Mermaid
| A Mermaid by John William Waterhouse | |
| Mythology | World mythology |
|---|---|
| Grouping | Mythological |
| Sub-grouping | Water spirit |
| Country | Worldwide |
| Habitat | Ocean, sea |
| Similar creatures | Merman Siren Ondine |
A male version of a mermaid is known as a "merman" and in general both males and females are known as "merfolk" or "merpeople". A "merboy" is a young merman.
Overview and etymology
"Mermaid" is a compound of mere, the Old English word for "sea", and maid, a girl or young woman.[1] The equivalent term in Old English was merewif.[2]In modern times, the mermaid is used as an official animal/mascot of many mythical stories involving pirates and the sea. It is also associated with "sea cows" that are called manatees. Sailors would see the animals and categorize them as mythical mermaids.
Traditionally, mermaids have been depicted unclothed. When censorship is an issue, most prominently in movies, effort is made to have the mermaids’ long hair cover their breasts. In areas with strong censorship, notably in some U.S. family movies, mermaids have been wearing different variants of tops or swimsuits or with shells.
The sirens of Greek mythology are sometimes portrayed in later folklore as mermaid-like and thus are often considered to be the same or similar creatures.[3] In stories of mermaids, some would use their beauty and charm to lure sailor men to their deaths; sirens would use their singing to lure sailors toward rocks, causing their ships to sink.[3] Other related types of mythical or legendary creatures are water fairies (e.g., various water nymphs) and selkies, animals that can transform themselves from seals to humans.[citation needed]
History
Ancient Near East
The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria, ca. 1000 BC. The goddess Atargatis, mother of Assyrian queen Semiramis, loved a mortal shepherd and unintentionally killed him. Ashamed, she jumped into a lake to take the form of a fish, but the waters would not conceal her divine beauty. Thereafter, she took the form of a mermaid-human above the waist, fish below—though the earliest representations of Atargatis showed her as a fish with a human head and arm, similar to the Babylonian Ea. The Greeks recognized Atargatis under the name Derketo. Prior to 546 BC, the Milesian philosopher Anaximander proposed that mankind had sprung from an aquatic species of animal. He thought that humans, with their extended infancy, could not have survived otherwise.A popular Greek legend turns Alexander the Great's sister, Thessalonike, into a mermaid after she died.[4] She lived, it was said, in the Aegean and when she encountered a ship, she asked its sailors only one question: "Is King Alexander alive?" (Greek: "Ζει ο Βασιλιάς Αλέξανδρος;"), to which the correct answer was: "He lives and reigns and conquers the world" (Greek: "Ζει και βασιλεύει και τον κόσμο κυριεύει"). This answer pleased her so she calmed the waters and wished the ship farewell. Any other answer would spur her into a rage. She would raise a terrible storm, with certain doom for the ship and every sailor on board.[5][6]
Lucian of Samosata in Syria (2nd century AD) in De Dea Syria ("Concerning the Syrian Goddess") wrote of the Syrian temples he had visited:
One Thousand and One Nights
The One Thousand and One Nights collection includes several tales featuring "Sea People", such as Djullanar the Sea-girl. Unlike the depiction 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, the children of such unions sharing in the ability to live underwater.In another Nights tale, "Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman", the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater submarine society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land, in that the underwater society follows a form of primitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist. Other Nights tales deal with lost ancient technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and catastrophes which overwhelmed them.[8]
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.[9] "Julnar the Sea-Born and Her Son King Badr Basim of Persia" is yet another Nights tale about mermaids.
When sailors come the mermaids sing, and some men are led straight to their doom. If they follow the mermaids' lovely and beautiful voices, they do not know what they are doing or where they're going.
China
In some ancient fairy tales of China, the mermaid was a special creature whose tears could turn into priceless pearls. Mermaids could also weave an extremely valuable material, translucent and beautiful.
Claimed sightings
Claimed sightings of dead or living mermaids have come from places as diverse as Java and British Columbia. There are two Canadian reports from the area of Vancouver and Victoria, one from sometime between 1870 and 1890, the other from 1967.[27][28] In some of the earliest accounts of Blackbeard's sail logs in the BBC documentary Pirates, he instructed his crew on several voyages to steer away from charted waters which he called "enchanted" for fear of Merfolk or mermaids, which Blackbeard and many members of the crew reported seeing and documenting.[29] These sighting were often recounted and shared by many sailors and pirates who believed the mermaids were bad luck and would bewitch them into giving up their gold and dragging them to the bottom of the seas.In August 2009, the town of Kiryat Yam in Israel offered a prize of $1 million for anyone who could prove the existence of a mermaid off its coast, after dozens of people reported seeing a mermaid leaping out of the water like a dolphin and doing aerial tricks before returning to the depths.[30] The prize has not yet been awarded.
In February 2012, work on two reservoirs near the towns of Gokwe and Mutare in Zimbabwe stopped when workers refused to work there, claiming that mermaids had hounded them away from the sites. The claim was reported by Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, Water Resources Minister.[31]
Symbolism
According to Dorothy Dinnerstein’s book, The Mermaid and the Minotaur, human-animal hybrids such as the minotaur and the mermaid convey the emergent understanding of the ancients that human beings were both one with and different from animals:
Art and literature
See also: Mermaids in popular culture
One influential image was created by John William Waterhouse, from 1895 to 1905, entitled A Mermaid, (see the top of this article). 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 collection of the Royal Academy.[34]
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