Voices From The Deep: The Folklore of The Mermaid

Voices From The Deep The Folklore Of

The

Mermaid Episode 26 Supplement Featuring

Mark Norman

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In This Episode: Host: Mark Norman Art Direction: Melissa Martell Graphic Design: MDM Creative Audio Production: Circle of Spears

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Cover Image: fish scale background courtesy of Pixelbay Opposite page: Clonfert Cathedral Mermaid Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

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The Folklore Podcast Supplement: The Folklore Of The Mermaid With Mark Norman

Background image: Stone Wall Background Courtesy of Photostock.

Image page 4: The Mermaid Of Zennor, St Ives.

Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

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Voices From The Deep The Folklore Of

The

Mermaid Featuring

Mark Norman

There is a village not far from St Ives, between the north coast of Cornwall and the wilds of the moors to the West.

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his village is called Zennor and its medieval church is home to a very unusual carving, more reminiscent of local folklore than of Christian iconography.

Carved into the end of one of the benches is the figure of a woman. She has long hair and holds in her hands a mirror and a comb, as people of her type often do.

Her type, as can be seen from the long tail to the bottom of the carving, is a mermaid.

This is a representation of the Mermaid of Zennor.

The local lore tells that this is the lady, if indeed she was a lady, who was responsible for the disappearance of one Mathew Trewella, a young local resident who was said to be Zennor’s best singer. The lady appeared in the area from nowhere and would attend the church on a Sunday from time to time. She was always well dressed and very attractive, and so naturally became the focus of many people’s attention.

Mathew Trewella decided that he would try to discover more about who the mysterious woman was and so he took it upon himself to follow her after the service one day.

He followed her from the church and towards the cliffs nearby ‌ and he was never seen again.

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The Folklore Podcast Supplement: The Folklore Of The Mermaid With Mark Norman

It was a good few years, according to the story, before anybody learned of the fate of young Mathew. The news was imparted to the captain of a ship who had anchored off nearby Pendower Cove by the very same mermaid, who had swum alongside the vessel. She told the captain that her name was Morveren and that she was one of the daughters of Llyr, the king of the ocean. She told the captain that she wanted to get back home to her children, and to her husband Mathew, but that she couldn’t because the anchor he had dropped was blocking the entrance to her house. She therefore asked the captain if he would mind moving.

Although Morveren had been perfectly pleasant and civil, and given no cause for alarm, the captain was aware of the stories of mermaids being unlucky and so quickly headed out to sea. The bench end, it is said, was carved as a warning to young male churchgoers of the dangers of beautiful young women.

As with many legendary stories of course, there is more than one version of events. Another tale has Morveren being drawn to the church by Mathew’s singing. Here she would sit listening to him, sitting at the back inconspicuously disguised as a human.

On one occasion, Mathew and Morveren’s eyes met and they instantly fell in love, but this scared the mermaid. She ran for the sea with Mathew and several others on her heels but tripped on her dress, affording the lad a glimpse of the end of her fish tail. Despite her protestations that she belonged in the water, Mathew followed her, insisting “I will go with ye. For with ye is where I belong.”

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He picked the mermaid up and ran with her into the sea to never be seen again. But according to this legend, Mathew continued to sing from his new home in the water. If the conditions were good then he would sing softly and high. But if Llyr was going to make the seas unfavourable then his song would be deeper. By this means, the fishermen of the area would know when to go out on the water in pursuit of their catch and when to stow their boats in port and remain safely at home.

When we think of the mermaid, many of us would probably automatically bring to mind the cultural icon stereotype popularised particularly by the Hollywood film or TV show: a beautiful woman with a fish's tail, inevitably involved in some form of love story. We find her portrayed as Ariel in the Disney animation which sanitises hugely the original story of “The Little Mermaid”. There are no happy endings in the written original where the mermaid ultimately sacrifices much. Daryll Hannah plays one in the film ‘Splash’. But these are very much removed from many of the folkloric roots of the mer-creature found in cultures around the world. Where does the representation of the mer-creature come from? How is it represented differently around the world? And why for example, as in the introduction, should it be shown as an icon in places of Christian worship?

To find the beginnings of the mermaid we need to go back to ancient Assyria where we find the origin story starting to take shape around 1000BC. The goddess Atargatis fell in love with a mortal man, a shepherd, whom she accidentally killed.

With much regret for this event, Atargatis tried to punish herself by undergoing a transformation into a fish. But the tales tell that the ocean was not sufficient to conceal her divine beauty, with the result that she ended up being half woman and half fish. Rather than the accepted modern symbol of the mermaid as fish from the waist down (which has not always been the representation in all cultures) the earliest representations of Atargatis in fact show her as predominantly fish, but bearing a human head and arm.

Mermaid stories may often be found linked with shipwrecks too, deriving from the siren and also with other sea-bourne dangers such as drowning or bad storms. They have traditionally strong links with weather lore and in fact there is a tale of Alexander the Great’s sister being turned into a mermaid and in this form asking sailors whether her brother were still alive or not. The correct answer to the question would bring them fair weather, but answer incorrectly and they would suffer storms and bad conditions.

At least some of the attributes of the traditional mermaid motif also probably take their roots from the sirens of Greek mythology. Traditionally, the sirens are a race of creatures who use their beautiful singing to lure unwary sailors to sail close, whereupon their ships are wrecked on the rocks that the sirens inhabit. This idea of the beautiful singing voice is found in many stories of mermaids also. In an interesting reversal of this attribute, the story of the Mermaid of Zennor earlier has the human as the singer with the mermaid becoming entranced instead by the voice. The fact remains however that the singing is important.

Sailors were very aware of these attributes and mermaids presented a real threat through maritime superstitions in earlier times. Certainly within British folklore traditions the mermaid is usually seen as an ill omen of some kind.

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The Folklore Podcast Supplement: The Folklore Of The Mermaid With Mark Norman

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The Folklore Podcast Supplement: The Folklore Of The Mermaid With Mark Norman

For example, there are fragmentary reports found around the area of Cromarty in Scotland which refer to a mermaid that was believed to live in the area and swim to shore where she would sit and braid her golden hair and defy men to befriend her. It was said that to any who did she would grant three wishes, and indeed one man named John Reid was said to have met his beloved through this means. However, the mermaid in this piece of lore would only use her powers for good through compulsion from those gaining wishes. Otherwise the sight of her may well presage ill or evil. Folklore of the area says that after she was sighted washing bloody clothes in the water of the loch one day, the church roof subsequently collapsed, killing many people who were inside at the time.

If you listen to The Folklore Podcast regularly, you will by now be starting to recognise where we find common themes across many folkloric tales. We may call these motifs. Remember that folklore is often about symbolism - a type of language which much be decoded like any other in order to find its meaning. We see that here. A church roof in this story collapses and kills worshipers. In the case of the Black Dog of Bungay which we have covered in Season 1 with an episode on ghostly dog apparitions, we find a demonic black dog attacking the church and killing parishioners. The symbols are different - the mermaid and the dog - but the outcome is the same; disaster in a religious place. We might therefore understand that the supernatural is being used to explain how such a tragedy may befall people in a house of god. Folklore is full of commonalities across time, geography and culture. It is part of what makes it such a rich and fascinating subject. Consider the idea of the three wishes granted in the story from Cromerty. We find that in other cultures’ lore and tales too, such as with the genie. The mer-creature appears here also in the tales of “1001 Arabian Nights” and we will return to this story later.

For now, let’s go back briefly to the idea of the siren. Linguistically, this mythological creature lends its name to a class of aquatic mammal: the Sirenia. This grouping includes creatures such as the dugong and the manatee which have evolved over the years to adapt to a marine environment.

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They look very ineffective for living in the water but in fact are hugely hydrodynamic and very strong in the water. Aside from using a paddle for driving them forwards and arms for changing direction, the Sirenia have two small bones in their muscle structure which are the last vestiges of hind limbs from early evolutions. It is no wonder, then, before the 1850s when the creatures started to be better understood, sailors would call these animals mermaids. When Christopher Columbus reported seeing mermaids during his exploration of the Caribbean, these were probably the animals that he was observing.

In much of Africa, and in others areas where African peoples ended up settling for various reasons such as parts of the Americas, we find the deity Mami Wata venerated. Mami Wata, whose name and its traditional spelling comes from the Pidgin English for Mummy Water, is a water spirit who is often depicted as a type of mer-creature; usually a mermaid form although sometimes as a male. In the tales where Mami Wata is not depicted as fully human in form, the spirit will have a human torso and fish-like hind quarters. Mami Wata will often carry trinkets which in many stories include combs and mirrors, a parallel we find in the more Western mermaid motifs.

Mami Wata is often associated with bringing good fortune to those who encounter her. She would abduct people to her own realm, either underwater or in the spirit world, and those who she chooses to let return will be bestowed with riches or good luck. In other tales men may find her by a river. In these versions of the story she will run off when discovered, leaving her chattels behind. If the man takes these away, then the spirit will appear to him in a dream and ask for them back. If he agrees, she will further ask for sexual fidelity from the dreamer. To accept this request will bring good fortune, but to refuse means bad luck.

A freshwater equivalent to Mami Wata in many ways is that of Melusine or Melusina who is a water spirit in some European folklore.

In Slavic folk traditions the idea of the siren is represented somewhat differently, where it is most commonly seen as the restless undead spirit.

Here the creatures are called Rusalkas and many authors from areas within Russia and the Ukraine, for example, have written on how the Rusalka will be a very dangerous maiden to desire. This parallels the Greek where the sirens are beautiful and yet deadly. The composer Dvorak wrote his opera “Rusalka” on this folklore. The Rusalka is not half human and half fish like the mermaid, but rather a representation of universal beauty like the siren. She may be freed if her death is avenged but usually she lures men to their deaths. When the Rusalka gets hold of a man, her body is said to become slippery (like the bottom half of a traditional mermaid) so that he may not get purchase as he tried to avoid drowning.

He was going to give up but his wife encourages him to try again and on this occasion he catches a merman in his net. The merman is also called Abdullah and they become partners and trade together. The human Abdullah trades in fruit and the merman in precious jewels.

Not all cultures, however, see the mermaid as a bringer of ill luck or worse. In Thailand, for instance, the mermaid motif is known as Suvannamaccha. She appears in the Thai and South East Asian versions of Ramayana as a mermaid princess and is a popular figure within the folklore of these areas. We may find representations of Suvannamaccha frequently in Thailand on cloths or in frames where they may be hung in houses or businesses to bring good fortune.

Although Abdullah the fisherman becomes sonin-law to the King, he continues to trade with Abdullah the merman who one day invites his partner to his underwater home for a feast. The merman gives the fisherman an ointment so that he may breathe safely underwater. The food eaten by the merman and his kind is raw fish and Abdullah the fisherman sees many wondrous things. However, one that disturbs the human is the fact that the mer-people celebrate at their funerals. He explains to the merman that humans do not do this, but that funerals are a time of mourning. At this the merman casts Abdullah out, saying that he cannot trust someone who does not rejoice in returning a gift to Allah. The fisherman continues to prosper and have good fortune, but he does not see Abdullah the Merman again.

We have spent some time considering some different versions of the mermaid, but we must not be too gender specific! At times I have used the phrase mer-creature, because some of these forms such as Mami Wata may appear in female or male guises. But the merman is, of course, recognised in folklore throughout the world. Particularly in Mesopotamian art, the merman is far more common than the mermaid. But generally, traditions and alleged sightings are, in most countries, far less common than with the mermaid They are however recorded. Let us start by going back to a story that I referred to earlier from the Middle Eastern cultural canon and the tales of 1001 Arabian Nights.

The tale of Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman is told by Scheherazade on the 940th to 946th nights.

There was a fisherman named Abdullah. He had a large family but was struggling to provide for them because he was not catching any finish.

One day a sheikh who is investigating the theft of jewellery from the Queen sees Abdullah the fisherman pawning jewels and falsely accuses him of the theft. The Queen intercedes because she recognises that the gems are not hers and, by way of apology, the King buys all of the jewels from Abdullah. In addition he also grants him the hand of his daughter the Princess in marriage.

Another example of a folk tale featuring a merman may be found in the book Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry which was compiled by William Butler Yeats in 1888. The story of ‘The Soul Cages’ written by T. Crofton Croker tells of a fisherman called Jack Dogherty from the coast of County Clare. The young lad is taken by a merman to a dry land at the bottom of the sea where he is given a meal. The merman explains that he traps the souls of drowned sailors in lobster pots, which he sets when he knows that a storm is due. Jack and the merman strike up a friendship which lasts for many years and during this time Jack secretly visits the merman’s home to release the souls of the sailors and send them on their way. The tale ends with Jack calling on the merman to find him gone, with no explanation being provided.

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The Folklore Podcast Supplement: The Folklore Of The Mermaid With Mark Norman

If you trace the roots of this tale back you find that, ultimately, it is a work of fiction which has been adapted from German folk tales. Of course, nothing in folklore as we have learned many times is clear cut, and there are in fact similar tales in other parts of Ireland which are relevant to the area. What these tales do tell us about the Merrow (the term by which mermaids and mermen are known in Ireland) is that whereas the women are beautiful the mermen are ugly and monstrous.

As with the tale of the Mermaid of Zennor with which this examination first started, we therefore find stories of interbreeding between mermaids and human males because mermen are not a good catch!

We may here have the explanation for why we are finding examples of the mermaid as an icon in Christian churches and the like. The earliest example of a mermaid in an English church may be that found in the Norman chapel at Durham castle. Another good example is found on a misericord in Carlisle Cathedral. This carving has long since lost one arm with the traditional comb held in the hand, but the other hand does still hold a mirror. This particular example dates from the early 1400s. When we consider the common use of folk tales as education and especially in Christianised forms as morality tales, it might be the case that these church examples on bench ends and bosses and the like are designed to serve as warnings against the dangers of desiring beautiful women.

Artistic interpretations of mermaid lore are, of course, not just restricted to churches. Everyone is probably familiar with the famous statue of Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid which sits on a rock in Copenhagen, Denmark, having been there since August 1913. Less well known is the fact that there are copies of this statue in 13 other locations around the world.

There are in fact many mermaid statues to be discovered globally. Brazil has one of the copies of the Copenhagen statue but also has an unusual mermaid sculpture at Praia de Sereia.

Situated 10 miles to the North of Maceio, this name literally translates as Mermaid Beach. The large statue is mounted on a reef out from the shore, which at some times of the day is completely submerged, although at other times it can be accessed by foot. A much older wooden statue may be found just a few miles to the south of this beach.

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The Folklore Podcast Supplement: The Folklore Of The Mermaid With Mark Norman

Although no evidence exists for the mermaid outside of the sphere of folklore, sightings are recorded at many points throughout history and these continue right up to the present day. In 2012, workers on a reservoir in Zimbabwe refused to work because they claimed that they were chased away from the site by a mermaid. This was not the only site where these claims were reported and mermaids attacks were not confined to these workers in that country. Mermaid belief is still very strong in this area and other news stories report of people being attacked, assaulted or even killed by assailants described as mermaids.

In fact, there is much of interest to folklorists in these programmes and they are worth watching for that reason, as well as being good fun. One particularly good underwater sequence, where divers in a submersible are startled by a mer-creature’s hand on the window of their craft, may however be rendered slightly less effective if I reveal that the creature in question was actually an actor called Dave!

Culturally, of course, this may be a motif that is being ascribed to something or someone, but it is a matter of all seriousness in the same way that witchcraft allegations against children in some African townships are a very serious concern. In other cultures, mermaid sightings may sometimes be something else entirely.

Many people are familiar with hoaxes such as the FeeJee mermaid. Exhibited at one time by showman Phineas Taylor Barnum, this mummified exhibit comprised the front half of a shaved monkey sewn to the tail of a fish.

In the 21st century, reports and alleged evidence may be a little more sophisticated. In 2016, photos emerged of a rotting corpse discovered on a beach in the UK town of Norfolk. The body appeared to resemble a decomposing mermaid and some people came out to claim it as such. Others speculated that it was the rotting remains of a dead seal. A more logical explanation may be found when you consider that the discoverer, Mr Jones, is a selfconfessed keen modeller, particularly of ‘creepy figures’ and is a member of a DIY Horror and Halloween social media group.

More sophisticated again are the CGI sequences used in two spoof documentaries broadcast on ‘Animal Planet’ about evidence for the existence of mermaids. The programmes, one of which was called ‘Mermaids - the Body Found’ caused great controversy because they were essentially dramas with actors playing the alleged experts and yet were broadcast on a legitimate documentary channel.

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Background: Books Courtesy of Open Book Library Education

SUGGESTED READING Alexander, S. Mermaids: The Myths, Legends and Lore. 2017.

Adams Media Kingshill, S and Westwood, J. The Fabled Coast. Arrow. 2014 Kingshill, S. Mermaids. Little Toller. 2015 Lao, M. Seduction and the Secret Power of Women: The Lure of Sirens and Mermaids. Inner Traditions. 2007 Muir, T. The Mermaid Bride and other Orkney Folk Tales.

Orcadian Ltd. 1998 Osborne, M.P. Mermaid Tales from Around the World. Scholastic US, 1999

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