What happens if you cook a mermaid: meat broth or ear? But seriously, where did people get the idea to unite two such dissimilar creatures into a single whole? Did mermaids and mermaids really exist? Or is it pure fantasy? Let's try to figure it out.
Most of the Earth's surface is covered with water, so various outlandish creatures are found in numerous rivers, lakes, seas and oceans. The ancient Greeks not only inhabited their reservoirs with naiads, the goddess of beauty Aphrodite herself emerged from the foam of the sea. The beauty Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu, was also born in the waves of the Milky Way.
“Stories about sea maidens and men - people with fish tails instead of legs - appeared in antiquity and spread everywhere,” writes Nathan Slifkin in his book Sacred Monsters. Mysterious and mythical creatures from Scripture, Talmud and Midrash. " - There are many images and stories about them in literature, art, objects of the ancient world. The sea maidens were called by various names, for example, silks, newts, undines, melusines, morganas, corrigans, lorelei, mermaids, naiads, nereids, ningyos, nixes, but most often sirens. Perhaps the Scriptures mention sea maidens; not so much in the sense of an actual being as in the sense of an idol in the form of a mermaid."
Slifkin also reports: “There are several detailed discussions of sirens in rabbinic literature. But is there such a creature in the world? Columbus noted at one time that he saw similar animals off the coast of Guinea in West Africa. It is widely believed that these animals formed the basis of the legends of mermaids and sirens. These are manatees and dugongs, which zoology classifies as sirens. A mermaid, that is, a half-human, half-fish, biologically cannot exist, but a representative of the family of seals or manatees with somewhat more human-like hands and features of a “face” is quite. It is believed that the legend of the mermaids is entirely based on manatees and dugongs. However, this is unlikely, because stories about sea maidens are common in those regions where the representatives of the order of sirens do not live, for example, in the British Isles and in Scandinavia."
Let us turn to the Slavic researchers of the phenomenon of mermaids. Some of them believe that mermaids are the souls of dead people, and their name is a reflection of pagan memorial days, known in Greece as rosals. There is another opinion: mermaids are water deities, their name comes from the alleged common Slavic word "rusa", which means a river and is now sounding in the word channel. According to another interpretation, mermaids live in water, but their initial element was light; the name of these demigods comes from the word "fair-haired" through the form "channel". Finally, the existence of the mermaid as a female deity is completely denied: the mermaid, just like the mermaids, is the name of the holiday of the Holy Trinity, which later merged with pagan rites.
The most striking mermaid story took place in 1830 on Benbekyula Island in the Outer Hebrides archipelago off the northwest coast of Scotland. British folklore collector Alexander Carmichael heard the story, he says, from "still living eyewitnesses who touched this curious creature." In his Carmina Gadelica (1900), it is written that when the locals were cutting algae on the coast of Skeir na Duhag in Grimnis, one of them noticed a small woman-like creature splashing in the sea just a few steps away. The men tried to catch the creature, but it swam away. The children started throwing stones at him. One stone hit the back, and it disappeared under the water. A few days later, the creature's lifeless body washed ashore.
Carmichael reports: “The upper part of the creature was the size of a well-fed child of three or four years of age with abnormally developed breasts. The hair is long, dark and shiny, the skin is white, soft and delicate. The lower part was like a salmon, only without scales. Crowds of people flocked to see the outlandish animal, many came from afar, and everyone unanimously decided that at last they had a chance to see a mermaid. The local landowner and sheriff of Duncan Shaw County ordered a coffin and shroud for the mermaid who was buried in front of many people.
“It is curious that the closer to us in time the stories about mermaids are, the more detailed and detailed they are. If mermaids were just fictional, the opposite would be expected. Individual stories from the last century or around that time give an impression of authenticity that can shake even the most seasoned skepticism,”writes Peter Costello.
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In the 1600s, a mermaid was allegedly caught in Holland, which sailed over a dam and was injured in the process. After her recovery, she learned Dutch, began to help with the housework, and even converted to Catholicism.
The disgusting-looking mermaid was brought from the East Indies by the captain of the American merchant ship Samuel Barrett Eads. The merchants who sold it to the captain claimed to have acquired it from a Japanese fisherman. Captain Eads sold his ship to buy a curiosity. In 1822 he brought her to London for the amusement of the public. Gentleman's Magazine published an article by Dr. Reese Price, who carefully researched this mermaid. She was about 86 centimeters long and had a curved tail, an ugly head the size of a two-year-old child, half of which was covered with black hair; the jaws protruded strongly forward. There was no visible seam between the upper torso and the scaly fish tail.
Despite a decent income from the mermaid displayed in the booth, Captain Eads asked Sir Everard Home, an anatomist, to confirm her authenticity. After examining the find, Sir Home's assistant recognized it as a fake: the skull and torso were taken from an orangutan, the jaws and teeth were from a baboon, the tail depicted the body of a large salmon. The humanoid nose and ears were made from folds of skin, the eyes and claws were artificial. The bones of the forearms were sawed off under the skin to give them the proportions of human hands. And to stretch the body of the fish and fit it to the size of the torso of the orangutan, a hoop was used, and the seam between the two halves was hidden in a skin fold. The skin of the fish was stretched over the spine of the orangutan in order to give the impression of a continuous spinal column from the body to the fish's tail. Craftsmen from Japan or the East Indies produced such stuffed animals for religious ceremonies, and then sold them profitably to Europeans.
People have not always encountered fakes. In the 19th century, some zoologists did believe in mermaids. Platypuses brought by travelers made the existence of these creatures even more believable.
In 2009, one such creature (eyewitnesses did not see, male or female) with a fish tail surfaced off the coast of Israel, not far from the city of Kiryat Yam. Shortly before sunset, it did a few tricks and disappeared into the night.
