The mermaid is usually depicted as a girl with a fish tail, but she can have a pair of legs and a pair of tails, which, in turn, can be not only fish, but also dolphin or serpentine. She sings wonderful songs, and sometimes she also plays the harp. In addition to mermaids, there are also "mermaids" sometimes just as romantic, and sometimes hot-tempered and angry. Mermaids love to bask in the sun on the coastal sand or on the rocks, combing their long hair with combs. They are found not only in the seas, but also in lakes, rivers and even wells. In Russia - in the whirlpools.
An unknown correspondent writes: “That year we rested on the Sea of Azov. Once I, a 12-year-old boy, walked waist-deep in water, bypassing shallows and depressions that alternated smoothly, and suddenly fell into an underwater pit. I dived to see what kind of pit it was, and … face to face ran into a small green man!
He was resting on the sandy bottom. His eyes were out of proportion to his face - large and very prominent. He lifted his eyelids, our gazes locked, and both flinched. The little man waved his hand and accidentally scratched my stomach with his long nails. We both rushed in different directions. He is inward, and I - up. Frightened to death, I rushed home and never again entered the sea that year. I have never met a green man again."
This is far from the first evidence of observation of a humanoid creature in water.
1610 - Englishman G. Hudson saw a mermaid near the coast. She had white skin and long black hair on her head. Sailors of the past centuries met mermaids so often that scientists could not simply dismiss their stories. Here is what the famous English explorer Henry Hudson wrote at the beginning of the 17th century: “One of the crew's sailors, looking overboard, saw a mermaid. Her chest and back were like a woman's … Very white skin and falling black hair. When the mermaid dived, her tail flashed, resembling the tail of a brown dolphin, speckled like a mackerel."
At the beginning of the 18th century, an image of a mermaid was placed in one book with the following signature:
“A siren-like monster caught on the coast of Borneo, in the administrative district of Amboina. It is one and a half meters long and has an eel-like physique. The creature lived on land for four days and 7 hours in a barrel of water. At times it made sounds that resembled a mouse squeak. The offered mollusks, crabs and sea crayfish are gone …"
For some reason, more often mermaids were found in Scotland. In the 17th century, the Aberdeen Almanac stated that travelers in these places "will certainly see a lovely flock of mermaids - amazingly beautiful creatures."
1890 - teacher William Monroe (Scotland) saw a creature on the beach whose head “had hair, a bulging forehead, a plump face, rosy cheeks, blue eyes, a mouth and lips of a natural shape, similar to human beings. Chest and abdomen, arms and fingers the same size as an adult; the way this creature used its fingers (when combing) does not imply the presence of membranes.”1900 - a mermaid, who had wavy golden-red hair, green eyes, as tall as a man, met a certain Alexander Gann. After 50 years, two girls saw the mermaid in the same places. According to their description, she was exactly like the mermaid that Gann saw in 1957 - a creature that looks like a mermaid even jumped on the raft of the traveler Eric de Bishop. The arms of this strange creature were covered with scales. In Russia, residents of a village near Vedlozero in Karelia have long noticed in him water creatures one and a half meters in height with a round head, long hair, white arms and legs, but a brown body. Seeing the fishermen, they dived under the water. These aquatic are described in the book by S. Maksimov, which was published in 1903.
The frequency of encounters with mermaids began to decline after the era of great geographical discoveries and in our time has dropped to almost zero. Sea people became extinct, and this probably happened relatively recently - in the middle or late 19th century. The reason is increased fishing and water pollution. There are no more chances that somewhere in the warm bays of the southern seas we will meet the last representatives of the mermaid tribe, no more than a meeting with a Bigfoot in the Himalayas or a dinosaur in the Congo.
Zhanna Zheleznova from Petrozavodsk told about this case:
“During an ethnographic expedition, I learned about a meeting of a man with an unprecedented amphibian humanoid creature.
This happened during the Great Patriotic War in Belarus. The soldier lagged behind his platoon, to catch up with him, walked along a forest road. And suddenly I saw a man lying on this road. He ran to him, and when he ran, he realized that this was not quite a man, but who or what was impossible to understand. He looks like a man with a beard, but all in fish scales, and on the arms and legs instead of fingers there are membranes. The soldier turned him over on his back, saw that he had a human face, although you cannot call him beautiful, you cannot call him ugly either.
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And this scaly one began to point to the soldier with signs and somewhere to the side, probably asking him to take him there. The soldier went in that direction and soon saw a small forest lake. He dragged the scaly creature there, lowered it into the water. He lay a little in the water, came to his senses and swam away. And he even waved his hand to the soldier goodbye.
The Icelandic chronicle of the 12th century records evidence of a half-woman, half-fish, which was seen off the coast of Greenland. She had a terrible face, a wide mouth and two chins. Raphael Holinshed reports that during the time of King Henry II of England (50-80s of the 12th century), fishermen caught a fish-man who refused to speak and ate both raw and boiled fish. He fled into the sea two months after his capture. 1403 - after a storm in West Friesland, a mermaid was found entangled in seaweed. She was dressed and fed with ordinary food. She learned to spin and bow before the crucifix, but she never spoke. She made frequent unsuccessful attempts to escape back to sea and died after 14 years of living among humans.
This and other similar evidence has long supported the belief in the existence of humanoid sea creatures. Most likely, tropical manatees, small whales, fur seals and seals were mistaken for mermaids. Up close, these animals, of course, do not at all resemble people, but in the water their postures and screams are sometimes very "human" …
1723, Denmark - a special Royal Commission was established, which was supposed to completely clarify the question of the existence of mermaids. During a trip to the Faroe Islands to collect information about mermaids, members of the commission met a male mermaid. The report indicated that the mermaid had "deep-set eyes and a black beard." 1983 - American anthropologist at the University of Virginia Ray Wagner told a Richmond newspaper that he saw the creature twice in the South Pacific, near New Guinea something resembling a human. Wagner explained that using the latest underwater video equipment, he was able to establish that the creature he saw was a sea cow. In most of the known cases, he believes, mermaids were nothing more than seals, brown dolphins, manatees, or sea cows. But Wagner does not claim that mermaids do not exist at all. Here is an incredible encounter. One of the Moscow editorial offices received a message about him in response to the publication of an article on the reality of goblin and mermaids. They talked about one variety - the swamp.
During the war years, Ivan Yurchenko lived in the village of Nikolaevka, in one of the northern regions of the European part of Russia, studied in elementary school. The school sent students to weed the weeds in the collective farm crops, far beyond the village. There, immediately beyond the field, swamps began. Hayfields were located near the swamps. The mowers set up a shed next to them for spending the night, laid hay on the bunks. One morning, having come to weeding, the guys went into the barn and noticed that there were dents in the hay from two huge figures, as you can see, who had spent the night in the barn that night. They were surprised at the height of the people, talked about it and got to work.
Ivan wanted to recover and he walked off the field to the swamp. And in the swamp behind the bushes, he saw two strangers who closely watched him. Ivan drew attention to the fact that they were black, they had long hair on their heads, and were very wide at their shoulders. I could not determine the growth, as the bushes interfered. Ivan was very frightened and, shouting, ran to his comrades.
Learning that someone was in the swamp, they ran to the village to the commandant (the commandant's office at that time existed for the exiles) and the chairman of the collective farm. Those, armed with a revolver and a gun, with the guys went to the scene. Unknown black people went into the depths of the swamp and looked at the people from behind the bushes. None of the local residents dared to move forward.
The men fired into the air, the strangers bared their white teeth (which was especially striking against the black background of their faces), and began to make sounds like rolling laughter. After that, it seemed to Yurchenko, they sat down or plunged into the swamp. Nobody saw them again. In the shed, in the hay, there were traces of, apparently, a huge male and a smaller female, and traces of large breasts could be seen.
So do our contemporaries know about such creatures? Or is this the only incomprehensible case?
Here's another letter.
“In 1952, I, M. Sergeeva, worked at the logging site Balabanovsk in Western Siberia. They felled timber in the winter, and in the spring they floated down the Karayga River. The area is swampy, in summer we picked mushrooms and berries there. There are many lakes there. Porasje Lake is located 20 km from the site. On the fourth of July we went to him: me, the old watchman with my nephew Alexei and Tanya Shumilova.
On the way, my grandfather said that the lake is peaty and shortly before the revolution it dried up, the bottom caught fire from lightning and burned for 7 years. After that, the water returned, and now there are many floating islands on the lake. They are called “kymya.” While the weather is good, kymya is near the shore, but if they go to the middle of the lake, expect rain.
We were at the site already at eleven o'clock in the evening. Hastily pulled on two curtains and immediately the three of them fell from fatigue. And the grandfather went to set the nets.
When we woke up in the morning, the ear was ready. A lot of fish were caught in the net, they loaded the entire cart. And then I saw that another lake was visible behind the trees nearby. I asked the old man about him, but he was angry with me muttered: "The lake is like a lake …" I did not ask him about anything else, but I told Alexey and Tatiana everything. Having chosen the moment when the grandfather went to inspect the distant network, we ran to that lake, since it was only 200 meters away. The water in it was so clear that all the pebbles at the bottom were visible. Tanya and Alexei wanted to swim, but I just took off my handkerchief and put it on some snag near the shore, and sat down next to me.
Alexei had already entered the water and was calling Tanya, when suddenly she screamed, grabbed her clothes and rushed into the forest. I looked at Alexei, who stood motionless and looked in front of him with round eyes. And then I saw a hand reaching out to his feet. A girl swam under the water to Alexei. She silently emerged, lifted her head with long black hair, which she immediately removed from her face.
Her big blue eyes glanced at me, the girl with a smile stretched out her hands to Alexei. I screamed, jumped up, and pulled him out of the water by the hair. I saw how the mermaid's gaze flashed evilly. She grabbed my handkerchief lying on a snag and, laughing, went under the water.
We did not have time to come to our senses, as the grandfather found himself nearby. He hastily made the sign of the cross over Alexei, spat to the side and only after that he sighed with relief. I had no idea that our watchman is a believer …
In the same year, in December, I was transferred to another section, and gradually that case began to be forgotten. But after 9 years, I suddenly received a letter from an old man, in which he wrote that he was seriously ill and was unlikely to rise. I took a vacation for three days and went to him. We talked all night, then the old man told me a story.
About 40 years ago, as a young guy, he worked as a ten's manager. Once I went into the forest for the poles. Then for the first time I found myself on that very lake. I wanted to swim … and the mermaid took possession of it. I didn't let go for three days, I had already said goodbye to my life. But, fortunately, he remembered his mother's blessing … And he said these words aloud. A mermaid with hatred, and with incredible force pushed him away …
Only then did I understand why the old man did not want to let us into that lake."
N. Nepomniachtchi