Its MHG cognate merwip also defined as meerweib in modern German 8 with perhaps merwoman 24 a valid English definition 25 The word is attested among other medieval epics in the Nibelungenlied 26 and rendered merwoman 27 mermaid water sprite or other terms 28 the two in the story 29 are translated as ON sjokonur sea women 28 OriginsThe siren of Ancient Greek mythology became conflated with mermaids during the medieval period Some European Romance languages still use cognate terms for siren to denote the mermaid e g French sirene and Spanish and Italian sirena 30 Some commentators have sought to trace origins further back into Ancient Middle Eastern mythology Sirens In the early Greek period the sirens were conceived of as human headed birds 31 32 but by the classical period the Greeks sporadically depicted the siren as part fish in art 33 g Medieval sirens as mermaids Sirens in Physiologus and bestiaries Siren and onocentaur Bern Physiologus Berner Burgerbibliothek Cod 281 fol 13v 38 Siren in a Second Family bestiary British Library MS Add 11283 fol 20v 39 Sirens swimming in sea Bestiary Bodl 764 fol 74v c Bodleian Libraries University of Oxford The siren s part fish appearance became increasingly popular during the Middle Ages 35 And the traits of the classical sirens such as using their beautiful song as a lure as told by Homer has often been transferred to mermaids 40 These change of the medieval siren from bird to fish were thought by some to be the influence of Teutonic myth later expounded in literary legends of Lorelei and Undine 35 though a dissenting comment is that parallels are not limited to Teutonic culture 41 Textual attestations The earliest text describing the siren as fish tailed occurs in the Liber Monstrorum de diversis generibus 7th mid 8th cent which described sirens as sea girls marinaepullae whose beauty in form and sweet song allure seafarers but beneath the human head and torso have the scaly tail end of a fish with which they can navigate the sea 43 45 Sirens are mermaids Old High German Early Middle High German Sirene sint meremanniu is explicit in the aforementioned Old German Physiologus 11th century 46 10 48 h The Middle English bestiary mid 13th century clearly means mermaid when it explains the siren to be a mereman 3 49 stating that she has a body and breast like that of a maiden but joined at the navel by a body part which is definitely fish with fins growing out of her 5 50 6 Old French verse bestiaries e g Philipp de Thaun s version written c 1121 1139 also accommodated by stating that a part of the siren may be bird or fish 51 Iconographic attestations In a 9th century Physiologus manufactured in France Fig top left 38 the siren was illustrated as a woman fish i e mermaid like despite being described as bird like in the text 53 54 The Bodleian bestiary dated 1220 12 also pictures a group of fish tailed mermaid like sirens Fig bottom contradicting its text which likens it to a winged fowl volatilis habet figuram down to their feet 59 In the interim the siren as pure mermaid was becoming commonplace particularly in the so called Second Family Latin bestiaries as represented in one of the early manuscripts classified into this group Additional manuscript 11283 c 1170 1180s Fig top right 60 Mirror and comb While the siren holding a fish was a commonplace theme 60 the siren in bestiaries were also sometimes depicted holding the comb 61 63 or the mirror 65 The comb and mirror became an persistent symbol of the siren mermaid 66 67 In the Christian moralizing context e g the bestiaries the mermaid s mirror and comb were held as the symbol of vanity 67 i Other Greek mythical figures The sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis who lived near the sirens were also female and had some fishlike attributes Though Scylla s violence is contrasted with the sirens seductive ways by certain classical writers 72 Scylla and Charybdis lived near the sirens domain 73 j In Etruscan civilization before the 6th century BC Scylla was portrayed as a mermaid like creature with two tails 73 Some have argued that the two tailed Melusine of later European art is traceable to this Etruscan Scylla 76 A sporadic example of sirens as mermaids tritonesses in Early Greek art 3rd century BC can be explained as the contamination of the siren myth with Scylla and Charybdis 77 The female oceanids nereids and naiads are mythical water nymphs or deities although not depicted with fish tails Nereid and nymph have also been applied to actual mermaid like marine creatures purported to exist from Pliny cf Roman Lusitania and Gaul and onwards Jane Ellen Harrison 1882 has speculated that the mermaids or tritonesses of Greek and Roman mythology may have been brought from the Middle East possibly transmitted by Phoenician mariners 35 The Greek god Triton had two fish tails instead of legs and later became pluralized as a group The prophetic sea deity Glaucus was also depicted with a fish tail and sometimes with fins for arms Ancient Middle Eastern mythology Kulullu Depictions of entities with the upper bodies of humans and the tails of fish appear in Mesopotamian artwork from the Old Babylonian Period onwards on cylinder seals These figures are usually mermen kulullu 78 but mermaids do occasionally appear The name for the mermaid figure may have been kuliltu meaning fish woman 79 Such figures were used in Neo Assyrian art as protective figures 79 and were shown in both monumental sculpture and in small protective figurines 79 Syrian mermaid goddess Main article Atargatis Atargatis depicted as a fish with a woman s head on a coin of Demetrius III A mermaid like goddess identified by Greek and Roman writers as Derceto or Atargatis was worshipped at Ashkelon 80 81 In a myth recounted by Diodorus in the 1st century BCE Derceto gave birth to a child from an affair Ashamed she abandoned the child in the desert and drowned herself in a lake only to be transformed into a human headed fish The child Semiramis was fed by doves and survived to become a queen 82 In the 2nd century AD Lucian described seeing a Phoenician statue of Derceto with the upper body of a woman and the tail of a fish He noted the contrast with the grand statue located at her Holy City Hierapolis Bambyce which appeared entirely human 84 85 In the myth Semiramis s first husband is named Onnes Some scholars have compared this to the earlier Mesopotamian myth of Oannes 86 one of the apkallu or seven sages described as fish men in cuneiform texts 87 90 While Oannes was a servant of the water deity Ea having gained wisdom from the god 87 English writer Arthur Waugh understood Oannes to be equivalent to Ea 91 and proposed that surely Oannes had a fish tailed wife and descendants 92 with Atargatis being one deity thus descended through the mists of time 92 Diodorus s chronology of Queen Semiramis resembles the feats of Alexander the Great campaigns to India etc and Diodorus may have woven the Macedonian king s material via some unnamed source 82 There is a mermaid legend attached to Alexander the Great s sister but this is of post medieval vintage see below 93 Rational attempts at explanation Further information Reported sightings Hoaxes and show exhibitions and Scientific inquiry Sometime before 546 BC Milesian philosopher Anaximander postulated that mankind had sprung from an aquatic animal species a theory that is sometimes called the Aquatic Ape Theory He thought that humans who begin life with prolonged infancy could not have survived otherwise 94 95 There are also naturalist theories on the origins of the mermaid postulating they derive from sightings of manatees dugongs or even seals 96 97 Still another theory tangentially related to the aforementioned Aquatic Ape Theory is that the mermaids of folklore were actually human women who trained over time to be skilled divers for things like sponges and spent a lot of time in the sea as a result One proponent of this theory is British author William Bond who has written several books about it 98 99 Medieval literatureMerwomen in Germanic literature Nibelungenlied Hagen unloads Nibelungen treasure where the Rhine mermaids await Adventure 19 Hagen with the prophetic mermaids Hadeburg and Sigelind Adventure 25 Pfizer ed 1843 Nibelungen noth Wooodcuts by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and Eugen Napoleon Neureuther Nibelungenlied Two prophetic merwomen MHG pl merwip Sigelinde MHG Sigelint and her maternal aunt 100 Hadeburg MHG Hadeburc are bathing in the Danube River k when Hagen von Tronje encounters them Nibelungenlied Aventiure 25 29 27 28 They are called sjokonar sea woman in the Old Norse THiđreks saga 28 There is a swan maiden tale motif 103 involved here Hagen robs their clothing but Grimm thought they must have actually been swan maidens since they are described as hovering above water 104 In any case this brief segment became the foundational groundwork of subsequent water nix lore and literature that developed in the Germanic sphere 103 They are a probable source of the three Rhine maidens in Richard Wagner s opera Das Rheingold 105 Though conceived of as swan maidens in Wagner s 1848 scenario the number being a threesome was suggested by the woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and Eugen Napoleon Neureuther in the Pfizer edition of 1843 fig on the left 106 Rabenschlacht Middle High German mereminne mermaid is mentioned among other epics in the Rabenschlacht 11 107 Battle of Ravenna 13th cent of the Dietrich cycle The mermaid or undine 17 is named Wachilt and is the ancestress l of the traitorous Wittich who carries him off at the time of peril to her submarine home 17 21 14 This material has been found translated as a medieval THidreks saga only in a late reworked Swedish version 14 i e one of the closing chapters of Didriks saga 15th century 15 also known as the Swedish epilogue 108 109 16 The mermaid undine is here translated as Old Swedish haffru 15 The Old Norse THidreks saga proper 19 110 calls the same mermaid a sjokona siokona sic 13 14 or sea woman 21 111 The genealogy is given in the saga the sea woman and Villcinus Vilkinus king of Scandinavia together had a son Vadi Wade of Sjoland Sjaelland Zealand who was a giant risi whose son was Velent Wayland the Smith whose son after that was Vidga Velentsson Wittich or Witige 19 112 14 21 13 who became a companion champion of King THidrekr Dietrich von Bern The frequently mentioned Sjaelland Denmark is interpreted to the divided portion of Villcina land inherited by the bastard prince Vadi Wade 113 The Swedish epilogue transposed the location of the crucial battle where the mermaid appeared from Ravenna Northern Italy supposedly in the original German epic Rabenschlacht to Gronsport somewhere on the Moselle in Northern Germany 114 115 then transported Vidga back to Sjaelland 16 Folklore of the British IslesThe Norman chapel in Durham Castle built around 1078 has what is probably the earliest surviving artistic depiction of a mermaid in England 116 It can be seen on a south facing capital above one of the original Norman stone pillars 117 Mermaid carving on a bench end Zennor Cornwall Mermaids appear in British folklore as unlucky omens both foretelling disaster and provoking it 118 Several variants of the ballad Sir Patrick Spens depict a mermaid speaking to the doomed ships In some versions she tells them they will never see land again in others she claims they are near shore which they are wise enough to know means the same thing Mermaids can also be a sign of approaching rough weather 119 and some have been described as monstrous in size up to 2 000 feet 610 m 118 In another short ballad Clerk Colvill Child ballad No 42 the mermaid seduces the title character and foretells his doom It has been surmised that in the original complete version the man was being penalized for spurning her though the Scandinavian counterparts that tells the complete story feature an elf woman or elf queen rather than mermaid 120 Mermaids have been described as able to swim up rivers to freshwater lakes In one story the Laird of Lorntie went to aid a woman he thought was drowning in a lake near his house his servant pulled him back warning that it was a mermaid and the mermaid screamed at them that she would have killed him if it were not for his servant 121 But mermaids could occasionally be more beneficent e g teaching humans cures for certain diseases 122 Mermen have been described as wilder and uglier than mermaids with little interest in humans 123 According to legend a mermaid came to the Cornish village of Zennor where she used to listen to the singing of a chorister Matthew Trewhella 124 The two fell in love and Matthew went with the mermaid to her home at Pendour Cove On summer nights the lovers can be heard singing together The legend recorded by folklorist William Bottrell stems from a 15th century mermaid carving on a wooden bench at the Church of Saint Senara in Zennor 70 125 Some tales raised the question of whether mermaids had immortal souls answering in the negative 126 In Scottish mythology a ceasg is a freshwater mermaid though little beside the term has been preserved in folklore 127 Mermaids from the Isle of Man known as ben varrey are considered more favorable toward humans than those of other regions 128 with various accounts of assistance gifts and rewards One story tells of a fisherman who carried a stranded mermaid back into the sea and was rewarded with the location of treasure Another recounts the tale of a baby mermaid who stole a doll from a human little girl but was rebuked by her mother and sent back to the girl with a gift of a pearl necklace to atone for the theft A third story tells of a fishing family that made regular gifts of apples to a mermaid and was rewarded with prosperity 128 In Irish lore Li Ban was a human being transformed into a mermaid After three centuries when Christianity came to Ireland she was baptized 129 The Irish mermaid is called merrow in tales such as Lady of Gollerus published in the 19th century Scandinavian folkloreHaffrue The mermaid corresponds to Danish and Bokmal Norwegian havfrue whereas merman answers to Danish Norwegian havmand 130 131 Refn group lower alpha Tracing this etymologically to Old Norse is elusive Old Swedish haffru was used as a tanslation word in the Sweidish saga of Didrik 14 cent as mentioned under Etymologies A supposed Old Norse haffru is the etymological source of Norman French havette for a man snatching water sprite according to one linguist 133 As a side note Norman French havette is a possible derivative 134 m An early description of the Havfrue and her mate Havmand was given by the Dano Norwegian Bishop Pontoppidan 1753 136 137 They were considered the mating female and male of the creature inhabiting the North Sea 138 139 and their offspring was called marmaele var marmaete 140 141 as repeated by later commentators 142 143 Though he was aware of fabulous fables being told about them n 144 139 he was convinced such creature existed But as they were non human he argued the term Havmand merman should be avoided in favor of some coined term such as sea ape Danish hav abe o 145 146 He also knowingly employed Old Norwegian Old Norse maryge sic and hafstrambe sic p as the Norwegian names of the mermaid and merman respectively 147 148 Havfrue cognates The Icelandic cognate form is haffru with several synonyms q 149 150 though instead of these the commonly used term today is hafmey 151 The Faroese forms are havfrugv havfrug 152 153 The Swedish form is hafsfru 154 with other synonyms such as sjojungfru 153 r or sjora 154 sea fairy the maritime counterpart of the forest skogsra 156 Other aliases The terms margygur or havgygur as aliases for mermaid were apparently current among the populace in modern age Iceland according to Jon Arnason 157 149 150 alongside the marbendill modern Icelandic for ON marmennill 158 Benjamin Thorpe 1851 writing on Norwegian folklore gave margygr for mermaid and marmennill for merman as Norwegian folk terms 143 s but these are interpolations which the source Andreas Faye s Norske sagn 1833 159 only side noted as occurrences of old terms in medieval literature 160 General characteristics The beautiful havfrue of Scandinavia may be benevolent or malicious and legends about her abducting maidens cf infra is given as a case of point for her malice 161 It is said the havfrue will avenge harm done to it as in the Norwegian anecdote of one who was lured near the ship and had her hand cruelly lopped off on the gunwale She caused a storm that nearly drowned the wicked sailor 162 Omen prophecy and wisdom The appearance sighting alone betides an impending storm 161 Norwegians do not wish to see the havfrue as she heralds storm or bad weather Norway 163 143 The appearance of the sjora forebodes a storm or poor catch in Swedish tradition much as the appearance of the skogsra wood nymph presages poor catch for the hunter 161 156 According to the superstitions of Swedish fishermen if one saw a sjora who was harbinger of tempest and bad catch one should not tell his comrades but stike flint against steel to light a spark 156 In other cases the Scandinavian mermaid is considered to be prophetic 161 The tale type The Mermaid s Message Norwegian Havfruas spadom ML 4060 is recognized as a Migratory Legend no i e a group of tales found in Scandinavia with parallels found elsewhere according to the scheme devised by Reidar Thoralf Christiansen 164 This may not necessarily involve the mermaid s spaeing and in the following example of this ML type tale she merely imparts wisdom A fisherman who performs favors and earns the privilege to pose three questions to a mermaid He inquires about the most suitable material for a flail to which she answers calf s hide of course and tells him he should have asked about how to brew water into beer which would have benefited him more greatly 165 Merfolk as abductors The Swedish ballad Hafsfrun 166 Havsfruns tarna sv SMB 23 TSB A 51 167 is an instance where a mermaid kidnaps a human girl at age fifteen and when the girl s brother accomplishes the rescue the mermaid declares she would have cracked t her neck if she knew she would be thus betrayed 169 The Swedish merman Hafsman nen steals a human woman to become his bride according to folklore 170 u Marmaele As aforementioned the mermaid Norwegian havfrue takes the merman Norwegian havmand for husband and produce children called marmaeler sing Norwegian marmaele sea talkers which the fishermen sometimes bring home to gain insight into the future 172 Early sources say that Norwegian fishermen who capture the marmaete or marmaele may bring them home but do not dare keep it for more than 24 hours before turning them back into the sea whence they found it 173 Margygr Jon Arnason describes the margygur as yellow haired woman who is fish from the waist down who drags careless seamen to the depths of the sea 149 150 The margygr she has a fish like tail but is cropped in this view vs St Olaf v Flateyjarbk fol 79r 174 However margygr literally means something like mer troll 150 and in medieval tradition the margygr is more of a sea monster 175 or sea ogress 176 179 According to a version of the Saga of St Olaf Olaf II of Norway the king encountered a margygr whose singing lulled voyagers to sleep causing them to drown 143 180 and whose high pitched shrieks drove men insane 175 180 Her physical appearance is described thus She has a head like a horse with ears erect and distended nostrils big green eyes and fearful jaws She has shoulders like a horse and hands in front but behind she resembles a serpent 180 178 This margygr was also said to be furry like a seal and gray colored 180 177 Western European folklore Raymond discovers Melusine in her bath Jean d Arras Le livre de Melusine 1478 Melusine is a mermaid like character from European folklore cursed to take the form of a serpent from the waist down Later depictions sometimes changed this to a fish tail and in heraldry her name was sometimes used for a mermaid with two tails 181 The alchemist Paracelsus s treatise A Book on Nymphs Sylphs Pygmies and Salamanders and on the Other Spirits 1566 spawned the idea that the water elemental or water sprite could acquire an immortal soul through marriage with a human this led to the writing of De la Motte Fouque s novella Undine and eventually to the famous literary mermaid tale Hans Christian Andersen s fairy tale The Little Mermaid 182 During the Romanesque period mermaids were often associated with lust 183 184 Byzantine and Ottoman Greek folkloreThe conception of the siren as both a mermaid like creature and part bird like persisted in Byzantine Greece for some time 185 The Physiologus began switching the illustration of the siren as that a mermaid as in a version dated to the 9th century 75 The 10th century Byzantine Greek dictionary Suda still favored the avian description 186 187 There is a modern Greek legend that Alexander the Great s sister Thessalonike turned into a mermaid Greek gorgona after her death living in the Aegean She would ask the sailors on any ship she encountered only one question Is King Alexander alive Greek Zei o Basileys Ale3andros to which the correct answer was He lives and reigns and conquers the world Greek Zei kai basileyei kai ton kosmon kyrieyei 93 This answer would please her and she would accordingly calm the waters and bid the ship farewell Any other answer would enrage her and she would stir up a terrible storm dooming the ship and every sailor on board 188 This legend derives from an Alexander romance entitled the Phyllada tou Megalexandrou Fyllada toy Megale3androy dating to the Ottoman Greece period 93 first printed in 1680 189 Eastern Europe Ilya Repin Sadko 1876 Rusalkas are the Slavic counterpart of the Greek sirens and naiads often seducing sailors to their doom 190 191 The nature of rusalkas varies among folk traditions but according to ethnologist D K Zelenin they all share a common element they are the restless spirits of the unclean dead 191 They are usually the ghosts of young women who died a violent or untimely death either by murder or suicide before their wedding especially by drowning Rusalkas are said to inhabit lakes and rivers They appear as beautiful young women with long pale green hair and pale skin suggesting a connection with floating weeds and days spent underwater in faint sunlight They can be seen after dark dancing together under the moon and calling out to young men by name luring them to the water and drowning them The characterization of rusalkas as both desirable and treacherous is prevalent in Russia Ukraine and Belarus and was emphasized by 19th century Russian authors 192 193 194 195 The best known of the great Czech nationalist composer Antonin Dvorak s operas is Rusalka In Sadko Russian Sadko an East Slavic epic the title character an adventurer merchant and gusli musician from Novgorod lives for some time in the underwater court of the Sea Tsar and marries his daughter Chernava before finally returning home The tale inspired such works as the poem Sadko 196 by Alexei Tolstoy 1817 75 the opera Sadko composed by Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov and the painting Sadko by Ilya Repin Chinese folkloreFurther information Merfolk China A merfolk race called the Di people zh are described as populating its own nation in the Shanhaijing Classic of Mountains and Seas compilation of Chinese geography and mythology dating from the 4th century BC 197 198 The ancient work also included several types of human headed fish such as the chiru zh or red ru fish 199 198 as well as creature with some humanlike qualities like the renyu 人魚 or human fish 200 198 Note that these are not of a specific gender so they are not really conducive to being called mermaids though some English European writers might use mermaid as shorthand There is also an account of the hairenyu ja 海人魚 sea human fish given in the Taiping guangji compilation sourced from the work entitled Qiawenji 洽聞記 The female of its kind had a head like beautiful woman s with hair like a horse s tail and white skin like jade without scales covered with multicolored downy hair or peach fuzz and legless The male and female had sexual organs like humans so that widows and widowers would keep them in their ponds and the creatures could perform sexual intercourse normally as a human would 201 202 w An anecdote considered relevant 205 concerns a renyu human fish allegedly seen by the ship carrying Zha Dao 査道 and emissary to Korea She had a unkempt hairdo and scarlet mane extending to the back of her elbows Zha ordered the crew to bring her aboard with poles but she escaped Zha explained that she was a renyu adept at fornicating with humans and was a type of human dwelling in the sea The anecdote is included in another leishu compilation called Gujin tushu jicheng 古今圖書集成 Comprehensive Compendium of Illustrations and Books Ancient and Modern 206 205 207 208 Korean folkloreKorea is bound on three sides by the sea In some villages near the sea in Korea there are mysterious stories about mermaids Mermaids have features just like humans Kim Dam Ryeong a mayor of the town specify saved four captured mermaids from a fisherman as recorded in the Eou yadam unofficial histories 209 In Dongabaek Island of Busan is a tale of Princess Hwang ok from Naranda a mythical undersea kingdom of mermaids this tale is based on the historical Heo Hwang ok from India 210 Another tale concerns a mermaid named Sinjike Korean 신지끼 who warned fishermen of impending storms by singing and throwing rocks into the sea from Geomun Island The island s residents believed her to be a goddess of the sea and that she could predict the weather 211 Japanese folkloreMain article Ningyo Ningyo no zu A flier of a mermaid dated 5th month of Bunka 2 1805 The Japanese equivalent is ningyo 人魚 literally human fish 212 According to one dictionary ningyo oftentimes refers to a half woman and half fish fabulous creature i e mermaid though not necessarily female i e includes mermen 213 Despite the dictionary stating it has the appearance of half woman half fish the creature has been pictorialized rather as a being with a human female head sitting on a body which is entirely fish like see fig right 212 Ningyo flesh The ningyo s flesh was purported to be an elixir and consuming its flesh said to bestow remarkable longevity A famous ningyo legend concerns the Yao bikuni ja who is said to have partaken of the flesh of a merfolk and attained miraculous longevity and lived for centuries It is not discernible whether the flesh was a female a pair of translators call it flesh of a mermaid in one book 214 but merely a strange fish with a human face in another 215 As yōkai A ningyo might be counted as a yōkai since it is included in Toriyama Sekien s Hyakki Yagyō series 216 Gender is unclear as it is only described as a being with a human face a fish body However Sekien s ningyo picture actually represents a human fish that lives in Western China also known as the Di people Diren zh according to the inscription printed alongside 216 They are described in the Classic of Mountains and Seas and translated as the Low People 217 218 or the Di People 197 Indian folklore Suvannamaccha and Hanuman mural at Wat Phra Kaew Bangkok In Hinduism Suvannamaccha lit golden mermaid is a daughter of Ravana who appears in the Cambodian and Thai versions of the Ramayana She is a mermaid princess who tries to spoil Hanuman s plans to build a bridge to Lanka but falls in love with him instead She is a popular figure in Thai folklore 219 Southeast Asia and PolynesiaIn Thailand Suvannamaccha is a daughter of Tosakanth appearing in the Thai and other Southeast Asian versions of Ramayana 220 She is a mermaid princess who tries to spoil Hanuman s plans to build a bridge to Lanka but falls in love with him instead 221 In Cambodia she is referred as Sovanna Maccha a favorite for Cambodian audiences 222 Indonesia In the Javanese culture of Indonesia Nyai Roro Kidul is a sea goddess and the Queen of the Southern Seas the mermaid queen is said to inhabit the southern beach in Java 223 She has many forms in her mermaid form she is called Nyai Blorong 224 Philippines In the Tagalog language mermaids are nown as sirenaandsiyokoy respectively 225 The general term for mermaid among all ethnic groups is Sirena 226 In the Philippines mermaid concepts differ per ethnic group Among the Pangasinense the Binalatongan mermaid is a Queen of the sea who married the mortal Maginoo Palasipas and ruled humanity for a time 227 Among the Ilocano mermaids were said to have propagated and spread through the union of the first Serena and the first Litao a water god 227 Among the Bicolano mermaids were referred as Magindara known for their beautiful voice and vicious nature 228 Among the Sambal mermaids called Mambubuno are depicted as having two fins instead of one New Zealand Mermaids and mermen are also characters of The myth of Pania of the Reef a well known tale of Maori mythology has many parallels with stories of sea people in other parts of the world African folkloreMami Water Lit Mother of the Water are water spirits venerated in West Central and southern Africa and in the African diaspora in the Caribbean and parts of North Central and South America They are usually female but are sometimes male They are regarded as diabolical beings and are often femme fatales luring men to their deaths 229 The Persian word پری دریایی or maneli means mermaid 230 In Zimbabwe mermaids are known as njuzu They are believed to be solitary and occupy one body of water Individual njuzu may be benevolent or malicious Angry njuzu may be blamed for unexpected misfortunes such as bad weather or the sudden disappearance of people Benevolent njuzu are thought to reside in peaceful lakes or rivers If a person goes missing near such lakes or rivers they may have been taken by the njuzu To obtain the person s release local elders will brew beer as a propitiatory offering and ask the njuzu to return the person alive Those seeking the person s release are not supposed to cry or shed tears If the njuzu releases the person they will become or be regarded as a n anga or traditional healer with knowledge of herbs medicinal plants and cures citation needed Examples from other cultures are the jengu of Cameroon citation needed Arabian folkloreOne Thousand and One Nights The One Thousand and One Nights collection includes several tales featuring sea people such as Jullanar the Sea born and Her Son King Badr Basim of Persia 231 Unlike depictions of mermaids in other mythologies these are anatomically identical to land bound humans differing only in their ability to breathe and live underwater They can and do interbreed with land humans and the children of such unions have the ability to live underwater In the tale Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land The underwater society follows a form of primitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist In The Adventures of Bulukiya the protagonist Bulukiya s quest for the herb of immortality leads him to explore the seas where he encounters societies of mermaids 231 American folkloreThe Neo Taino nations of the Caribbean identify a mermaid called Aycayia 232 233 with attributes of the goddess Jagua and the hibiscus flower of the majagua tree Hibiscus tiliaceus 234 In modern Caribbean culture there is a mermaid recognized as a Haitian vodou loa called La Sirene lit the mermaid representing wealth beauty and the orisha Yemaya citation needed Iara and Ipupiara In Brazilian folklore the iara also known as mae d agua lady mother of the water is a water dwelling beauty whom fishermen are prone to fall prey to 235 236 Iara is a beautiful white woman who lives in a river and seduces men as she sings with her hypnotizing and enchanting voice Once the man is seduced he is drawn into the river to be gone forever 237 she is reputedly golden haired 236 though the blond blue eyed image was not attested until after mid 19th century to the best knowledge of Camara Cascudo x 238 Cascudo in his earlier writing contended that though the Iara was rooted in two indigenous beings the water devil Ipupiara cf below and the Cobra Grande he also saw the combining of the Portuguese lore of the Enchanted Moura moorish girl who was obviously dark skinned 239 y The Iara became increasingly to be regarded as a woman fish after the image of the European sirens mermaids 240 241 It is often argued that the legends of the Iara developed around the 18th century out of the indigenous myth of the Ipupiara pt among the Tupinamba people The Ipupiara was originally conceived of as a male water dweller that carried fishermen to the bottom devouring their mouths nose fingertips and genitals 235 European writers during the age of exploration disseminated the myth but the Gandavo pt 1576 z included an illustration of Hipupiara with female breasts Subsequently the Jesuit Cardim pt aa wrote that the Igpupiara also consisted of females that look like women with long hair 242 Though somewhat vague in the case of Gandavo Cardim had clearly injected Christian opinion which would readily relegate the role of emasculating men to the female kind 243 Later with the introduction of African slaves the Yoruba myth of Iemanja was admixed into the telling 235 Reported sightingsRoman Lusitania and Gaul In his Natural History 9 4 9 11 Pliny the Elder remarked that a triton merman was seen off the coast of Olisipo present day Lisbon Portugal 244 and it bore the physical appearance in accordance with common notion of the triton according to a deputation from Lisbon who reported it to Emperor Tiberus One nereid was sighted earlier on the same Lisbon coast Pliny remarks that contrary to popular notion the true nereids are not smooth skinned in their human like portions but covered with scales all over the body 247 Their mournful song at death have also been heard by the coastal inhabitants Also multiple nereids had washed up on the shore according to the legatus governor of Gaul who informed the late Emperor Augustus about it in a letter 244 249 246 ab 16th century Swedish writer Olaus Magnus quotes the same passage from Pliny and further notes that the nereid are said to utter dismal moans wailings at the hour of her death thus observing a connection to the legend of sea nymphs 250 and the sister Fates whose clashing cymbals and flute tunes could be heard on shore 251 252 250 Olaus in a later passage states that the nereids tr mermaids are known to sing plaintively 253 254 in general ac It has been conjectured that these carcasses of nereids washed up on shore were presumably seals 244 256 Age of Exploration Americas and polar frontiers In 1493 sailing off the coast of Hispaniola Christopher Columbus spotted three sirens or mermaids Spanish serenas which he said were not as beautiful as they are represented due to some masculine features in their faces but these are considered to be sightings of manatees 257 258 During Henry Hudson s second voyage on 15 June 1608 members of his crew reported sighting a mermaid in the Arctic Ocean either in the Norwegian or Barents Seas 259 Dutch explorer David Danell during his expeditions to Greenland in 1652 54 claimed to have spotted a mermaid with flowing hair and very beautiful though the crew failed to capture it 260 Colonial Brazil Bartholin s siren 1654 He came into the possession of its hand and ribs shown right Danish physician and natural historian Thomas Bartholin wrote about a mermaid specimen caught in Brazil probably a manatee 261 and subsequently dissected at Leiden 262 264 Though referred to in the text as a sea man homo marinus from Brazil the account was accompanied by an engraved drawing captioned Sirene whose appearance was that of a humanoid female with bared breasts a mermaid 265 263 The specimen s body was deformed and without the sign of a tail 266 matching the drawing And a membrane that join the fingers together 266 is also reflected in the drawing as well as her webbed pair of hands forepaws 265 ad The specimen s account and illustration was later reproduced by Linnaeus who captioned the beast Siren Bartholini 267 268 hence Bartholin s Siren Bartholin was actually not the sole proprietor of the specimen but he came into possession of its hand and ribs which he also illustrated in his book figures above 269 ae Based on the illustration the hand has been determined to be the front flipper belonging to a manatee by a team of researchers 261 Bartholin himself had argued that it was a sea mammal closely related to seals phocae 266 262 af His rationale was that since there are several marine counterparts to land mammals e g sea horses ag the possibility of a marine creature with striking likeness to humans could not be ruled out 263 though they should all be classified among seal kind 266 Erasmus Francisci Erasmus Finx 1668 associated this Brazilian specimen with the local native lore of the Yupiapra Ipupiara ah 270 271 Colonial Southeast Asia 17th century Visayas Anthropomorphos Johannes Jonston Historia naturalis in Latin 1657 272 A type of mermaid referred to as anthropomorphus 273 or woman fish Spanish peche mujer 274 allegedly inhabited the Spanish ruled Philippines particularly in the waters around the Visayan Islands according to contemporary writings from the 17th century 283 The accounts are found in several books on various topics from magnetism to natural history to ecclesiastical history 284 These books refer to the mermaid merman as piscis anthropomorphos Dutch Anthropomorphus ai and emphasize how human like they appear in their upper bodies as well as providing woodcut or etchings illustrating the male and female of the part human part fish creature 275 273 The woman fish or peche mujer in modern Spanish 274 aj was the name given to the creature among the Spaniards but the sources also state it was called duyon by the indigenous people 275 272 ak and it is assumed the actual creature was a dugong according to modern translators notes 282 286 al Several of these sources mention the medical use of the woman fish to control the flow of blood or the four humours It was effective for staunching the bleeding i e effective against hemorrhages according to Jonston 289 Other sources mention the ability to stop bleeding e g Colin 290 who also thought that the Philippine woman fish tasted like fatty pork 291 The bones were made into beads i e strung together as it was believed effective against defluxions of the humours 292 18th century Moluccas Renard s illustrated book of marine life Monster or Siren mermaid 293 Louis Renard Poissons ecrevisses et crabes autour des isles Moluques et sur les cotes des terres Australes 2nd edition 1754 294 A dugong ditto book Allegedly captured in the Moluccas in the 17th century was the so called Amboina mermaid after the then Dutch Province of Ambon 295 am which its leading researcher has referred to as Samuel Fallours s Sirenne after the man who came into possession of it and made an original painting of it in full color 297 The painting was reproduced by Louis Renard on the Fish of the region first published in 1719 302 It was supposedly caught Boeren in Ambon Province Buru in present day Maluku Province 303 presumably around the years 1706 1712 301 or perhaps the year 1712 precisely 305 During this period Fallours served briefly as soldier for the VOC Dutch East India Company starting June 1706 but turned associate curate Krankbezoeker for the Dutch Reformed Church September 1706 to June 1712 306 Fallour s mermaid with additional details were described by Francois Valentijn in a 1726 book 307 ao The mermaid was 59 Dutch inches duimen long or 5 feet in Rhineland measures She reportedly survived 4 days 7 hours in a water tank and died after refusing food it was given having uttered no intelligible sound 305 298 or issuing sounds like screechings of a mouse French souris 294 Something like a straw cape Japanese mino appears wrapped around her waist in the painting according to one commentator 310 but Fallours revealed in his notes that he lifted the front and back fins and found it was shaped like a woman 311 The mermaid was suspected to be a dugong in reality even by contemporary scholars such as Georg Rumphius although Valentijn was unable to believe they were the one and the same 312 Leading researcher Theodore W Pietsch ap concurs with the dugong identification but an ichthyologist has opined that I could more easily accept a small oar fish or another eel like fish rather than a dugong as a partial basis for the drawing noting that Renard s book carries an illustration of a plausibly realistic dugong as well 298 Qing dynasty China The Yuezhong jianwen Chinese 粵中見聞 Wade Giles Yueh chung chieh wen Seens and Heards or Jottings on the South of China 1730 contains two accounts concerning mermaids In the first a man captures a mermaid 海女 sea woman on the shore of Lantau Island Wade Giles Taiyu shan She looks human in every respect except that her body is covered with fine hair of many colors She cannot talk but he takes her home and marries her After his death the mermaid returns to the sea where she was found In the second story a man sees a woman lying on the beach while his ship was anchored offshore On closer inspection her feet and hands appear to be webbed She is carried to the water and expresses her gratitude toward the sailors before swimming away 313 314 U S and Canada Two sightings were reported in Canada near Vancouver and Victoria one from sometime between 1870 and 1890 the other from 1967 315 316 A Pennsylvania fisherman reported five sightings of a mermaid in the Susquehanna River near Marietta in June 1881 317 21st century In August 2009 after dozens of people reported seeing a mermaid leaping out of Haifa Bay waters and doing aerial tricks the Israeli coastal town of Kiryat Yam offered a 1 million award for proof of its existence 318 In February 2012 work on two reservoirs near Gokwe and Mutare in Zimbabwe stopped when workers refused to continue stating that mermaids had hounded them away from the sites It was reported by Samuel Sipepa Nkomo the water resources minister 319 Hoaxes and show exhibitionsSee also Merman Hoaxes and sideshows Manufactured merfolk specimens Main article Feejee mermaid P T Barnum s Fiji mermaid 1842 A celebrated example of mermaid hoax was the Fiji mermaid exhibited in London in 1822 aq and later in America by P T Barnum in 1842 ar 323 in this case an investigator claims to have traced the mermaid s manufacture to a Japanese fisherman 324 An alleged ningyo or merman mermaid specimen side view Baien s sketch 1825 Fake mermaids made in China and the Malay archipelago out of monkey and fish parts were imported into Europe by Dutch traders since the mid 16th century and their manufactures are thought to go back earlier 325 The manufacture of mermaids from monkey and fish parts also occurred in Japan especially in the Kyushu region 326 as a souvenir industry targeting foreigners 327 as Mōri Baien painted full color illustrations of such a compositely manufactured ningyo specimen in his ichthyological tract 1825 327 329 For much of the Edo Period Nagasaki in Kyushu was the only trade port open to foreign countries and the only place where non Japanese aliens could reside Jan Cock Blomhoff the Dutch East India Company director stationed in Dejima Nagasaki is known to have acquired merfolk mummies these and other specimens are now held in the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden Netherlands 330 331 332 A mummified Sea Devil Persian شیطان دریا fish Mashhad Museum Iran The equivalent industry in Europe was the Jenny Haniver made from dried rays 333 In the middle of the 17th century John Tradescant the elder created a wunderkammer called Tradescant s Ark in which he displayed among other things a mermaid s hand 334 Mermaid shows Scantily clad women placed in watertanks and impersonating mermaids performed at the 1939 New York World s Fair It was part of the Dream of Venus installation by Surrealist artist Salvador Dali The mermaid interacted with Oscar the Obscene Octopus and the ongoings were portrayed in E L Doctorow s novel World s Fair 335 Professional female divers have performed as mermaids at Florida s Weeki Wachee Springs since 1947 The state park calls itself The Only City of Live Mermaids 336 and was extremely popular in the 1960s drawing almost one million tourists per year 337 Most of the current performers work part time while attending college and all are certified Scuba divers They wear fabric tails and perform aquatic ballet while holding their breath for an audience in an underwater stage with glass walls Children often ask if the mermaids are real The park s PR director says Just like with Santa Claus or any other mythical character we always say yes We re not going to tell them they re not real 338 The Ama are Japanese skin divers predominantly women who traditionally dive for shellfish and seaweed wearing only a loincloth and who have been in action for at least 2 000 years 339 Starting in the twentieth century they have increasingly been regarded as a tourist attraction They operate off reefs near the shore and some perform for sightseers instead of diving to collect a harvest They have been romanticized as mermaids 340 Scientific inquiryThe topic of mermaids in earnest has arisen in several instances of scientific scrutiny including a biological assessment of the unlikelihood of the supposed evolutionary biology of the mermaid on the popular marine science website DeepSeaNews Five of the primary reasons listed as to why mermaids do not fit current evolutionary understanding are thermoregulation adaptations for regulating body heat evolutionary mismatch reproductive challenges digestive differences between mammals and fish lack of physical evidence 341 Mermaids were also discussed tongue in cheek in a scientific article by University of Washington emeritus oceanographer Karl Banse 342 His article was written as a parody 343 but mistaken as a true scientific expose by believers as it was published in a scientific journal Myth interpretationsThis section needs expansion You can help by adding to it July 2022 According to Dorothy Dinnerstein s book The Mermaid and the Minotaur human animal hybrids such as mermaids and minotaurs convey the emergent understanding of ancient peoples that humans were both one with and different from animals Human nature is internally inconsistent that our continuities with and our differences from the earth s other animals are mysterious and profound and in these continuities and these differences lie both a sense of strangeness on earth and the possible key to a way of feeling at home here 344 Arts entertainment and mediaSee also Mermaids in popular culture Arthur Rackham Rhinemaidens from The Rhinegold amp The Valkyrie 1910 An illustration of Vanity Fair s Becky Sharp as a man killing mermaid by the work s author William Thackeray Literature The best known example of mermaids in literature is probably Hans Christian Andersen s fairy tale The Little Mermaid first published in 1837 182 The title character youngest of the Merman king s daughters falls in love with a human prince at and also longs for an eternal soul like humans despite the shorter lifespan The two cravings are intertwined only by achieving true love will her soul bind with a human s and become everlasting But the mermaid s fish tail poses an insurmountable obstacle for enticing humans and a sea witch offers a potion to transform into human form at a price the mermaid s tongue and beautiful voice The mermaid endures the excruciating pain of having human legs and despite her inability to speak almost succeeds in wedding the prince but for a twist of fate au The mermaid is doomed unless she stabs the prince with a magic knife on his wedding night She refuses to harm him and dies the mermaid way dissolving into foam However her selflessness has earned her a second chance at salvation and she is resurrected as an air spirit 345 Andersen s works has been translated into over 100 languages 346 One of the main literary influences for Andersen s mermaid was Undine an earlier German novella about a water nymph who could only obtain an immortal soul by marrying a human 347 Andersen s heroine inspired a bronze sculpture in Copenhagen harbour and influenced Western literary works such as Oscar Wilde s The Fisherman and His Soul and H G Wells The Sea Lady 348 Sue Monk Kidd wrote a book called The Mermaid Chair loosely based on the legends of Saint Senara and the mermaid of Zennor Art and Music Sculptures and statues of mermaids can be found in many countries and cultures with over 130 public art mermaid statues across the world Countries with public art mermaid sculptures include Russia Finland Lithuania Poland Romania Denmark Norway England Scotland Ireland Germany the Netherlands Belgium France Spain Italy Austria Switzerland Greece Turkey India China Thailand South Korea Japan Guam Australia New Zealand Brazil Ecuador Colombia Mexico the Cayman Islands Mexico Saudi Arabia Jeddah the United States including Hawaii and the U S Virgin Islands and Canada 349 Some of these mermaid statues have become icons of their city or country and are major tourist attractions in themselves The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen is an icon of that city as well as of Denmark The Havis Amanda statue symbolizes the rebirth of the city of Helsinki The Syrenka mermaid is part of the coat of Arms of Warsaw and is considered a protector of Warsaw which publicly displays statues of their mermaid An influential image was created by the Pre Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse from 1895 to 1905 entitled A Mermaid Cf figure top of page An example of late British Academy style artwork the piece debuted to considerable acclaim and secured Waterhouse s place as a member of the Royal Academy but disappeared into a private collection and did not resurface until the 1970s It is currently once again in the Royal Academy s collection 350 Waterhouse s mermaid grooms her hair with comb and mirror the stereotypical implements of the mermaid likely designed to portray her as temptress 351 and her red hair auburn hair 351 is a match for the hair colour of Venus 352 av Waterhouses s The Siren 1900 also depicts the siren as a mermaid of sorts representing the femme fatale 353 drawing men to destruction In the modern age of course the word siren is used as a synonym of femme fatale 352 Mermaids were a favorite subject of John Reinhard Weguelin a contemporary of Waterhouse He painted an image of the mermaid of Zennor as well as several other depictions of mermaids in watercolour Musical depictions of mermaids include those by Felix Mendelssohn in his Fair Melusina overture and the three Rhine daughters in Richard Wagner s opera Der Ring des Nibelungen Lorelei the name of a Rhine mermaid immortalized in the Heinrich Heine poem of that name has become a synonym for a siren The Weeping Mermaid is an orchestral piece by Taiwanese composer Fan Long Ko 354 Motion pictures Film depictions include Miranda 1948 Night Tide 1961 the romantic comedy Splash 1984 and Aquamarine 2006 A 1963 episode of the television series Route 66 entitled The Cruelest Sea of All featured a mermaid performance artist working at Weeki Wachee aquatic park Mermaids also appeared in the popular supernatural drama television series Charmed and were the basis of its spin off series Mermaid In She Creature 2001 two carnival workers abduct a mermaid in Ireland c 1900 and attempt to transport her to America The film Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides mixes old and new myths about mermaids singing to sailors to lure them to their death growing legs when taken onto dry land and bestowing kisses with magical healing properties Disney s musical animated version of Andersen s tale The Little Mermaid was released in 1989 355 356 Notable changes to Andersen s story include removing the religious aspects of the fairy tale including the mermaid s quest to obtain an immortal soul The sea witch herself replaces the princess to whom the prince becomes engaged using the mermaid s voice to prevent her from obtaining the prince s love However on their wedding day the plot is revealed and the sea witch is vanquished The knife motif is not used in the film which ends with the mermaid and the prince marrying 357 Hayao Miyazaki s Ponyo is an animated film about a ningyo who wants to become a human girl with the help of her human friend Sosuke The Australian teen dramedy H2O Just Add Water chronicles the adventures of three modern day mermaids along the Gold Coast of Australia The Starbucks coffee logo is a melusine citation needed Heraldry Arms of Warsaw In heraldry the charge of a mermaid is commonly represented with a comb and a mirror 358 359 and blazoned as a mermaid in her vanity 360 In addition to vanity mermaids are also a symbol of eloquence 361 Mermaids appear with greater frequency as heraldic devices than mermen do A mermaid appears on the arms of the University of Birmingham in addition to those of several British families 359 A mermaid with two tails is referred to as a melusine Melusines appear in German heraldry and less frequently in the British version 359 A shield and sword wielding mermaid Syrenka is on the official coat of arms of Warsaw 362 Images of a mermaid have symbolized Warsaw on its arms since the middle of the 14th century 363 Several legends associate Triton of Greek mythology with the city which may have been the origin of the mermaid s association 364 The Cusack family crest includes a mermaid wielding a sword as depicted on a memorial stone for Sir Thomas Cusack 1490 1571 365 The city of Norfolk Virginia also uses a mermaid as a symbol The personal coat of arms of Michaelle Jean former Governor General of Canada features two mermaids as supporters 366 FandomInterest in mermaid costuming has grown with the popularity of fantasy cosplay as well as the availability of inexpensive monofins used in the construction of these costumes The costumes are typically designed to be used while swimming in an activity known as mermaiding Mermaid fandom conventions have also been held 367 368 Gallery Mermaid carved on a capital of the Rio Mau Monastic church Portugal 1151 A stone coat of arms in Santo Domingo church Pontevedra Galicia Spain 16th century Mermaid in Fefinans Manor house Cambados Galicia Spain 16th century A most strange and true report of a monstrous fish Illustration from an early printed report of a Mermaid sighting 1604 English carved decoration by James Richards on Prince Frederick s Barge 1731 1732 Portuguese Baroque stonework in Povoa de Varzim Matriz Church 1743 1757 Fountain depicting a mermaid playing a guitar located in the Museum of the City of Mexico 17th century A stone coat of arms in Mugardos Galicia Spain 18th century Illustration from Vanity Fair Becky Sharp as a mermaid Mermaid and merman 1866 Unknown Russian folk artist Havfrue by Elisabeth Jerichau Baumann 1873 The Play of the Naiads by Arnold Bocklin 1886 The Land Baby by John Collier 1899 The Mermaid of Zennor by John Reinhard Weguelin 1900 The Mermaid by Howard Pyle 1910 The Mermaid and the Satyr by Ferdinand Leeke 1917 Mermaids by Jean Francis Aubertin circa 1920 The Little Mermaid s Sisters by Anne Anderson circa 1910 Illustration of The Little Mermaid by E S Hardy circa 1890 The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen 1913 A mermaid in the coat of arms of the Paijanne Tavastia region Finland 1997 369 The mermaid of the Phra Aphai Mani legend in Songkhla Thailand 2006 Mermaid statue in Nuuk GreenlandSee alsoCategory Mermaid novels Ichthyosis Kelpie List of piscine and amphibian humanoids Melusine Merlion The Mermaid of Warsaw Merman Mythological hybrid Nereid Sea monster Sea witch Selkie Sirenia an order of aquatic mammals that include manatees and dugongs Sirenomelia or mermaid syndrome a disorder in which a child is born with legs fused together 370 Susulu mythology Thessalonike of Macedon The legend of Thessalonike UndineExplanatory notes And despite the misleading spelling not a variant of merman first used 17th cent 3 The word occurs variously as OHG merimenni merimeni meriminni meriminnun meriminna merminno 7 Schade s dictionary uses OHG meremanni as headword 8 They are glosses to sirenes at Isiah 13 21 where Hebrew ya anah י ע נ ה mod Eng bibl tr ostriches was translated as sirens by the Septuagint and Vulgate 7 She is Wachilt whose great grandson German Urenkel is Wittich 12 In other words she is Velent Wieland s grandmother 13 or Wittich s father s father s mother 14 in the Dietrich Cycle She is deemed an undine by one modern commentator 17 That is the OED s entry for gave cf OE merewif and Mermin in small capitals meaning there is an entry for the latter but not the former The Megarian bowl 3rd century BC with a scene from the Odyssey with sirens depicted as fish tailed tritonesses to use art jargon 34 Harrison names a clay lamp possibly from the Roman period 35 36 A terracotta mourning siren 250 BC is the oldest representation of siren as mermaid familiar to Waugh 37 But upon reflection since the OHG word only means sea woman it is not assured that a fish tailed being is meant In the bestiaries And that is generally accepted to be the intended symbolism in ecclesiastical art such as church carvings of mermaids 37 68 but this church view has been derided as misogynistic from a modern perspective 69 and it has been noted that the mirror and comb were originally the accoutrements of the love goddess Venus in Classical Times 70 71 In The Odyssey after Odysseus encounter with the sirens he headed for the place where Scylla and Charybdis dwelled 74 But perhaps not too far from the meadows opposite the Rhine River where they pitched camp in an earlier passage in the Nibelungenlied 29 and occurs at the confluence of the Rhine and the Danube in THidreks saga 101 hence Wagner s reinvention of them as Rhinemaidens 102 MHG ane modern German Ahn The initial h is an aspirated h here could very well be pronounced even in modern Normandy especially for words borrowed from the Germanic as Gorog points out elsewhere 135 Wartburg Gorog tr glosses navette as sort of water sprite ondine which attracts passers by at night and plunges in with them adding that in the patois of Valognes it is used as a bugbear to frighten children from approaching water And documented some of these fables as the mermaid purportedly foretelling the birth of Christian IV Or even the eccentric Sea Quoyas Morrov after apparently the native Angolan name for some ape because a mermaid capture in Angola was also documented Recte margygr and hafstrambr as described below margygur hafgygur mer troll haffru sea maid mey fiskr maiden fish In Sweden also and sjo kona sjo kuna in the dialect of Ruhnu Estonia 155 And also Bassett 1892 p 172 The original text gives knackt i e cracked rather than kneckt 161 or knackt 168 The Swedish ballad Hafsmannen is based on the abduction theme and recounts the same myth as Danish ballad Rosmer Havmand 171 Facsimiles of the miniature painting are found in Fridtjof Nansen s book 158 and Dubois s paper 174 The anecdote is set in Donghai or Eastern Sea which designates East China Sea on a modern atlas and this is given in Magnani s translation but is Eastern Sea given by Groot translating this passage 203 Historically the name could apply to the Sea of Japan 204 The authority in question Cascudo sees the influence of Goncalves Dias s romantic indigenization Cascudo s Dicionario do folclore brasileiro 1954 explores numerous other contributing European lore and indigenous water myth Pero de Magalhaes Gandavo Historia da Provincia de Santa Cruz 1576 Do clima e terra do Brasil 1584 Pliny follows with an account of a sea man witnessed on the Gulf of Gades Gulf of Cadiz 248 i e not qualifying they do so at the hour of death Bartholin subsequently provides a textual description of a neckless siren with lactating breasts 262 however that is the description from an entirely different specimen caught in the River Cuama off the Cape of Good Hope quoted from Bernardinus Ginnarus 266 Bartholin describes in detail that it was caught off of Brazil by merchants of the Dutch West India Company the GWC and the dissection conducted in Leiden by Petrus Pavius Pieter Pauw attended by Johannes de Laet who was director of th GWC Bartholin was given a hand and few ribs from de Laet as a token of friendship 266 Bartholin writes Phocae 266 which is the genus but perhaps he intended pinnipeds 262 more broadly A sea horse in reality was either walrus or sea unicorns narwhals both sources for marine ivory For water horse as sea unicorn see Francisci 1668 opposite p 1406 Plate XLVII cf Iara and Ipupiara supra Kircher s Latin text actually resorts to writing out piscis an8rwpomorfos partly in Greek Greek ligature is used for the final omicron sigma 275 Jonston s Latin version uses anthropomorphos the Dutch translator changed this to morphus in the text though the caption remained phos in the engraving 273 In the primary sources variously spelt in Middle Spanish as peche muger 275 pez muller pexe muller 279 etc The word is duyong in the Ilongo Hiligaynon or Palawano language of the Bisayans 285 According to Navarrete an indigenous man had confessed to having nightly sexual intercourse with a piscis mulier or pexemulier said to resemble a woman from the breasts down 281 286 Later it was no longer a Dutch Province Bassett 1892 renamed her the Molucca siren 296 but that name does not seem to have wide circulation color illustrations engraved copper plates hand painted in color Valentijn was also a minister of the church mostly in the employ of the VOC he was minister in Ambon at age 19 from 1685 for a decade and was stationed again in Java 1705 1714 308 but was minister in Dorchrecht Netherlands by 1916 when Renard corresponded with him seeking help for his book 309 and he compiled his own book while in the Netherlands 308 And editor of the English edition of Renard s work This specimen had been on display inside a jar at the Turf Coffee house St James s Street as illustrated in an etching of it was made by artist George Cruikshank Although the exhibitors called it mermaid the gender as to the monkey port or fish part used is probably unclear and one newspaper renames it Barnum s merman 320 321 322 Marine biologist Hondo comments that the Japanese souvenirs tended to use a group of fish shaped like the suzuki Japanese sea bass and asserts that in Canton China the type of fish used were Cyprinids carp family Nibea mitsukurii and the giant mottled eel 327 The mermaid drawn by Cruikshank i e the Fiji mermaid is speculated to be concocted from a blue faced monkey and a salmon 328 The prince remains unacquainted with her despite being saved by her from a shipwreck The mermaid had brought him ashore unconscious and then hid behind rocks and covered herself in foam to hide The prince is betrothed to a princess who turns out to be the girl he mistakenly believed to be his rescuer due to the mermaid s concealment And the comb and mirror were originally associated with Aphrodite Venus as Fraser points out here ReferencesCitations a b Mermaid Dictionaries Oxford Archived from the original on 20 November 2018 Retrieved 16 April 2012 a b c mermaid Oxford English Dictionary Online ed Oxford University Press Subscription or participating institution membership required Murray James A H ed 1908 A New Eng Dict VI s v mermaid a b c d e f g h i mermin Oxford English Dictionary Online ed Oxford University Press Subscription or participating institution membership required Murray James A H ed 1908 A New Eng Dict VI s v mermin Detailed record for Arundel 292 British Library Retrieved 19 September 2022 fol 8v Natura Sirene a b British Library Arundel MS 292 fol 8 verso 6 a b c Morris Richard ed 1872 Natura Sirene The Mermaid An Old English miscellany containing a bestiary Kentish sermons Proverbs of Alfred religious poems of the thirteenth century E E T S Original series 49 Early English Text Society pp 18 19 With marginal synopsis a b c Pakis 2010 p 126 n40 a b Schade Oskar 1866 meremanni ahd st M mhd mereminne merewip merwip Altdeutsches Worterbuch in German Vol II Halle Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses p 394 Bain Frederika 1879 Steinmeyer Elias von Sievers Eduard eds Die althochdeutschen Glossen Vol 1 Berlin Weidmann p 602 a b Vienna Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek ms 223 fol 32r 47 Maurer 1967 ed Der altdeutsche Physiologus note 37 92 apud Pakis 2010 p 126 n37 olim MS Philol 244 von der Hagen F H 1824 ed pp 52 53 a b Lexer 1872 Mittelhochdeutsches Handworterbuch s v mer minne Paul Hermann 1893 Grundriss der germanischen Philologie Vol 2 Trubner p 55 a b c d e Buchholz Peter 1980 Vorzeitkunde mundliches Erzahlen u Uberliefern im mittelalterlichen Skandinavien nach d Zeugnis von Fornaldarsaga u eddischer Dichtung in German Wachholtz p 85 ISBN 9783529033131 Nach der THidreks saga 36 46 ist der Riese Vadi der Sohn einer siokona Meerfrau a b c d e f Davidson H R Ellis September 1958 Weland the Smith Folklore 63 3 149 150 JSTOR 1258855 a b c d Hylten Cavallius Gunnar Olof ed 1854 Sagan om Didrik af Bern Kap 383 p 300 Den gamla svenska bearbetningen af Didriks saga is dated as ifran 1400 talet 15th century or later p xxiii a b c Paff 1959 p 71 The Swedish epilogue II 395 purports to know the true story of the death of Vidga and thidrikr after thidrikr chased Vidga into the sea see Musula Vidga s great grandmother an undine conveyed him to Sjaelland Cf Paff 1959 pp 51 53 129 a b c d Paff 1959 p 129 THidreks saga or Dietrich s saga But the great grandmother s involvement is only known from the Swedish version 14 16 Swedish epilogue 17 from the 15th century Swedish reworking 15 a b c Bertelsen Henrik ed 1905 THiđriks saga af Bern Kap 841 57 I 73 Vade rise ier asiolande svnr villcinus konongs ok siokononar Earlier portion of the Old Norse THidreks saga 19 a b c d Bashe E J 1923 Some Notes on the Wade Legend Philological Quarterly 2 283 Bosworth Toller 1882 s v mere wif Beowulf Klaeber ed 2008 1936 v 1519 merwoman Oxford English Dictionary Online ed Oxford University Press Subscription or participating institution membership required Murray James A H ed 1908 A New Eng Dict VI s v merwoman name for the mermaid when older or wedded As merwoman is used for merwip e g at Grimm amp Stallybrass tr 1883 p 490 re the Nibelungenlied example Lexer 1872 Mittelhochdeutsches Handworterbuch s v mer wip a b Grimm amp Stallybrass tr 1883 p 490 a b c d Lionarons Joyce Tally 1998 The Otherworld and its Inhabitants in the Nibelungenlied In McConnell Winder ed A Companion to the Nibelungenlied Camden House p 168 169 ISBN 9781571131515 a b c Bartsch ed 1905 5th ed Das Nibelungenlied XXV Aventiure Str 1533 1544 Edwards Cyril tr 2020 The Nibelungenlied The Lay of the Nibelungs Twenty fifth Adventure Str 1532 1543 Oxford University Press Mittman Asa Simon Dendle Peter J 2016 The Ashgate research companion to monsters and the monstrous London Routledge p 352 ISBN 9781351894326 OCLC 1021205658 Holford Strevens 2006 pp 17 18 Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica IV 891 919 Seaton R C ed tr 2012 p 354ff and at that time they were fashioned in part like birds and in part like maidens to behold Milliken 2014 p 125 citing Benwell amp Waugh 1965 Waugh 1960 Rotroff Susan I 1982 Hellenistic Painted Potter Athenian and Imported Moldmade Bowls The Athenian Agora 22 American School of Classical Studies at Athens p 67 190 Plates 35 80 ISBN 978 0876612224 a b c d Harrison Jane Ellen 1882 Myths of the Odyssey in Art and Literature London Rivingtons pp 169 170 Plate 47a Benwell amp Waugh 1965 p 46 and Fig 3a a b Waugh 1960 p 77 a b The Bern Physiologus fol 13v Rubric De natura serena et honocentauri Produced c 830 Hautvillers Abbey near Reims France 52 British Library Add MS 11283 British Library Retrieved 6 September 2022 fol 20v Waugh 1960 pp 78 79 Mustard 1908 p 22 McCulloch Florence 1962 1960 Mediaeval Latin and French Bestiaries revised ed Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press p 167 ISBN 9780807890332 Edmond Faral has called attention to what he believes is the first mention of this new type of siren 151 It is contained in the late seventh or early eighth century Liber monstrorum Faral 1953 pp 441ff cited by McCulloch 1962 1960 p 167 42 Orchard Andy tr ed 2003a Pride and Prodigies Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf Manuscript University of Toronto Press pp 262 263 ISBN 9780802085832 Pakis 2010 p 137 and n89 Holford Strevens 2006 p 29 both quote from the Orchard 2003 translation 44 a b Handschriftenbeschreibung 11043 Wien Osterr Nationalbibl Cod 223 Handschriftencensus Philipps Universitat Marburg Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz Retrieved 12 September 2022 a b 5 De sirenis et onocentauris Physiologus OHG TITUS Project Retrieved 12 September 2022 with the apparatus to load image Cod 223 fol 32r Pakis 2010 p 126 note 39 gives Sirene sint meremanniu citing Maurer ed 1967 the Titus Project transcription is verifiable against the image of the manuscript fol 32r 47 46 Pakis 2010 pp 126 127 note 42 though the remark is shorthanded stating that the same word as the Old High German term is used Armistead tr 2001 vv 391 462 pp 85 86 Holford Strevens 2006 p 34 Bern Burgerbibliothek Cod 318 Physiologus Bernensis e codices Retrieved 11 September 2022 facsimile fol 13v Woodruff Helen September 1930 The Physiologus of Bern A Survival of Alexandrian Style in a Ninth Century The Art Bulletin 12 3 Fig 22 and p 249 JSTOR 3050780 Leclercq Jacqueline February 1989 De l art antique a l art medieval A propos des sources du bestiaire carolingien et de se survivances a l epoque romane From ancient to mediaeval Art On the sources of Carolingian bestiaries and their survival in the romance period Gazette des Beaux Arts 113 82 88 doi 10 2307 596378 JSTOR 596378 Physiologus de Berne En contradiction avec le texte qui depeint une Sirene oiseau c est une Sirene poisson qui dans l illustration apparait face au centaure in French Leclercq Marx Jacqueline 1997 La sirene dans la pensee et dans l art de l Antiquite et du Moyen Age du mythe paien au symbole chretien Classe des beaux arts Academie royale de Belgique p 62ff ISSN 0775 3276 The chapter devoted to the Siren and the Centaur is an excellent example of this because the Siren is represented as a woman fish whereas she is described in the form of a woman bird Bodleian Library MS Bodl 764 Oxford University the Bodleian Libraries Retrieved 9 September 2022 fol 074v Hardwick 2011 p 92 Holford Strevens 2006 pp 31 32 Fig 1 4 Barber Richard ed 1993 Sirens Bestiary Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library Oxford M S Bodley 764 with All the Original Miniatures Reproduced in Facsimile Boydell Press p 1150 ISBN 9780851157535 Oxford MS Bodley 764 fol 74v 55 56 57 58 a b Clark Willene B 2006 A Medieval Book of Beasts The Second family Bestiary Commentary Art Text and Translation Boydell Press p 57 and n50 ISBN 9780851156828 a b George amp Yapp 1991 p 99 Ms 100 2007 16 fol 14 Sirens about 1250 1260 Getty Museum Retrieved 10 September 2022 serene fol 20v Cf three sirens with two holding fish and third a mirror as in Getty MS 100 olim Alnwick ms 62 Detailed record for Royal 2 B VII Queen Mary Psalter British Library Retrieved 6 September 2022 fol 96v British Library Ms Royal 2 B Vii fol 96v 61 64 Holford Strevens 2006 p 36 a b Peacock Martha Moffitt 2020 Classen Albrecht ed The Mermaid of Edam and the Emergence of Dutch National Identity Imagination and Fantasy in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time Projections Dreams Monsters and Illusions Walter de Gruyter p 684 ISBN 9783110693782 Chunko Dominguez Betsy 2017 English Gothic Misericord Carvings History from the Bottom Up BRILL pp 82 84 ISBN 9789004341203 Bacchilega amp Brown 2019 p xiv a b Wood 2018 p 68 Warner Marina From the Beast to the Blonde p 406 apud Fraser 2017 Chapter 1 Prehistory Mermaids in the West comb and mirror probably inherited from the goddess of love Aphrodite Xenophon citing Socrates possibly spuriously apud Holford Strevens 2006 p 22 a b Holford Strevens 2006 p 29 Holford Strevens 2006 pp 20 a b Bain Frederika 2017 The Tail of Melusine Hybridity Mutability and the Accessible Other Melusine s Footprint Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth BRILL pp 25 26 ISBN 9789004355958 Bain 2017 citing Terry Pearson and Francoise Clier Colombani 75 Thompson Homer A July September 1948 The Excavation of the Athenian Agora Twelfth Season PDF Hesperia The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 17 3 The Thirty Fifth Report of the American Excavation in the Athenian Agora 161 162 and Fig 5 doi 10 2307 146874 JSTOR 146874 Ornan Tallay et al Israel Exploration Society 2005 The Triumph of the Symbol Pictorial Representation of Deities in Mesopotamia and the Biblical Image Ban Orbis biblicus et orientalis 213 Gottingen Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht p 127 ISBN 9783525530078 a b c Black Jeremy Green Anthony 1992 Gods Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia An Illustrated Dictionary The British Museum Press pp 131 132 ISBN 0 7141 1705 6 Macalister R A Stewart 1913 The Philistines their history and civilization London Pub for the British Academy by H Milford pp 95 96 Ringgren Helmer 1969 Bleeker C Jouco Widengren Geo eds The Religion of Ancient Syria Historia Religionorum I Religions of the Past E J Brill p 208 a b Grabbe Lester L 2003 Like a Bird in a Cage The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BCE Bloomsbury Publishing pp 122 123 ISBN 9780567207821 Hasan Rokem Galit 2014 Fine Steven Koller Aaron eds Leviticus Rabbah 16 1 Odysseus and the Sirens in the Beit Leontis Mosaic from Beit She an Talmuda de Eretz Israel Archaeology and the Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine Studia Judaica 73 Walter de Gruyter GmbH amp Co KG p 182 ISBN 9781614512875 Lucian De Dea Syria 14 Lightfoot ed tr 2003 Cited and translation quoted by Hasan Rokem 2014 p 182 83 De Dea Syra 14 apud Cowper 1865 pp 9 10 Smith W Robertson 1887 p 313 314 a b Breucker Geert de 2021 Hokwerda Hero ed Berossos and the Construction off a Near Eastern Cultural History in Response to the Greeks Constructions of Greek Past Identity and Historical Consciousness from Antiquity to the Present BRILL pp 28 29 ISBN 9789004495463 Goodman Ailene S 2021 The Extraordinary Being Death and the Mermaid in Baroque Literature BRILL Bloomsbury Publishing p 261 ISBN 9789004487895 Waugh 1960 p 73 Oannes was later described by the Babylonian writer Berossus as having an extra human head beneath the head of its fish body 88 89 Waugh 1960 p 73 the first merman in recorded history is the sea god Ea or in Greek Oannes a b Waugh 1960 pp 73 74 a b c Russell Eugenia 2013 Literature and Culture in Late Byzantine Thessalonica A amp C Black p xxii ISBN 978 1 441 16177 2 Evans James Anaximander Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 14 January 2020 Bell Jacob 30 March 2019 Evolutionary Theory in Ancient Greece amp Rome Classical Wisdom Weekly Archived from the original on 14 January 2020 Retrieved 14 January 2020 Waugh 1960 pp 77 78 Jon A Asbjorn 1978 Dugongs and Mermaids Selkies and Seals p 95 these marine beasts have featured in folk tradition for many centuries now and until relatively recently they have maintained a reasonably standard set of characteristics Many folklorists and mythographers deem that the origin of the mythic mermaid is the dugong posing a theory that mythologised tales have been constructed around early sightings of dugongs by sailors William Bond Goodreads Retrieved 29 April 2022 Bond William Suffield Pamela 2012 The Origins of the Mermaid Myth barnesandnoble com Retrieved 29 April 2022 Lexer 1872 Mittelhochdeutsches Handworterbuch s v muome swf mutterschwester Paff 1959 p 214 at a point near where the Rhine and Danube Duna join Magee 1990 p 65 a b Kemmis Deva F 2017 Listening Down the Hall An Epistemological Consideation of the Encounter with Melusine in the Germanic Literary Tradition Melusine s Footprint Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth BRILL pp 326 327 n11 ISBN 9789004355958 Grimm apud Magee 1990 p 63 and Grimm amp Stallybrass tr 1883 p 490 Muller Ullrich UM in German 2011 2002 Rhine Maidens In Gentry Francis G Wunderlich Werner McConnell Winder Mueller Ulrich eds The Nibelungen Tradition An Encyclopedia Routledge pp 167 168 ISBN 0 8153 1785 9 Millington Barry Spencer Stewart 1993 Notes on the translation Wagner s Ring of the Nibelung A Companion Thames amp Hudson ISBN 0500771464 Martin Ernst ed 1866 Str 964 Str 969 Paff 1959 p 71 Haymes tr 1988 p 270 The End of Vidga and Thidrek according to the Swedish Chronicle of Thidrek Ch 439 Vidga takes up residence in Sjaland The so called Vilkinasaga ends before this chapter according to Bertelsen s notes But THidreks saga was frequently referred to as Vilkina saga by early commentators Or Ger Meerfrau 13 Paff 1959 p 53 Paff 1959 pp 53 217 Paff 1959 pp 35 73 85 Identification of Gronsport with a specific modern city has not been made von Der Hagens tr 1855 Wilkina und Niflunga Saga oder Dietrich von Bern und die Nibelungen III 267n states he doesn t know Wood Rita March 2010 The Norman Chapel in Durham Castle PDF Northern History XLVII 1 31 Archived from the original PDF on 11 February 2014 Retrieved 25 July 2012 The Norman Chapel Architecture Durham World heritage Archived from the original on 9 May 2012 Retrieved 11 May 2012 a b Briggs 1976 p 287 Child Francis James 1965 The English and Scottish Popular Ballads vol 2 New York Dover p 19 Child Francis James ed 1884 42 Clerk Colvill The English and Scottish Popular Ballads Vol 1 Part2 Boston Houghton Mifflin and Company pp 372 374 Archived from the original on 1 November 2006 Briggs KM 1967 The Fairies in English Tradition and Literature London University of Chicago Press p 57 Briggs 1976 p 288 Briggs 1976 p 290 Waugh 1960 p 82 Matthews John Hobson 1892 A History of the Parishes of St Ives Lelant Towednack and Zennor In the County of Cornwall London Elliott Stock p 383 Briggs 1976 p 289 Watson E C 1908 Highland Mythology The Celtic Review 5 17 67 doi 10 2307 30069982 JSTOR 30069982 a b Briggs Katharine 1976 An Encyclopedia of Fairies Pantheon Books pp 22 23 Ben Varrey ISBN 0 394 40918 3 Briggs 1976 pp 266 7 Olsen L B ps Salomon Soldin 1806 Havfrue mermaid sea maid siren Havmand seaman merman Dansk og engelsk Lexicon udarbeidet efter de bedste Forfattere i begge Sprog in Norwegian Kjobenhavn A amp S Soldin pp 155 820 Brynildsen John ed 1917 Hav frue mermaid maiden mand merman Norsk engelsk ordbog in Norwegian 2 ed Kristiania H Aschehoug amp Company p 325 a b Gorog Ralph Paul de August 1964 The Treatment of Norman in Jan de Vries Altnordisches etymologisches Worterbuch Scandinavian Studies 35 3 212 JSTOR 40916633 Wartburg Walther von 1922 Franzosisches etymologisches Worterbuch XVI 112 searchable index translated by Gorog in his supplementary list of Norman words borrowed from Old Norse which were missed by Fries Jan de 1962 Altnordisches etymologisches Worterbuch 132 Wartburg 1922 XVI 112 apud Gorog 132 op cit Cf explanatory footnote supra Gorog Ralph Paul de Autumn 1961 A Note on the change of h to r in Normandy Romance Notes 3 1 73 77 JSTOR 43800089 Pontoppidan Erich 1753a Kap 8 2 Havmand 4 Meer minne 5 Marmaete Det forste Forsog paa Norges naturlige Historie in Danish Vol 2 Copenhagen Berlingske Arvingers Bogtrykkerie pp 302 317 digital copy National Library Norway Pontoppidan Erich 1755 Ch 8 Sect 3 Hav Mand Mer man Sect 4 Meerminne Sect 5 Marmaete The Natural History of Norway Translated from the Danish Original Vol 2 London A Linde pp 186 195 Pontoppidan 1753a p 302 a b Pontoppidan 1755 p 186 Pontoppidan 1753a pp 304 312 317 Pontoppidan 1755 pp 187 192 195 Faye 1833 p 59 Havmaend og Havfruer mermen and mermaids in the plural a b c d e Thorpe Benjamin 1851 I Norwegian Traditions The Merman Marmennill and Mermaid Margygr Northern Mythology Comprising the Principal Popular Traditions and Superstitions of Scandinavia North Germany and the Netherlands Compiled from Original and Other Sources Vol 2 London Edward Lumley p 27 Pontoppidan 1753a p 303 Pontoppidan 1753a p 306 Pontoppidan 1755 p 188 Pontoppidan 1753a p 302n p 304 Pontoppidan 1755 p 183 p 186n a b c Jon Arnason 1862 Saebuar og vatna p 131 a b c d Jon Arnason 1866 Icelandic Legends Vol 2 Translated by George E J Powell Eirikr Magnusson London Longman Green and Co pp lvi lvii olina THorvardardottir 1987 Saebuar vatnaverur og disir Islenskar thjodsogur alfar og troll in Icelandic Boka og bladautgafan p 17 ISBN 9789979921004 Jakobsen Jakob 1891 havfru havfrugv Faerosk anthologi Ordsamling og register udarbejdede af Vol 2 S L Mollers bogtrykkeri p 109 a b Hayward 2017 p 8 a b Tauchnitz Karl 1883 mermaid Nytt engelskt och svenskt handlexikon A New Pocket dictionary of the English and Swedish Languages Leipzig O Holtze p 260 Rietz Johan Ernst in Swedish 1877 kona sjo kuna Svenskt dialekt lexikon eller ordbog ofver svenska allmogespraket in Swedish Vol 1 Lund Cronholm p 345 a b c Thorpe Benjamin 1851 II Swedish Traditions The skogsra the sjora Of Water Elves 1 The Mermaid Northern Mythology Comprising the Principal Popular Traditions and Superstitions of Scandinavia North Germany and the Netherlands Compiled from Original and Other Sources Vol 2 London Edward Lumley pp 75 76 77 Though he is clearly dependent on past written literature also e g Jon Gudmundsson the Learned d 1658 who also classified the mermen mermaids among elves a b Nansen Fridtjof 2014 In Northern Mists Translated by Chater Arthur G Cambridge University Press p 244 ISBN 9781108071697 Thorpe 143 identifies Faye as the general source on p 9 note 2 Faye 1833 p 59 Note Anm The merman Old Norse marmendill in Halfs saga 14th cent and Landnamabok margygr Old Norse margyr in the saga of St Olaf a b c d e f Keightley Thomas 1850 1828 The Fairy Mythology Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of various Countries new revised ed H G Bohn pp 152 153 Faye 1833 pp 59 60 cited by Bassett 1892 pp 172 173 Faye 1833 p 59 bebude Storm og Uveir Bassett 1892 p 172 Kvideland Reimund in Norwegian Sehmsdorf Henning K eds 1988 Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend U of Minnesota Press pp 35 262 ISBN 9781452901602 Chapter 52 Spirit of the Sea 52 4 Mermaid and the Fisherman in Kvideland amp Sehmsdorf 1988 pp 261 262 apud Rekdal Olav 1933 Havfrua og fiskaren Eventyr og segner p 110 Collected in 1923 from Guri Finnset in Eikisdalen Romsdalen Norway a b Arwidsson Adolf Ivar ed 1837 150 Hafsfrun Svenska fornsanger Vol 2 Stockholm P A Norstedt amp soner pp 320 323 Havfruns tarna Smalands Musikarkiv Linnaeus University Retrieved 28 June 2022 a b Grimm amp Stallybrass tr 1883 2 494 495 Folksong text published by Adolf Ivar Arwidsson 166 discussed by Grimm 168 and Keightley 161 Grafstrom Anders text Forssell Christian ed Forssell Christian in Swedish 1827 Helsingland Ett ar i Sverge Taflor af Svenska almogens Kladedragt lefnadssatt och hemseder samt de for Landets Historia markvardigaste Orter in Swedish Johan Gustaf Sandberg illustr J Horberg p 52 J Y 27 December 1873 Swedish Anitquities translated and abridged from Forssell s Annee en Suede The Antiquary IV 95 315 Godecke P A in Swedish 1871 Studier ofver vara folkvisor fran medeltiden Framtiden Tidskrift for fosterlandsk odling in Swedish 5 325 326 Faye 1833 pp 58 59 cited by Bassett 1892 p 172 Pontoppidan 1755 p 195 a b DuBois Thomas A January 2004 A History Seen The Uses of Illumination in Flateyjarbok The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 103 1 33 35 fig 15 JSTOR 27712401 a b Sayers William April 1994 Deployment of an Irish Loan ON verda at gjalti to Go Mad with Terror The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 93 2 176 JSTOR 27710979 Laity K A 2004 Translating Saint as Vi king St Olaf in the Heimskringla Viator Medieval and Renaissance Studies 35 1 176 doi 10 1484 J VIATOR 2 300196 ISSN 0083 5897 a b Borovsky Zoe Patrice 1994 Rocking the Boat Women in Old Norse Literature University of California Berkeley p 171 further compared to a seal Hon er lodin hairy or furry sem selr ok gra at lit a b Bugge Sophus 1899 The Home of the Eddic Poems With Especial Reference to the Helgi lays Grimm library 11 Translated by Schofield William Henry revised ed London David Nutt pp 237 238 Also giantess who emerges from the sea 177 and described as disgusting trolls 178 a b c d Vigfusson Gudbrandur Unger Carl Richard eds 1862 Chapter 23 Olafr konungr vann margyghe Flatejarbok vol 2 Christiania P T Malling pp 25 26 Donald A K 1895 Melusine Compiled 1382 1394 AD by Jean D Arras Englisht About 1500 Kegan Paul Trench Trubner Retrieved 20 November 2012 a b Jarvis Shawn C 2007 Haase Donald ed The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales 3 Volumes Greenwood pp 619 621 ISBN 978 0 313 04947 7 Yves Morvan La Sirene et la luxure Communication du Colloque La luxure et le corps dans l art roman Mozac 2008 Teodolinda Barolini La Commedia senza Dio Dante e la creazione di una realta 2003 p 150 Wood 2018 pp 51 52 Seirenas Suda On Line tr Robert Dyer on 13 June 2002 Wood 2018 p 52 Mitakidou Christodoula Manna Anthony L Mitakidou Soula 2002 Alexander and the Mermaid Folktales from Greece p 96 ISBN 1 56308 908 4 Garstad Benjamin 2015 Rome in the Alexander Romance Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 108 500 JSTOR 44157821 Naroditskaya amp Austern 2006 p 6 a b Ivanits Linda J 1992 Russian folk belief Schiller Sophie illustr 1st pbk ed Armonk NY M E Sharpe p 76 ISBN 978 0 87332 889 0 Illes Judika 2009 Rusalka The encyclopedia of spirits the ultimate guide to the magic of fairies genies demons ghosts gods and goddesses New York HarperOne p 871 ISBN 978 0 06 135024 5 Warner Elizabeth 2002 Russian myths Austin TX Univ of Texas Press p 42 ISBN 978 0 292 79158 9 Kelly Katherine E ed 1996 Modern drama by women 1800s 1930s an international anthology London Routledge p 326 ISBN 978 0 415 12493 5 Ivanits Linda J 4 March 2015 Russian Folk Belief Routledge ISBN 9781317460398 Bristol Evelyn 1991 A History of Russian Poetry p 149 ISBN 0 19 504659 5 a b Strassberg Richard E ed 2018 266 The Di people Diren 氐人 A Chinese Bestiary Strange Creatures from theGuideways Through Mountains and Seas University of California Press p 190 ISBN 978 0 52029 851 4 a b c Magnani 2022 p 89 Strassberg Richard E ed 2018 15 Red Ru fish Chiru 赤鱬 A Chinese Bestiary Strange Creatures from theGuideways Through Mountains and Seas University of California Press p 34 Strassberg Richard E ed 2018 125 Human fish Renyu 人魚 A Chinese Bestiary Strange Creatures from theGuideways Through Mountains and Seas University of California Press p 130 ISBN 978 0 52029 851 4 卷第464 海人魚 太平廣記 1726 via Wikisource Magnani 2022 p 91 Groot Jan Jakob Maria 1901 X On Zoanthropy 12 Man fishes The Religious System of China book II On the soul and ancestral worship E J Brill p 241 Schottenhammer Angela 2006 The Sea as Barrier and Contact Zone Maritime Space and Sea Routes in Traditional Chinese Books and Maps In Schottenhammer Angela Ptak Roderich eds The Perception of Maritime Space in Traditional Chinese Sources Otto Harrassowitz Verlag p 11 ISBN 9783447053402 a b Matsuoka 1982 p 56 陳夢雷 in Chinese ed 1726 博物彙編 禽蟲典 第144卷 䱱魚釋名 欽定古今圖書集成 via Wikisource Yoshioka 1993 p 39 citing Hino 1926 p 170 Zheng Jinsheng Kirk Nalini Buell Paul D Unschuld Paul Ulrich eds 2018 Dictionary of the Ben Cao Gang Mu Volume 3 Persons and Literary Sources University of California Press p 87 ISBN 9780520291973 Keith Sarah Lee Sung Ae 2018 Hayward Philip ed Legend of the Blue Sea Mermaids in South Korean folklore and popular culture Scaled for Success The Internationalisation of the Mermaid Indiana University Press pp 78 79 ISBN 978 0861967322 Keith amp Lee 2018 pp 73 74 Keith amp Lee 2018 p 74 a b Hayward Philip 2018a Japan The Mermaidization of the Ningyo and related folkloric figures In Hayward Philip ed Scaled for Success The Internationalisation of the Mermaid Indiana University Press pp 51 52 66 ISBN 978 0861967322 Nakamaru Teiko 2015 Hakubutsugaku no ningyo hyōshō honyurui josei uo 博物学の人魚表象 哺乳類 女性 魚 How the Naturalists Described Merfolk or Mermaids Fishes Women and Mammalia Journal of Comparative literature Nihon Hikaku Bungakukai 58 8 comparing the definitions of ningyo in Kojien dictionary 5th edition 1998 and 6th edition 2008 The definition shifts from half human woman to half human usually woman Yoda Hiroko Alt Matt 2013 Yokai Attack The Japanese Monster Survival Guide Tuttle Publishing p 265 ISBN 978 1 462 90883 7 Toriyama 2017 p 120 notes by Yoda and Alt a b Toriyama Sekien 2017 Japandemonium Illustrated The Yokai Encyclopedias of Toriyama Sekien translated by Hiroko Yoda Matt Alt Courier Dover Publications p 168 ISBN 9780486818757 Shanhaijing Haineinanjing 山海經 山海經 海內南經 via Wikisource 氐人國在建木西 其為人人面而魚身 無足 Birrell tr 2000 p 136 Sastri Satyavrat 1982 Studies in Sanskrit and Indian culture in Thailand Parimal Publications p 63 Satyavrat Sastri 2006 Discovery of Sanskrit Treasures Epics and Puranas Yash Publications p 77 ISBN 978 81 89537 04 3 Retrieved 24 July 2012 S N Desai 2005 Hinduism in Thai Life Popular Prakashan p 135 ISBN 978 81 7154 189 8 Retrieved 24 July 2012 Le Reamker Description of Ream Ker in French Illes Judika 2009 The Encyclopedia of Spirits HarperOne p 768 ISBN 978 0 06 135024 5 Robson Stuart The Kraton KITLV Press 2003 Leiden ISBN 90 6718 131 5 p 77 English Leo James 1986 Tagalog English Dictionary Manila Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer National Book Store ISBN 971 91055 0 X 1583 pp Philippine Demonological Legends and Their Cultural Bearings Maximo Ramos Phoenix Publishing 1990 a b The Beyer Ethnographic Series Bikol Beliefs and Folkways A Showcase of Tradition Nasayao 2010 Drewal Henry John 2008 Introduction Charting the Voyage Sacred Waters Arts for Mami Wata and other divinities in Africa and the diaspora Bloomington Indiana University Press p 1 ISBN 978 0 253 35156 2 Moaveni Azadeh 2010 Honeymoon in Tehran Random House p 240 ISBN 978 0 8129 7790 5 The banning of some names like Maneli meaning Mermaid seemed to have no rationale at all a b Irwin Robert 2003 One Thousand and One Nights A Companion Tauris Parke Paperbacks p 209 ISBN 1 86064 983 1 Diccionario de Argot Cubano Conexion Cubana Archived from the original on 30 September 2011 Retrieved 24 April 2012 Bennett Lennie 10 July 2008 Four exhibitions woven into Textures Tampa Bay St Petersburg Times Archived from the original on 1 December 2008 Retrieved 25 April 2009 Hibiscus tiliaceus Hau Malvaceae Plants of Hawaii Hear org Archived from the original on 8 May 2008 Retrieved 24 April 2012 a b c Souza Licia Soares de 2011 A Baia de Todos os Santos em Mar Morto In Caroso Carlos Tavares Fatima Pereira Claudio eds Baia de todos os santos aspectos humanos in Portuguese SciELO EDUFBA p 562 doi 10 7476 9788523211622 ISBN 9788523211622 JSTOR 10 7476 9788523211622 24 a b Herrera Sobek Maria 2012 Iara Celebrating Latino Folklore An Encyclopedia of Cultural Traditions ABC CLIO pp 159 160 ISBN 9780313343391 Teixeira 1992 p 33 Cascudo 1962 1 364 IARA cross referenced to Cascudo 1962 2 441 442 MAE D AGUA Cascudo 1983 1947 Geografia dos mitos brasileiros p 134 Cited and summarized by Teixeira 1992 p 33 Noguera Renato 2018 Alguns mitos Guaranis Iara ciume seducao e projecao Mulheres e deusas Como as divindades e os mitos femininos formaram a mulher atual Carla Silva HarperCollins Brasil pp 130 132 ISBN 9788595083059 Iara renasce como mulher peixe uma imagem similar a sereia dos europeus The novelist Morais 1926 Na planicie amazonica p 80 A yara iara Metade mulher metade peixe cauda de escamas multicores The iara part woman part fish tail with multicolored scales is oft quoted as in Cascudo 2002 Antologia do folclore brasileiro 9th ed 2 178 a b Fonseca Pedro Carlos Louzada 2009 Tropos da colonizacao da America discurso do genero e simbolismo animal Romance Notes in Portuguese 2 Norse Greenland Selected Papers from the Hvalsey Conference 2008 3 4 doi 10 1353 rmc 2009 0035 JSTOR 43801787 S2CID 201769444 Se em Gandavo permanece ambiguo o tratamento do tropo da feminizacao da natureza referida ao monstruoso em Fernao Cardim essa figuracao deixa se entrever de form sugestiva buscada a outro tropo da mentalidade religiosa medieval If in Gandavo the treatment of the trope of the feminization of nature referring to the monstrous remains ambiguous in Fernao Cardim this figuration lets itself be glimpsed in a suggestive way sought from another trope of the medieval religious mentality Fonseca 242 invoking the vagina dentata concept and quoting Walker Barbara G ed 1983 The Woman s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects Harper amp Row p 328 Christianity made the vagina a metaphor for the gate of hell and revived the ancient fear inducing image of the vagina dentata toothed vagina that could bite off a man s penis a b c ni Mheallaigh Karen 2014 7 Conclusion fiction and the wonder culture of the Roman empire Reading Fiction with Lucian Fakes Freaks and Hyperreality Greek Culture in the Roman World Cambridge University Press p 262 ISBN 9781316123980 Pliny the Elder 1855 IX Chap 4 5 The forms of the tritions and nereids The forms of sea elephants The Natural History of Pliny Vol 2 Translated by Bostock John Riley Henry Thomas H G Bohn pp 362 363 ISBN 9780598910769 a b Hansen William ed 2017 The Book of Greek amp Roman Folktales Legends amp Myths Princeton New Jersey Princeton University Press pp 169 170 ISBN 9780691170152 Reads the portion of the body that resembles the human figure is still rough all over with scales ub Bisticj and Riley s translation 245 This is given as bristling with hair in Rackham s Loeb Classical Library translation but squama here is probably scales and the emendation is given in Hansen s rendering 246 a b c Pliny the Elder 1940 IX 10 iv Tritons Nereid and aquatic monsters Natural History Vol 3 Loeb classical library Translated by Rackham H arris W Heinemann pp 168 169 1958 ed IV 9 Tiberio principi nuntiavit Olisiponensium legatio ob id missa visum auditumque in quodam specu concha canentem Tritonem qua noscitur forma et Nereidum falsa non est squamis modo hispido corpore etiam qua humanam effigiem habent namque haec in eodem spectata litore est cuius morientis etiam cantum tristem accolae audivere longe et divo Augusto legatus Galliae complures in litore apparere examines Nereidas scripsit IV Tritons Nereid and aquatic monsters 9 An embassy from Lisbon sent for the purpose reported to the Emperor Tiberius that a Triton had been seen and heard playing on a shell in a certain cave and that he had the well known shape The description of the Nereids also is not incorrect except that their body is bristling with hair sic even in the parts where they have human shape for a Nereid has been seen on the same coast whose mournful song moreover when dying has been heard a long way off by the coast dwellers also the Governor of Gaul wrote to the late lamented Augustus that a large number of dead Nereids were to be seen on the shore Pliny Historia Naturalis IX iv 9 248 translated by Harris Rackham 1958 248 a b Nigg Joseph 2014 A Sea Creature Sea Monsters A Voyage around the World s Most Beguiling Map David Matthews Anke Bernau James Paz University of Chicago Press pp 130 132 ISBN 9780226925189 Olaus Magnus 1555 Libri XX Capitulum XX Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus in Latin Rome Giovanni M Viotto p 716 Olaus Magnus 1996 Foote Peter ed Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus Romae 1555 Description of the Northern Peoples Rome 1555 Fisher Peter Higgens Humphrey trr Hakluyt Society p 1052 There can be heard melodious flutes and cymbals as I recounted on the sister Fates and the nymphs as Pliny reads An embassy was dispatched from Olysippo to the Emperor Tiberius that Triton had been seen And the Nereids the people listened from afar to her dismal moans at the hour of her death etc e book unpaginated Olaus Magnus 1555 Libri XXI Praefatio Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus in Latin Rome Giovanni M Viotto p 729 Sunt amp beluae in mari quasi hominis figuram imitantes lugubres in cantu vt nereides etiam marini homines toto corpore absoluta similitudine Olaus Magnus 1998 Foote Peter ed Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus Romae 1555 Description of the Northern Peoples Rome 1555 Fisher Peter Higgens Humphrey trr Hakluyt Society p 1081 ISBN 9780904180435 There are also sea creatures like mermaids which sing plaintively and are similar in shape to human beings and there are mermen e book unpaginated Pliny the Elder 1963 Natural History Vol 8 Loeb classical library W Heinemann p 589 index ISBN 9780674994607 Cf the conjecture in the index to the Loeb Classics Library translation that Pliny s homo marinus merman may refer to African manatee 255 Sanchez Jean Pierre 1994 Myths and Legends in the Old World and European Expansionism on the American Continent The Classical Tradition and the Americas European images of the Americas and the classical tradition 2 pts Walter de Gruyter p 203 ISBN 3 110 11572 7 National Science Research Council Guyana 1974 An International Centre for Manatee Research Report of a Workshop Held 7 13 February 1974 National Academies p 5 Hawks Francis L The Author of Uncle Philip s Conversations 1842 2 The Adventures of Henry Hudson New York D Appleton amp Company p 37 Archived from the original on 16 November 2006 Etting Vivian 2009 The Rediscovery of Greenland during the Reign of Christian IV Journal of the North Atlantic 2 Norse Greenland Selected Papers from the Hvalsey Conference 2008 159 JSTOR 26686946 Dutch captain David Dannel sic a mermaid with flowing hair a b Senter Phil Snow Venretta B September 2015 Solution to a 300 year old zoological mystery Archives of Natural History 40 2 257 262 doi 10 3366 anh 2013 0172 Abstract a b c d Broedel Hans Peter 2018 2 The Mermaid of Edam Meets Medical Science Empiricism and the Marvelous in Seventeenth Century Zoological Thought in Byars Jana Broedel Hans Peter eds Monsters and Borders in the Early Modern Imagination Routledge ISBN 9780429878855 a b c Bartholin Thomas 1654 Historia XI Sirenis se Marini Hominis Anatome Thomae Bartholini historiarum anatomicarum rariorum centuria I et II in Latin Copenhagen typis academicis Martzani sumptibus Petri Hauboldt bibl pp 186 191 and Plate Bartholin prope Brasiliam captus suit homo marinus 263 but Webster a Sea Man taken by the Merchants of the West India Company the latter omits mention of Brazil a b Scribner 2020 Sirene with certain popular features of a mermaid exposed breasts and a humanoid face odd webbed hands buttocks at the front a b c d e f g Bartholin 1654 loc cit this passage translated in Webster John 1677 Chap XV Of divers Creatures that have a real existence in Nature and yet by reason of their wonderous properties or seldom being seen have been taken for Spirits and Devils The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft London J M pp 285 286 Linne Carl von 1769 Caroli Linnaei Amoenitates academicae seu dissertationes variae physicae medicae botanicae antehac seorsim editae nunc collectae et auctae cum tabulis aeneis Vol 7 Leiden Apud Godefredum Kiesewetter p 324 Scribner Vaughn 29 September 2021 Mermaids and Tritons in the Age of Reason Public Domains Review Retrieved 27 July 2022 Scribner 2020 Francisci Erasmus 1668 Von den Meer Menschen Erasmi Francisci Ost und West Indischer wie auch Sinesischer Lust und Stats Garten Nuremburg Endter p 1412 and Plate XLVII 1 Meer Mensch filier So bey Bragefanger Die Riepe Die abgefleischte hand 2 Schwimmende Firer from Erasmi Francisci Ost und West indischer 1668 JCB Archive of Early American Images John Carter Brown Library Retrieved 27 July 2022 a b c Jonston Johannes 1657 Titulus III Caput 1 De pisce an8rwpomorfw amp Remoranti Historiae naturalis de piscibus et cetis libri 5 Amstelodamum Ioannem Iacobi fil Schipper pp 146 147 Tab XL a b c d Jonston Johannes 1660 Boek I III Opschrift I Hooft St Van de visch Anthropomorphus oft die een menschen gestalte heeft en van de Remorant Beschryvingh van de Natuur der Vissen en bloedloze Water dieren Amsterdam I I Schipper p 168 Tab XL a b c Ojeda Alfonso 2020 Cinco historias de la conexion espanola con la India Birmania y China Desde la imprenta a la igualdad de genero Los Libros De La Catarata ISBN 9788413520643 a b c d e f Kircher Athanasius 1654 1641 Lib III Pars VI Caput II VI De Pisce Anthropomorpho seu Syrene sanguinem trahente Magnes sive De arte magnetica opus tripartitum 3 ed Rome Deuersin et Zanobius Masotti pp 531 532 Jacob Alexander ed 1987 Henry More The Immortality of the Soul Springer Martinus Nijhoff Publishers p 431 n293 7 ISBN 978 94 010 8112 2 Prichard James Cowles 1847 Researches Into the History of Mankind History of the Oceanic and American nations Sherwood Gilbert amp Piper p 58 Jongh Eddy de 2004 Fish Still Lifes by Dutch and Flemish Masters 1550 1700 Centraal Museum p 167 ISBN 9789059830059 a b c Colin Francisco in Spanish 1663 Lib I Cap XVII Algunas cosas naturales proprias y otras notables destas Islas II Peces y animales marginalia Pez Muller et seqq Labor Evangelica Ministerios Apostolicos de los Obreros de la Compania de Jesus Fundacion y Progressos de su Provincia en las Islas Filipinas Vol Parte I Madrid Por Joseph Fernandez de Buendia pp 80 Braunlein Peter in German Lauser Andrea 1993 Leben in Malula ein Beitrag zur Ethnographie der Alangan Mangyan auf Mindoro Philippinen Centaurus Verlagsgesellschaft p 438 n29 ISBN 9783890857916 a b c d Churchill Awnsham Churchill John eds 1704 Chapter V His Stay in Manila An Account of the Empire of China Historical Political Moral and Religious in A Collection of Voyages and Travels Some Now First Printed from Original Manuscripts Others Translated Out of Foreign Languages and Now First Publish d in English Vol 1 Black Swan in Pater Noster Row p 249 a b c d Cummins J S ed 2017 Book VI The Author s Travels 1646 1674 Chapter IV The Author s Stay at Manila The Travels and Controversies of Friar Domingo Navarrete 1616 1686 Volume I Taylor amp Francis ISBN 9781317013419 The incidents of capture and localities are as follows the actual sources authors will be elaborated in the citation footnotes to follow In Kircher and Jonston s writings the place of capture is given as the Insulas Pictorum near the Visayas 275 272 namely the Island s of the Artist s 276 A group of islands within the Visayas including e g Mindoro was known as the Islas de los Pintados Islands of the Painted People 277 Therefore referring to the locality as somewher within the present day Visayas 274 The Dutch translation rendered the islands not as the Islands of the Painted Painters but as the Picten Islands in turn understood to mean the Islands of the Picts 278 Colin identified the habitat as the Philippine waters and Malacca Strait of Malacca 279 Nvarette while visiting Mindro aforementioned island 280 writes of the abundance of fish and the presence of woman fish under the heading o NanboanNanboan 281 namely Naujan 282 Athanasius Kircher Magnes sive De arte magnetica 1641 275 whose account is reiterated in Johannes Jonston Historiae naturalis de piscibus et cetis libri 5 in Latin 1657 Dutch translation Beschryvingh van de Natuur der Vissen en bloedloze Water dieren 1660 273 Also Francisco Colin es 1663 Labor evangelica 279 Domingo Fernandez Navarrete Tratados historicos politicos ethicos y religiosos de la monarchia de China 1676 281 282 Polistico Edgie 2017 dugong In Haase Donald ed Philippine Food Cooking amp Dining Dictionary Mandaluyong Anvil Publishing Inc ISBN 9786214200870 a b Blair Emma Helen Robertson James Alexander eds 1906 Manila and the Philippines about 1650 concluded Domingo Fernandez Navarrete O P Madrid 1675 From his Tratados historicos The Philippine Islands 1493 1803 Explorations Vol 38 Edward Gaylord Bourne notes A H Clark Company p 29 Castiglioni 2021 p 22 Otsuki Gentaku 1786 Rokumotsu shinshi fols 24 25 Appropriating remedy for hemorrhages which is Castiglioni s paraphrase 287 of Ōtsuki Gentaku ja writing shiketsu 止血 血を止む stop the bleeding in his Japanese translation of Johnston 288 Cummins 2017 p 82 footnote Colin on the Pez Muller marginalia or Pexe Muller Duyon text me parecio su carne como de torcino gordo Navarrete Cummins tr singular virtue against Defluxions 282 281 Pietsch 1991 p 7 9 a b Renard Louis 1754 monstre ou sirenne Poissons ecrevisses et crabes de diverses couleurs et figures extraordinaires que l on trouve autour des isles Moluques et sur les cotes des terres Australes peints d apres nature Ouvrage quit contient un trr e grand nombre de poissons les plus beaux amp les plus rares de la Mer des Indes Baltazar Coyett Adrien van der Stell 2 ed Amsterdam Chez Reinier amp Josue Ottens Planche LVII Nº 240 ミシガン大学蔵本 e g Carrington 1957 pp xi 11 Bassett 1892 amp p191 sfnp error no target CITEREFBassett1892p191 help Pietsch 1991 pp 12 13 a b c Burr Brooks M 18 February 1997 Reviewed Work s Fishes Crayfishes and Crabs Louis Renard s Natural History of the Rarest Curiosities of the Seas of the Indies by Theodore W Pietsch Copeia 1997 1 241 243 doi 10 2307 1447871 JSTOR 1447871 a b Pietsch 1991 pp 5 7 Hayward Philip 2018b Chapter 5 From Dugongs to Sinetrons Syncretic Mermaids in Indonesian Culture In Hayward Philip ed Scaled for Success The Internationalisation of the Mermaid Indiana University Press pp 89 106 ISBN 978 0861967322 a b Hayward 2018 pp 93 94 300 citing Pietsch 1991 Louis Renard 1678 79 1746 298 Poissons ecrevisses et crabes de diverses couleurs et figures extraordinaires que l on trouve autour des isles Moluques et sur les cotes des terres Australes Fish Lobsters Crabs in Various Colors and Extraordinary Shapes as Found in the Moluccas and on the Coasts of Australia first edition 1719 second edition 1754 299 301 an of various marine organisms of the Moluccas region including this mermaid 299 Pietsch 1991 pp 7 13 a b Valentyn Francois 1726 Verhandling der Water Dieren 3de Hoofdstuck I Van de Zee Menschen Treatise on the Aquatic Animals of Ambon Oud en Nieuw Oost Indien in Dutch Vol 3 Dordrecht Amsterdam Johannes van Braam Gerard onder de Linden pp 330 332 ISBN 9789051942286 Pl Internet Archive a b According to Valentijn Valentyn 1726 Oud en Nieuw Oost Indien 3 Part 1 pp 331 332 304 quoted in English translation in Pietsch 1991 p 7 Pietsch 1991 pp 1 15 Francois Valentyn Oud en Nieuw Oost Indien vol 3 304 a b Suarez Thomas 2012 Chapter 15 The Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries Francois Valentijn and Johannes van Keulen Early Mapping of Southeast Asia The Epic Story of Seafarers Adventurers and Cartographers Who First Mapped the Regions Between China and India Tuttle Publishing pp 232 ISBN 9781462906963 Pietsch 1991 p 7 Yoshioka Ikuo in Japanese September 1993 Ningyo no shinka 人魚の進化 PDF Comparative folklore studies for folklore studies of Asia Tsukuba University 8 38 ISSN 0915 7468 URI Hayward 2018a p 93 Pietsch 1991 p 5 I had the curiosity to lift its fins in front and in back and found it was shaped like a woman Mr Van der Stel asked me for it and I gave it to him I think he sent it to Holland English tr Pietsch 1991 p 12 Dennys Nicholas Belfield 1876 The Folk Lore of China and Its Affinities with That of the Aryan and Semitic Races Trubner and Co pp 114 115 Fan Duan ang 范端昂 ed 1988 Yuezhong jianwen 粤中见闻 Guangdong Guangdonggaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe p 134 ISBN 9787536100862 Myths amp Legends Tourism Victoria archived from the original on 16 October 2008 Folklore Examples in British Columbia Folklore 11 January 2009 Retrieved 24 April 2012 A Mermaid in the Susquehanna YorksPast York Daily 8 June 1881 Archived from the original on 19 September 2015 Retrieved 2 January 2016 Is a Mermaid Living Under the Sea in Kiryat Yam Haaretz 12 August 2009 Archived from the original on 7 January 2010 Retrieved 22 September 2015 Mermaid Sightings in Zimbabwe Spark Debate Over Traditional Beliefs VOA 3 February 2012 Retrieved 17 May 2020 Altick Richard Daniel 1978 Chapter 22 Life and Death in the Animal Kingdom The Shows of London Harvard University Press pp 302 303 ISBN 9780674807310 Webster Hugh Alexander 1891 Mermaids and Mermen The Encyclopaedia Britannica A Dictionary of Arts Sciences and General Literature Encyclopedia Britannica Vol 16 9 ed pp 44 45 Babin Tom 28 September 2012 Up close and personal with the Banff Merman at the Banff Indian Trading Post Calgary Herald Archived from the original on 8 September 2019 Retrieved 23 August 2019 Bondeson Jan 1999 The Feejee mermaid The Feejee mermaid and other essays in natural and unnatural history Ithaca NY Cornell University Press pp x 38 40 ISBN 0 801 43609 5 Bondeson 1999 pp 61 62 Gudger E W 1934 Jenny Hanivers Dragons and Basilisks in the Old Natural History Books and in Modern Times The Scientific Monthly 38 6 512 JSTOR 15490 Aramata Hiroshi Ōya Yasunori 2021 Ningyo 人魚 Aramata Hiroshi no Nihon zenkoku yōkai mappu アラマタヒロシの日本全国妖怪マップ in Japanese Shuwa system p 53 ISBN 9784798065076 a b c Honma Yoshiharu 1 October 2005 Nihon korai no ningyo ryugunotsukai no seibutsugaku 日本古来の人魚 リュウグウノツカイの生物学 Japan Sea Rim Studies in Japanese 11 126 127 Patten Robert L 1992 Chapter 15 Thorough bred Artist George Cruikshank s Life Times and Art, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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