—from John Leyden’s nineteenth-century ballad, “The Mermaid” 
WHEN YOU PICTURE A MERMAID, what do you see? A mythical creature whose head and body, from the pelvis up, resemble that of a gorgeous human female? A creature with long, flowing hair, smooth skin, and full, shapely breasts? A beauty who, from the pelvis down, sports the greenish, scaly tail of a fish? This general description covers the most basic characteristics we’ve come to associate with mermaids over the centuries—but various cultures in different times and places have put their own spins on these seagoing, hybrid beauties. Some mermaids are innocently beautiful, others are terrifyingly seductive. What does the true mermaid look like? Let’s find out.
Fish Tales
“That sea-maid’s form, of pearly light,
Was whiter than the downy spray,
And round her bosom, heaving bright,
Her glossy, yellow ringlets play.”
—from John Leyden’s nineteenth-century ballad, “The Mermaid”
Although we’re used to thinking of mermaids as beautiful, myth and folklore tell us that this wasn’t always the case. The Speculum Regale, a thirteenth-century Norwegian text (also called the King’s Mirror), described mermaids as Neanderthal-like beasts with fishtails and scales on their lower bodies, large webbed hands, terrifying faces, wide mouths, and wrinkled cheeks—hardly the comely creatures we think of today!
The ancient Babylonian god Ea (or Oannes) initially appeared on the scene wearing a cloak made of fish scales; later images show him as a half-man, half-fish merman. Pliny the Elder, who lived in Italy during the first century C.E., wrote some of the earliest “scientific” accounts of mermaids in his extensive compilation Natural History—he described them as “rough and scaled all over.”
The Assyrian goddess Atargatis, who legend says became our first mermaid, is depicted on ancient coins as a fish standing upright on its tail and wearing the head of a human woman. Some early artwork shows her with two legs as well as a tail.
The Roman poet Ovid described the Greek merman, Triton, as having the upper body of a human and the tail of a fish, but his shoulders were “barnacled with sea-shells.” The infamous Greek Sirens, whose enchanting songs lured seamen to their deaths, started off as bird-women, and only later exchanged their feathers for fishtails. Other sources report merfolk as lacking scales and tails altogether.
Siren Sightings
In July 1833, six fishermen off Scotland’s Isle of Yell hauled aboard a mermaid who had become tangled in their lines. The men described her as being about three feet in length with “bristles extending from her head to her shoulders that could be raised or lowered.” Other notations concerning the incident added that the mermaid lacked scales, fins, or gills. The skipper told the story to a Mr. Edmondson who repeated it to a Natural History Professor at the University of Edinburgh. When all was said and done it had been decided that it was “quite impossible” for six Shetland fishermen to mistake another type of sea-creature for a mermaid.