MERMAIDS HAVE SPLASHED ABOUT the waters of the world for millennia. But where do these lovely creatures of the sea come from, and how have they captured the imaginations of people around the globe? Here we’ll explore the origins of these mysterious aquatic beings, from the streams and rivers of ancient Babylonia to the shining seas of the New World and beyond.
The Symbolism of Water
The sea has long been connected with emotions, intuition, and the unconscious. Deep, dark, and mysterious, the ocean still holds secrets we may never discover. We generally give water a feminine face, associating its changeable nature—its fertility and nourishment, its undulating and sensual rhythms—with women. The ocean’s duality mirrors that of mermaids—it brings food, but also devastating storms. So perhaps it’s no surprise to find the waters of the world populated by female sea creatures who can protect human beings or destroy them.
Psychoanalysts might explain mermaids as symbols of the male psyche—specifically of a man’s unconscious feminine side, or anima in Jungian terminology. A man who’s out of touch with his inner female might see women as alluring, yet frightening—an image that gets projected onto mermaids. Remember, it’s mostly men who see mermaids and it’s men whom these awesome beauties usually drown.
Life on Earth cannot survive without water, and our ancestors naturally attributed mystical powers to it. Ancient cultures worshiped powerful water goddesses whom they thought ruled the oceans, lakes, and rivers. In those long-ago times, when the universe was more mysterious and magical than it is today, people believed deities of all kinds controlled virtually every aspect of existence—and water divinities were among the most revered and feared. From these mighty gods and goddesses came the merfolk we know today.
Some early people thought human beings evolved from merfolk—and in a way, perhaps we did. Science tells us that all life originated in the sea, and human embryos develop from fish-like forms in the salty amniotic fluid of their mothers’ wombs. Maybe we love mermaids because when we look at them we see reflections of ourselves.
Of the Water Born
We depend on water for our very existence, so it’s no surprise that people have long attributed magical and divine properties to water. The word “mer” comes from the Old English mere, meaning sea. In French, the word for sea is mer and the word for mother is mere, suggesting that the sea is mother to us all.
And as the sea nurtures people from all cultures and walks of life, so, in one form or another, do mermaids appear in virtually all cultures past and present—and their stories are as colorful as the people who tell them.
The ancient Greeks called her sea goddess.
According to the Roman poet Ovid’s epic Metamorphoses, when the Trojans’ ships burned during the Trojan War, their wood transformed into the bodies of sea goddesses—or as Ovid described them, the “green daughters of the sea”—and mermaids were born.
The Celts called her merrow.
Merrow comes from muir, meaning “sea,” and oigh, meaning “maid.” An Irish legend says pagan women became mermaids when St. Patrick chased them from the land in the process of converting Ireland from the Old Religion to Christianity.
The Latvians call her nara, and the Estonians call her näkineitsi.
According to the folklore of the indigenous people of Latvia and Estonia, children who were drowned in the Red Sea by the Pharaoh morphed into mermaids.
The question of how mermaids came into being may never be answered—but that, too, is part of their mystery and mystique.
THE MERMAIDS OF NOAH’S ARK
Merfolk even appear in the beloved Bible story of Noah’s Ark, according to Christian mythology of the infamous flood. A fifteenth-century illustration from the notable Nuremberg Bible pictures a mermaid, a merman, and even a merdog swimming beside Noah’s Ark.
Half-Fish, Half-Human, and All Divine
“Darwin may have been quite correct in his theory that man descended from the apes of the forest, but surely woman rose from the frothy sea, as resplendent as Aphrodite on her scalloped chariot.”
—Margot Datz, A Survival Guide for Landlocked Mermaids 
Many ancient traditions viewed mermaids as more than simply enticing sirens of the deep—these beauties were divine. Water gods and goddesses governed the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers of the world. Stories of these deities have been handed down to us through the ages via oral tradition, art, and music.
The first recorded story of a mermaid comes to us from Assyria, circa 1000 B.C.E. Mythology tells us that Atargatis fell in love with a human being—a young shepherd—as gods and goddesses often did in those days. Some legends say she accidentally killed him; others say she became pregnant and was shocked when their daughter was born human. Either way, the distraught goddess threw herself into a lake. Legend has it that the water could not hide her otherworldly beauty, so she became a mermaid, half-fish, half-human—and remained divine.
But long before Atargatis, the ancient world honored its water gods and goddesses. The early Babylonians, for example, credited the man-fish god Ea (a.k.a. Oannes) with teaching humankind agriculture, architecture, and much more. The Phoenicians worshiped a half-fish, half-man god named Dagon. According to the Aborigines, life-giving spirits called yawkyawks, who looked like women with fishtails, resided in Australia’s sacred water holes. Ancient Greek and Roman art depicts water deities with bodies that combined the traits of humans and aquatic creatures, the most famous being the god Triton, son of the sea rulers Poseidon and Amphitrite.
Merfolk quite likely derived from these ancient divinities. Though less formidable than Ea, Dagon, Poseidon, and Amphitrite, mermaids and mermen possessed their own powers—from bestowing good luck on humans to brewing up ferocious storms at sea. Merfolk could be compassionate or malevolent—and might just as well destroy people as rescue them.
OF SHELLS AND CONCHES
Triton served as the “model” for the famous marble Fountain of Triton in Rome, sculpted by Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the mid-1600s. The fountain, considered to be one of Rome’s most beautiful, features the half-man, half-fish god seated on an open shell and blowing his signature conch.
Nymphs, Sprites, and Other Minor Divinities
Lots of lesser water deities also delighted the ancient world. The Greeks had a special fondness for nymphs, who had the sleek, svelte bodies of beautiful young women or girls—no scaly appendages. Sometimes the nymphs rode dolphins or other water creatures—a fishy link with their merfolk relatives. Our word nymph comes from the Greek nymphē. In English it means a young girl, often with seductive qualities. The Greeks categorized these feminine spirits according to the type of water they inhabited.
• Oceanids lived in the oceans.
• Nereids resided in the seas and the foam along rocky coastlines.
• Naiads preferred freshwater—lakes, rivers and streams, marshes, and even fountains.
But the Greeks weren’t the only ones who believed in water deities. Early Europeans, from the Mediterranean regions to Scandinavia, believed in water sprites—some playful, some dangerous—and they told tantalizing stories about mysterious beings who could breathe both water and air. Sprite comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning “spirit.” These elemental spirits cavorted in lakes, rivers, and waterfalls, sporting human-like bodies with blue-green skin. But these spirits lacked the mermaid’s characteristic fishtail—that feature was tacked on later, after sailors spread stories of mermaids around the world.
In Africa, water spirits including Mami Wata (see Chapter 8) not only appeared with fishtails, they also showed up with the extremities of snakes or crocodiles attached to their human torsos. Some of these spirits may have spawned tales of mermaids in the Caribbean regions, when slaves brought their folklore with them to the West.
MARRIAGE LORE
Greek lore says that if a man manages to steal a water nymph’s scarf he can force her to marry him.
Mixed Marriages
Some folklore suggests that mermaids evolved from trysts between gods and water nymphs, or between sea deities and humans. Greek and Roman gods frequently crossed species lines in their amorous adventures. The lusty Olympian Zeus, for instance, impregnated an oceanid named Metis, and Apollo was besotted with Chlidanope, a beautiful freshwater nymph.
Tales of “mixed marriages” between divinities, spirits, humans, and creatures of many types abound in mythology (remember the romance between a shepherd lad and the Assyrian goddess Atargatis, who supposedly launched the mermaid race?). Mermaids themselves frequently seek human partners, as did the little mermaid in Hans Christian Andersen’s famous story and the Greek ondines.
Myths, folklore, and occult texts dating back to ancient Greece speak of water elementals called ondines or undines. Elementals are nonphysical beings who inhabit the four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—and they can sometimes be seen by humans. Although modern occultism holds that ondines exist in all bodies of water, they were once believed to be freshwater spirits who lived in ponds, lakes, and waterfalls.
Ondines may have served as prototypes for mermaids. Like mermaids, they possess beautiful singing voices and are said to live forever. Some legends attest that an ondine can only gain a soul if she bears a child to a human man, an idea that reinforces the myths of unions between spirits and morals—as well as lore about mermaids’ desire for human mates. But in the German tale Sleep of Ondine, a mermaid’s marriage to a human turns into a tragedy. The heroine, a water nymph appropriately named Ondine, loses her immortality—and her mortal husband—after she bears him a child.
“These Nature spirits were held in the highest esteem, and propitiatory offerings were made to them. Occasionally, as the result of atmospheric conditions or the peculiar sensitiveness of the devotee, they became visible.”
—Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages
THE CURSE OF ONDINE
The “Curse of Ondine” is a term for congenital central hypoventilation syndrome, a potentially fatal form of sleep apnea. In the story Sleep of Ondine, the water nymph curses her husband when she catches him with another female by saying, “For as long as you are awake, you shall breathe. But should you ever fall into sleep, that breath will desert you.” When he could no longer stay awake and succumbed to sleep, he died.
Wishful Delusions?
“In several European languages, including French, Italian, and Spanish, the word for ‘mermaid’ is actually a derivative of ‘siren,’ while manatees and dugongs, those sea-mammals so often presented as the reality behind mermaid sightings, belong to the order Sirenia.”
—Gail-Nina Anderson, “Mermaids in Myth and Art,” www.forteantimes.com
Throughout the world, seafarers and people who live near water have long told tales of merfolk. Yet despite countless sightings over thousands of years, physical evidence of mermaids remains as elusive as that of Bigfoot. Some mermaid debunkers dismiss sailors’ claims as the wishful delusions of men who’ve been too long at sea or have drunk too much rum—or both. Perhaps the mermaid’s elusiveness is part of her mystique.
Other researchers suggest that the so-called “mermaids” seafarers reported seeing were really manatees, dugongs, or the now-extinct Steller’s sea cows. These aquatic mammals have large eyes and rather human-like faces, and at night or from a distance they might be mistaken for the legendary mermaids.
During his voyage back from the New World in 1493, Christopher Columbus wrote of spotting three mermaids playing in the waves in the Caribbean. Quite likely he actually saw manatees, for he reported that the mermaids were “not half as beautiful as they are painted” and their faces looked more like men’s than women’s.
Adult manatees and dugongs, however, grow up to 12 feet in length and weigh more than 1,000 pounds, whereas mermaids are usually described as being the size of humans. Furthermore, manatees prefer warm water—coastal waters, shallow rivers, and bays—and the largest manatee population today lives in Florida’s waters. This makes it unlikely that English explorer Henry Hudson saw manatees when he reported spying mermaids in the frigid sea near the Arctic Circle in 1608, during his search for a Northwest Passage.
Siren Sightings
Over a period of months in 2009, dozens of people claimed to have seen a mermaid cavorting in the waters off the coast of Israel. The sightings attracted crowds of curious people and prompted the town of Kiryat Yam, north of Haifa, to offer a $1 million prize to whoever could prove the mermaid really existed. The prize went uncollected.
Aquatic Anima
Noted Swiss analyst Carl G. Jung (1875–1961) proposed the idea that each person, regardless of gender, psychologically has both a masculine and a feminine side. He used the term anima to describe the feminine part of a man’s psyche, and noted that often men repress this part of themselves. According to Jung, when someone doesn’t integrate a facet of his nature he tends to project it outward and see it represented in his external circumstances—and he’s usually both attracted and repelled by what he sees.
Women sometimes report seeing mermaids, but mostly it’s men who spot them. And though mermen have been sighted throughout the centuries, mermaids make up the vast majority of these mysterious sea beings—at least according to legends and recorded accounts. Thus, Jungian analysts might describe mermaids as symbols of the anima, desirable, yet frightening, and infinitely fascinating as they emerge from the secret depths of the subconscious.
Could our current fascination with mermaids signify a resurgence of feminine power at the end of the Age of Pisces (the sign astrologers connect with the sea)? Mermaids are not only alluring; they’re also agents of life and death. Just as Ariel, the little mermaid in the Disney film, rescues the shipwrecked prince, mermaids may have shown up to redeem a world mankind has brought to the brink of ruin.
We may also be connected to mermaids in a physical way as well. Science tells us that mermaids’ oceanic home is also the source of human life—we all started out as aquatic creatures eons ago. As embryos, we developed from fish-like beings in the salty amniotic fluid of our mothers’ wombs, in order to finally become Homo sapiens. If that’s so, perhaps we share a similar ancestry with these mysterious and alluring water spirits. Maybe there’s a bit of merfolk in all of us.
“Mermaids and other female water spirits have appeared in folklore and religions around the world for many centuries. They may be viewed as symbols both of men’s idealization of the feminine and of men’s fear of women.”
—Professor Jonathan Cheek, “The Mermaid Myth”
The Sirens’ Song
Mermaids are notorious for enchanting male sailors with their beauty and irresistible singing voices—and then luring the bedazzled men to watery graves. In Homer’s 3,000-year-old epic poem Odyssey, the hero, Odysseus, is lashed to the mast of his ship to prevent him from jumping overboard when he hears the Sirens’ seductive voices, and his sailors stuff wax in their ears for protection.
Modern mermaids, however, have relinquished their devastating power over men. Yes, they still sing, but their songs are upbeat and pleasing instead of mesmerizingly murderous. Still sexy, but hardly siren-like, today’s comely creatures are fun-loving and flirtatious rather than frightening. In TV commercials they prefer to entice men into buying beer or blue jeans rather than dragging them down into the ocean’s depths.
In short, the mermaid has become a merchandising tool. Retail stores and online shops offer mermaid outfits for little girls—and grownups, too. You can buy mermaid lunchboxes, beach towels, jewelry, dishes, sheets, and Christmas tree ornaments, to name a few. Hollywood and Madison Avenue have tamed the mermaid. Her mystique has diminished, partly because she’s omnipresent now instead of rare. Today’s mermaid could be the girl next door (except for her fins, of course). Unlike her sultry, siren ancestors, the modern mermaid is safe—and it seems we prefer her that way.
Fanciful Fins
Maybe you weren’t born a mermaid, but don’t let that stop you from fulfilling your fantasy. These days anybody can become a mermaid—well, at least you can look like one. The first order of business is acquiring a mermaid tail. Online stores offer plenty of options for wannabe mermaids of all ages—and in all price ranges. Some of these fishy appendages can be worn in the water, like swimsuits. Others are designed specifically to attract attention on land.
Most mermaid tails these days are made from neoprene, nylon spandex, silicone, or urethane—alas, real scales and fins don’t last long out of water. And today’s faux fins afford plenty of bling. Sequins, pretty beads, and gossamer glitz are de rigueur among fashionable mermaids. Most tails slip on like long, tight skirts and some come with separate, attachable dorsal fins that you can use to propel yourself around the pool.
Of course, color is a consideration when it comes to choosing the right tail for you. Most mermaid tails take their inspiration from the sea itself and greens, blues, and watery shades predominate. But if you prefer purple, red, or yellow tails you won’t be disappointed—there’s something for everyone.
Depending on your finances, you can purchase a basic mermaid tail for about $60—or you can order custom-made extremities that run in the thousands of dollars. You can even rent a fishtail if masquerading as a mermaid is only a passing fancy. For more information, visit http://mermaidtails.net for a listing of mermaid tails and other accouterments for sale.