Mythical creatures, in which the upper part of the body is like a woman's, and the lower part is with a fish tail, are called mermaids among the Slavs, and sirens, undines and other names among other peoples.
According to one version, the word "mermaid" among the Slavs came from the word "fair-haired", which meant "pure", "light". But in the Old English this word had a very definite meaning "sea girl" (mermaid).
In Greek mythology, the analogs of mermaids were the spirits of rivers and streams - naiads. The oceanids were called the spirits of salt water, and the nereids - who live exclusively in the Mediterranean Sea. Another name - sirens, was applied to mermaids who lured sailors to themselves with mellifluous singing and killed them.
The South American Indians called their mermaids Iaras. And not only were they themselves afraid of them to death, but even the Europeans who sailed to them were able to convince them of their existence. Serious people who believed in the Christian Trinity, and not in any evil spirits, sent letters to their historical homeland with frightening stories about how another beauty with long hair and a fish tail bewitched and destroyed the ship with all the fishermen.
Knew mermaids and Serbs, who called them pitchforks. Here, the scaly beauties also preferred to play love. At the same time, feeling like the full-fledged mistress of all reservoirs - from forest lakes to village wells - the pitchforks were very angry when one of the mortals dared to drink water from them.
To go ashore in the form of a lovely girl, go down the aisle and even give birth to a child - Serbian mermaids could well agree to this. But give a glass of water to the traveler - no way! They could have sent blindness to the unfortunate, and punished with rain and hail.
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The water women in Ireland - the merrow - were described as incomparable beauties. Unless, of course, you close your eyes to the fishtail instead of legs and the membranes between the fingers. But at the same time it is better to stay away from them: after all, the appearance of a merrow on the surface of the water portends a terrible storm. And if an Irish mermaid falls in love with an earthly man, then she begins to freak out at all like a mermaid: she will go ashore in the guise of a small horse in a red cap with feathers and will wait for reciprocity from her chosen one.
The Baltic peoples (except for the Lithuanians), as well as the Germans, have always admired their water maidens called Undins: the local ladies had blue eyes, golden curls, and an angelic voice. How not to fall in love with such a water bride!
As a result, many amorous Latvian guys went missing after the very first meeting with the undine. As for Lithuania, the local inhabitants called their tailed maidens Nare. But this did not change the essence: just like the naiads or undins, the nare on clear, warm nights came out of the water, sang, arranged round dances in order to lure at least some guy - even one for all.
Encounters with mermaids
It should be noted that references to the existence of mermaids can be found not only in folk legends, but even in the works of ancient respected authors. So, the Roman scientist Pliny the Elder wrote: "… sometimes their dead bodies were found on the shore …", while emphasizing that this is not about idle inventions, but about real facts.
Sailors and travelers told about meetings with mermaids from century to century. So, in the book of Sigot de la Fonda "Wonders of Nature, or a Collection of Extraordinary and Notes of Worthy Phenomena and Adventures …" it is said that in Holland "in 1403, after a terrible storm that tore apart the West Friesland dam, they found a mermaid entangled in seaweed … They brought it to Harlem, dressed, taught to knit stockings and bow before the crucifixion.
She lived among people for several years without learning to speak, and when she died, she was buried according to Christian tradition.
And here is an entry from the logbook of Henry Hudson, who sailed off the coast of the New World: “This morning one of my crew looked overboard and saw a mermaid. He began to call the rest of the sailors. The mermaid, meanwhile, swam very close to the ship and examined it carefully. A little later, a wave overturned her. When she dived, everyone saw her tail, like the tail of a brown dolphin, speckled like a mackerel. Date: June 15, 1608.
The entry in the book of memoirs of the captain of the English fleet, Richard Whitburn, is also credible: “I cannot but say a few words about the strange creature that I first met in 1610. Early in the morning, as I stood on the river side of St. John's Harbor in Newfoundland, an amazing creature swam towards me very quickly. He had a woman's face, eyes, nose, mouth, chin were proportional and very beautiful."
As for the last centuries, descriptions and evidence of encounters with mermaids have diminished. One of the possible reasons is the pollution of rivers and seas, contributing to the extinction of amazing creatures of nature. In addition, the speed of water vehicles has increased many times over: in the era of sailing ships, sailors had much more time and opportunities to examine aquatic life. And yet here are the stories that have already been noted in modern times.
On a warm summer day in 1890, teacher William Monroe was walking along a beach in the Scottish county of Catness. Suddenly, on a rock protruding from the sea, he noticed a creature that looked like a seated naked woman. But this did not seem strange to the teacher. The lower body was underwater, and Monroe could clearly see bare hands brushing his long, shiny brown hair. A few minutes later, the creature slid off the rock into the sea and disappeared from view. After much hesitation and doubt, Monroe nevertheless sent a note to the London Times.
In a letter, he very carefully and briefly described the unusual creature: “The head was covered with brown hair, slightly darker at the crown, the forehead was bulging, the face was plump, the cheeks were rosy, the eyes were blue, the mouth and lips were naturally shaped, similar to human ones. I could not make out the teeth, because the mouth was closed, the chest and stomach, hands and fingers were the same size as that of an adult human race.
Monroe wrote that although other trustworthy people claimed to have seen this creature, he did not believe them until he saw it with his own eyes. And when he saw, he was convinced that it was a mermaid. The teacher expressed the hope that his letter could help to confirm "the existence of a phenomenon hitherto almost unknown to naturalists, or to reduce the skepticism of those who are always ready to challenge everything that is not able to comprehend." From this quite logical letter it follows that not only sailors who went crazy with boredom and abstinence on long ocean voyages believed in sea maidens.
A more modern story tells that on January 3, 1957, the traveler Eric de Bishop sailed on a reconstructed model of an ancient Polynesian raft from Tahiti to Chile. Suddenly the watchman on the raft behaved very strangely: he shouted that he saw an incomprehensible creature jumping out of the water onto the raft.
Balancing on its tail, this creature with hair like the finest seaweed stood right in front of him. Having touched the uninvited guest, the sailor received such a blow that he lay flat on the deck, and the creature disappeared into the waves. Since the sailor's hands were still sparkling fish scales, de Bishop did not doubt the veracity of what had happened.
Amphibian women have been met more than once in the Caspian. Researchers explain their appearance in the area of human habitation by intensive oil production, geophysical explosions in the search for new deposits, that is, a violation of the ecosystem of habitual habitats. In March 2007, the sailors of the fishing trawler "Baky" also presented a photograph of this mysterious creature.
Answering journalists' questions, captain Gafar Hasanov said that “it sailed for a long time not far from us, following a parallel course. At first we thought it was a large fish. But then they noticed that the hair was clearly visible on the monster's head, and the front fins were not fins at all, but … hands!"
There is a touching and sad story dating back to the 6th century about a mermaid who daily visited a monk from the holy brotherhood of Jonah on a small island near Scotland. She prayed for a soul, and the monk prayed with her to give her the strength to leave the water element. But it was all in vain, and in the end, crying bitterly, she left the island for good. They say that the tears she shed turned into pebbles, and the gray-green pebbles on the coast of Iona are still called mermaid tears.
For a long time, these sea maidens have been associated with seals - with their smooth skin and human-like behavior. In Scandinavia, Scotland and Ireland, there are many legends about selkies (silks) - people forced to live in the sea in the guise of a seal and only sometimes on the shore, turning into a man.
In some places they thought that seals were fallen angels, somewhere they considered them the souls of drowned people or victims of a spell imposed. Moreover, in Ireland there was a belief that the ancestors of people were seals.
Shot from the Irish cartoon “ Song of the Sea ” (2014) about the Selky girl
In some areas, mermaid legends have a long history. In 1895, the inhabitants of the Welsh port of Milford Harbor believed that mermaids, or sea fairies, regularly visit the city's weekly fair. They get to the city by an underwater road, quickly buy everything they need (tortoiseshell combs and the like) and disappear until the next fair day.
Mermaids have been featured in both Thailand and Scotland. There, in May 1658, mermaids were seen at the mouth of the Dee, and the Aberdeen Almanac promised the travelers that they would “certainly see a lovely flock of mermaids, amazingly beautiful creatures.”
As rumors about mermaids multiplied, forgeries inevitable in such cases began to appear. Usually they were made by connecting the top of the monkey with the tail of a large fish. One of these, possibly from the 17th century, was featured in a counterfeiting exhibition held by the British Museum in London in 1961.
The most popular mermaid stories spread among sailors. Earlier skeptical Christopher Columbus noted on his first trip that he saw three mermaids frolicking in the sea far from the coast of Guiana.
Most of these so-called mermaids were unusually ugly, but aroused continued interest. One edition from 1717 contains an image of a supposedly genuine mermaid. Caption: “A siren-like monster caught on the coast of Borneo, in the administrative district of Amboina. It is 1.5 meters long and has an eel-like constitution. Lived on land for 4 days and 7 hours in a barrel of water. Periodically made sounds resembling a mouse squeak. The offered mollusks, crabs and sea crayfish are gone …"
At one time Peter I was interested in mermaids. He turned to the Danish colonial priest François Valentin, who wrote on this topic. The latter could add little, but nevertheless described another mermaid from Amboina. She was seen by over 50 witnesses as she frolicked with a flock of dolphins. The priest was completely convinced of the veracity of these stories.