In the photo: a sea animal with the appearance of a human, from the Chinese work Shan-hai-king.
The Natural History of India, published in 1717, contains references to an exotic living creature from the Far East that was caught near the Moluccas in Indonesia: “It was 59 inches long (one and a half meters - Ed.) And somewhat resembled an eel … She lived in a barrel of water for 4 days and 7 hours … made soft sounds, did not eat anything and then died."
In Denmark in 1723, a special Royal Commission was established, which was supposed to bring final clarity on the existence of mermaids. But during a trip to the Faroe Islands to collect information about mermaids, members of the commission came across a male mermaid. The report indicated that the mermaid had "deep-set eyes and a black beard that looked like it had been trimmed."
In 1983, an anthropologist at the University of Virginia (USA) Ray Wagner told a Richmond newspaper that in the South Pacific, near the island of New Guinea, he twice saw a creature resembling a man. 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. However, Wagner does not claim that mermaids do not exist at all.
“People are fascinated by mermaids, and the stories about them often sound true,” says psychotherapist Linda Carter-Eyck, who conducts research as part of a psychoanalysis program. In her opinion, mermaids live in the minds of people. The ocean affects the subconscious area of a person, evoking the image of a mermaid in his imagination. The trick is to keep her from dragging you along.
Until the 19th century, when scientific and geographical discoveries practically deprived mythological creatures of the right to exist, the practice of creating stuffed "mermaids" from the bodies of monkeys and fish tails flourished. The disgusting "mermaids" looked frightening enough so that the audience who came to look at the made beauty did not accuse the owner of the stuffed animal of fraud.
Since the mermaid was a religious symbol of temptation and deceit, there was never a ban on her depiction in art and literature. In the play A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare writes about a mermaid whose singing was so beautiful that the stormy sea calmed down, and some stars, hearing the singing of the sea beauty, fell from heaven.
It is interesting that the image of a mermaid flourished precisely in the 19th century, when science finally divided fantasy and reality, and in prose and poetry revived interest in romance. Especially many ballads about the sea people were created in Britain and Scandinavia. In England, the mermaid has also become a symbol of the empire that rules the seas and makes its own wealth in the overseas colonies. Her images adorned ships, coats of arms and weapons. The famous romantic poet John Keats dedicated his poem to the Mermaid Tavern, where London writers gathered.
In 1811, the poem of Baron le Lamotte-Fouquet "Ondine" was published, on which an opera was soon written. It talks about the marriage of the river nymph Undine and a mortal man: Undine could find a human soul and a sensual heart, but her husband cheats on her, and she returns to the river. The name "Undine" (from the Latin "und" - water) was first used by the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus (16th century) - the creator of "systematic mythology" who combined the images of mythological creatures with the Greek doctrine of the four components of the world: earth, air, fire and water. Undine became a symbol of water.
Mermaids and humans do not find happiness together. In Andersen's tale, the mermaid finds a soul, but not the love of a prince. In Arnold's Deceived Sea Boy, the heroine Margaret is cheating on her lover for fear of losing her soul. And in the novel "The Fisherman and His Soul" by Oscar Wilde, the fisherman tries to get rid of his soul in the hope of marrying a mermaid.
Another motif, used, for example, in Alexander Pushkin's The Mermaid and Walter Scott's Bride of Lammermoor, is a mermaid protecting innocent girls and taking revenge on her unfaithful lovers.
Heinrich Heine in "Lorelei" and Alfred Tennyson in "Sea Fairies" and "Mermaid" refer rather to the image of a man who wants to get rid of human worries and who goes to his death to hear the beautiful singing of mermaids. It is interesting that Tennyson writes about the "silver legs" of mermaids, and his sea nymphs are apparently Homeric sirens that sang for Odysseus.
In the poem "Breaking the Union" by Thomas Hood, symbolizing Ireland's desire for independence from the British Empire, the mermaid wants to amputate her "Saxon" tail in order to become a real person.
Mermaids become less frequent characters in 20th century literature, and marriage to a mermaid is often described in a satirical form. In HG Wells' The Sea Lady, the mermaid finds herself unable to understand the moral constraints people place on their lives.
Mermaids have left a noticeable mark in music. They are dedicated to Haydn's Song of the Mermaid, the symphonic poem The Water One and the opera Mermaid by Dvořák, the unfinished opera Lorelei and the Belle Melusine overture by Mendelssohn, the opera Sadko by Rimsky-Korsakov, in which Sadko falls in love with the daughter of the sea king. Mermaids appear in Handel's opera Rinaldo and in Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungen.
A mermaid sculpture adorns Copenhagen's bay. A mermaid with a sword in her hand is depicted on the coat of arms of Warsaw. Images of newts were very popular in the Baroque era (they can be seen, for example, in Raphael's Triumph of Galatea). In the Nuremberg Bible (1483), Noah's ark floats surrounded by mermaids. However, the first in the history of the image of a mermaid in painting should be called the painting by Daniel MacLease "The Origin of the Harp" (1842), in which a mermaid with a harp in her hands cries about her unhappy love.
In contrast to the medieval performance, the mermaid of the late 19th - early 20th centuries is a “femme fatale”. This is how she is depicted by the Swiss artists Arnold Becklin, the Norwegian Edvard Munch, the Austrian Gustav Klimt and many others. In our century (in the works of Rene Margitte and Paul Delvaux), her image takes on a somewhat comic shade.
Water is a symbol of both death and rebirth. Like water, mermaids have not only been a danger to people for centuries, but also helped them. The changing image of the mermaid, which has served as an inspiration to so many artists, poets and writers, is likely to remain so compelling in the future.
Mermaids are perhaps the only mythological creatures that have found their soil in Slavic legends and … today's life. We cannot but tell here about the meetings with these creatures of our compatriots. So …
The well-known cryptozoologist M. G. Bykova tells (the text was written in the late 60s):
- Visually Ukrainians and Southern Great Russians perceive mermaids as water beauties. And in the north of Russia these are most often shaggy, ugly women with large saggy breasts. They appear out of the water in the evening or at night, try to attract attention, wander near the water and even in the forest. Having met such a woman face to face, a person only occasionally manages to make out her.
Here is a case of an unusual meeting. A message about him was received by one of the Moscow editorial offices in response to the publication of an article on the reality of goblin and mermaids. It was about one species - the swamp.
During the war, Ivan Yurchenko lived in the village of Nikolaevka, in one of the northern regions of the European part of our country, he studied at an elementary school. The school guided the students to weed the weeds in the collective farm crops far beyond the village. There, immediately beyond the field, swamps began. There were hayfields 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 who had apparently spent the night in the barn that night. They were surprised at the height of the people, talked about this topic and got to work. Ivan wanted to recover and walked away from the field to the swamp. At this time, in the swamp behind the bushes, he noticed two unknown persons 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 greatly 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 moved 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 villagers dared to move forward. The men fired into the air, the unknown bared their white teeth (which was especially striking against the black background of their faces), began to emit sounds similar to rolling laughter. Then, as 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, apparently, of 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 (Western Siberia). They prepared timber in winter, and in spring they floated down the Karayga River. The area around is swampy, in the summer we picked mushrooms and berries there. There are many lakes here. Lake Porasie lies twelve kilometers from the site. On July 4, 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 that it dried up shortly before the revolution, the bottom caught fire from lightning and burned for seven whole years. Then the water returned, and now there are many floating islands on the lake. They are called kymya. While the weather is good, ky-mya is near the coast, but if they move to the middle of the lake, expect rain.
We reached the place 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 up the nets.
When we woke up in the morning, the ear was ready. There were a lot of fish in the net, they loaded the whole carriage. And then I noticed that another lake was visible not far behind the trees. I asked the old man about him, but he got angry with me and muttered: "The lake is like a lake …" I didn't ask him about anything else, but I told Alexei and Tatiana everything. Having chosen the moment when the grandfather left to look at the distant network, we ran to that lake, since it was only two hundred meters away. The water in it was so clear that all the stones at the bottom were visible. Tanya and Alexey decided to swim, but I just took off my handkerchief and put it on some snag near the shore, and I sat down next to me. Alexei was already in the water and was calling Tanya, when she suddenly 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 was swimming 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 and, jumping up, pulled him out of the water by his hair. I noticed how the gaze of the water girl flashed evilly. She grabbed my handkerchief lying on a snag and, laughing, went under the water. She grabbed my handkerchief lying on a snag and, laughing, went under the water. She grabbed my handkerchief lying on a snag and, laughing, went under the water.
Promotional video:
We did not have time to come to our senses, as the grandfather was nearby. He hastily crossed Alexey, spat to the side and only after that he sighed with relief. I had no idea that our watchman is a believer …
In December of the same year, I was transferred to another section, and gradually that case began to be forgotten. However, nine years later, I suddenly received a letter from the old man, in which he wrote that he was seriously ill and was unlikely to get up. I took a vacation for three days and went to him. We talked all night, then the old man told me a story. About forty 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 came to that very lake. I decided to swim … and a mermaid took possession of it. I didn't let go for three days, I had already said goodbye to my life. But, fortunately, I remembered the mother's blessing … And he said these words aloud. The mermaid pushed him away with hatred, but with such force that he ended up on the shore …
Only then I understood why the old man did not want to let us into that lake."
DOES YOUR GIRL STIN IN FISH?
Newlyweds Klaus and Erika Weiss from Switzerland decided to spend their honeymoon on the shores of a cozy lagoon of the picturesque Lake Baldega. They rented a small cottage located in a vast, unpopulated space.
Once, walking along a deserted coast, the couple witnessed a spectacle of wondrous beauty and grace. Several girls slowly and gracefully circled in a round dance, now bending over, now waving their arms. The mysterious dancers were dressed in translucent shirts up to the toes. Thick hair with a silvery sheen streamed down their shoulders. The Weiss spouses looked at them spellbound, fearing even to disturb the magical harmony with a sigh. Half an hour later, the girls, laughing noisily, ran to the water and at the same time, splashing and splashing, dived into the lake.
“Stop staring at your eyes,” the wife said, hurrying to take away her husband, who was carried away by the unusual sight. She decided she was attending a rehearsal for a local folklore ensemble.
The next evening the Weiss couple followed the same route again. Suddenly, someone's melodic drawn-out voices were heard behind them. Turning around, they saw yesterday's beauties emerging from the lake. The couple barely had time to hide behind a nearby bush.
One of the girls suddenly stopped and walked resolutely towards the bushes.
“Someone is watching us … Come out immediately,” came an imperious female voice.
“We kissed here,” Weissa tried to justify himself timidly.
- Really? - the girls laughed. - Do you know how? Let us teach you.
One of the strangers came close to Klaus and hugged him. A full-breasted body shone shamelessly through her loose clothing of fine fabric. Her huge violet eyes shone with an enigmatic glossy sheen. Klaus couldn't help but marvel at the contrast between the two women. Of course, the stunted, fat, dull-eyed man (his Erica) was no match for the divine being clinging to him.
“Come to me,” the girl said quietly. - My name is Inger.
Her voice alerted Klaus. The soft chest sounds were clearly threatening. The young man was seized with a premonition of danger, a chill ran through his body. Unwittingly, he pushed Inger aside, throwing off her chiseled and cold hands as marble.
- Do you like me? the voice repeated.
Algae got entangled in Inger's hair, and the young man's putrid smell began to stir up from her. He was shaking. Erica gasped and collapsed to the ground. She was immediately surrounded by other "dancers".
Meanwhile, Inger, again approaching Klaus, held out her hands to him. He backed away in horror. Beads of cold sweat covered his forehead.
Inger, sparkling eyes, begged:
- Kiss me, I really want you so.
Klaus's ears were ringing, and a lump of vomit rolled up to his throat. Inger pressed her body against him. Klaus felt a disgusting, putrid warmth under his arms. The girl's gentle, but inexorably powerful hands wrapped around his neck. With a pale, icy mouth, she dug into Klaus's lips.
From the smell of decaying swamp hitting his nose, he began to choke and was close to fainting. A few minutes later, when Inger finished kissing with a loud smack, Klaus was already turned inside out. Not at all embarrassed, the girl wiped his mouth with the hem of her dress and unbuttoned the fly on his trousers …
Klaus was brought to consciousness, rubbing his body with some kind of stinking ooze. Erica was forced to drink some tart herbal infusion, after which she began to thin out in size and prettier right before our eyes.
The no longer resisting, exhausted spouses were laid side by side, and a whole host of girls attacked them with their frenzied caresses, and they mostly went to Erica. They kissed her in all places. Soon she began to taste, with surprise to find in herself the reserves of lust and lust dormant until then.
Having played enough, the girls grabbed Erika and dived with her into the water.
Before disappearing forever, one of the beauties approached the prone Klaus.
“Get out of here immediately and don't tell anyone what you saw,” she said.
Klaus, without even collecting his things, rushed headlong to the station and on the first train went home to Zurich, where he found a specialist in anomalous phenomena, Professor Schloss.
The professor smiled at his story and noticed that Lake Baldega has long enjoyed a notorious reputation for the mysterious disappearance of people who find themselves in those lands. Mermaids, in his opinion, inhabiting the lake in abundance, pose a serious danger. They live mainly in forest lakes, sometimes near swamps.
- The mermaids are mostly deceased prostitutes, drug addicts, but most often lesbians, - said the professor. “After death, their astral bodies do not fly away, but continue to be fed by bad energies emanating from living people. Water, as it turned out, is the most favorable environment for the spread of "bacteria of vice", that is, various satanic fluids, therefore, the wandering souls of sinners find their posthumous refuge in humid places and reservoirs. Mermaids can be not only women, but also men of homosexual orientation. There are especially many such "mermaids" in England.
An amazing case, according to Professor Schloss, occurred near the Swedish lake Venern. The young journalist Per Lundqvist came to the village of Kaple to see his grandmother. The house was separated from the lake by a pine grove. One evening Per met a girl of rare beauty at its edge. She sat on a stump and sobbed bitterly. The young man asked how he could help her. The girl, introducing herself as Eva, said that she had lost all her money and had nothing to return to her place in Malmö. Per gave her a few dozen crowns for a train ticket. Having promised to repay the debt, the girl sent the money by mail and soon she herself arrived in Kapla. Young people began to meet. Per could not help but notice some oddities in Eva's behavior. He was surprised, for example, by her habit of constantly wetting her long, thick hair with water. Moreover, she did not give him either her address or phone number. Every evening they said goodbye at the bus stop and each time they agreed where they would meet tomorrow.
It was going to the wedding, and Per invited Eva to his home to introduce her to her grandmother.
Seeing the bride of her grandson, the old woman froze in amazement. Upon learning that Eva lives in Malmö, she shook with fear. Calling Per to the kitchen, grandmother told him that Eva's face was familiar to her, because she constantly sees a portrait of a girl in the house of her old friend, whose granddaughter, who lived with her parents in Malmö, had recently died under mysterious circumstances.
Per, as always, having escorted the girl to the bus stop, decided to follow her discreetly, using a bicycle hidden in the bushes. He saw how Eva asked the driver to stop the bus that had barely left, got out of it and went to the lake. Diving into the water, she disappeared into the moonlit path.
Having visited the house of his grandmother's friend, Per was convinced that the portrait was indeed his bride. The late granddaughter was also called Eva.
Alarmed relatives exhumed at a cemetery in Malmö. Eva's corpse was not in the grave.
After consulting with specialists, the young man sprinkled himself with holy water and put on a pectoral cross. In addition, he was explained that the energy of mermaids is contained in their hair, which must be constantly damp. If they start to dry out, the mermaid becomes anxious.
Eva, having met with Per at the agreed place, clearly felt that something was wrong and, referring to poor health, tried to go “home”, but the “groom”, firmly grabbing her by the hand, dragged her into the sauna and locked the massive door.
Having made Eve a serious interrogation, Per found out that, in earthly life with AIDS, the girl took a strong dose of sleeping pills, swam away and drowned. She said that every mermaid, in order to "register" at the bottom of any body of water, must enthrall the maximum number of people. So the fate of the enamored journalist was a foregone conclusion.
Per gritted his teeth with compassion when Eva begged to let her go, or at least to sprinkle water on her …
Two hours later her face wrinkled, her nose fell through, her eyes dripped out … For
three evenings in a row, Professor Schloss's interlocutor, Klaus Weiss, came to the shore of Lake Baldega, hoping to receive news from missing wife. After the fourth walk, he did not return …
For 50 years now, there have been regular reports that residents and tourists of one of the Hawaiian Islands saw a mermaid in the water. The attitude to these messages has so far been rather skeptical: who will believe that the half-woman-half-fish, who was the character of Andersen's wonderful sad tale in childhood and revived on the screen by Wal Disney, really exists?
However, on April 12, 1998, documentary evidence of this amazing phenomenon appeared: 43-year-old American submarine captain Jeff Leicher managed to take several underwater photographs of the sea diva, known among the local population as the "Cape Kaivi mermaid." On that day, Jeff and nine other oceanographers were exploring the ocean floor a few miles from Kona Island. The team had already finished the work scheduled for the morning and was returning to the island on the surface, when suddenly their submarine was surrounded by a flock of dolphins, which began to amusely circle and play in the waves left by the submarine. Suddenly someone from the crew screamed loudly and began to point at some object in the water. Jeff and his comrades could not believe their eyes: literally three meters from their boat, a naked woman was floating. She had long flowing hair and an unusually beautiful face. But no human being can swim that fast! She easily overtook the dolphins. Following the dolphins, the sea nymph made a jump in the air, and the crew members were stunned: the lower part of her body was covered with scales and ended in a huge fish tail! She jumped high again and disappeared under the water. All ten crew members witnessed the incredible episode. But their shocks did not end there. About an hour later, the team arrived on the island. Everyone changed into diving equipment and began to descend under the water near the shore. Jeff took an underwater camera with him to photograph rare tropical fish. Suddenly, he felt something brush against his right leg. It was her. The mermaid flashed next to the speed of lightningthen she turned and swam past him in the opposite direction. Jeff managed to snap the camera several times. And the mermaid rose to the surface of the water and swam away.
The photographs taken by Jeff Leicher have undergone extensive research in three dark labs. All experts came to the conclusion about the authenticity of the images. This confirms an amazing fact: among the inhabitants of the underwater kingdom there are creatures similar to people. And the legends about the beautiful inhabitants of the seabed, maddening fishermen and sailors, are based on the real existence of mermaids.
Today in the press there are amazing information about such creatures. What is valuable is that they come from the so-called simple and, in any case, not experienced in this particular issue of people. But at the same time, their inexperience leads to some overlaps, although they are unlikely to have any meaning, because they have very little effect on the reliability of the narrative. Science will figure out the essence of the question when a sufficient amount of data has accumulated. In sum, numerous narratives make it possible to distinguish the truth from the dreamed or invented by the narrator. It should be borne in mind that all kinds of negative aspects can come not only from the narrator, but also from the recording eyewitness testimony. So, in one of the memories of an unusual meeting,what happened almost three decades ago and according to all the rules of our then hidden life (in order to avoid meetings with other services), there is a strange contradiction.
Says the colonel of the border service in reserve Z. The
material was published in the almanac "It Can't Be" (May 1991) under the title "Amphibian Man" It seems strange in this story that if the amphibian was meant, then why should she use the reed as a breathing tube, allegedly used when going under water.
So, it was in the material about a "foray" into nature in the Cagulskie floodplain, to large lakes overgrown with reeds, 20 kilometers from the Soviet-Romanian border.
Hearing moans from an abandoned excavator, the border guard on a floating island saw “an eerie-looking humanoid creature. A black-brown body, some kind of oily, long, dirty, matted hair, a beard up to the navel, all in green mud, the creature is all covered with leeches … And his right hand (it was a completely naked man) is covered in blood, and the blood oozes through a reed island into the water. Moans - it hurts ….
Further, the plot developed artlessly. Z. saw the wound and assumed that the object had been hit by an excavator bucket. During the provision of assistance (examination, cleaning the wound, dressing and even two injections), the border guard examined the membranes between the fingers of the victim, "like a duck." The meeting ended with the creature leaving the water for some reason with the help of a reed.
Apparently, Z. could not have known that a creature so similar to a person should not speak, own speech. He recalled that it emitted moans, a gurgle, something like a croak. And this is probably the true element of this narrative.
The scientist-specialist who wrote down these memories, as expected, answers on the pages of the almanac that, they say, not quite healthy people who accidentally fall into the water can undergo mutations, which then (how quickly?) Are fixed and make it possible to adapt to the aquatic environment.
The scientist's answer itself is interesting and unconventional for official science. But how much does he clarify the problem?..
