In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
Mermaids are sometimes associated with perilous events, such as storms, shipwrecks, and drownings (cf. ). In other folk traditions (or sometimes within the same traditions), they can be benevolent or beneficent, bestowing boons, or falling in love with humans.
The male equivalent of the mermaid is the merman, also a familiar figure in folklore and heraldry. Although traditions about and reported sightings of mermen are less common than those of mermaids, they are in folklore generally assumed to co-exist with their female counterparts. The male and the female collectively are sometimes referred to as merfolk or merpeople.
The Western concept of mermaids as beautiful, seductive singers may have been influenced by the sirens of Greek mythology, which were originally half-birdlike, but came to be pictured as half-fishlike in the Christian era. Historical accounts of mermaids, such as those reported by Christopher Columbus during his exploration of the Caribbean, may have been sightings of manatees or similar aquatic mammals. While there is no evidence that mermaids exist outside folklore, reports of mermaid sightings continue to the present day.
Mermaids have been a popular subject of art and literature in the modern era, such as in Hans Christian Andersen's literary fairy tale "The Little Mermaid" (1837). They have subsequently been depicted in operas, paintings, books, comics, animation, and live-action films.
Etymologies
The English word "mermaid" has its earliest-known attestation in Middle English (Chaucer, Nun's Priest's Tale, c. 1390). The compound word is formed from (sea) and (young woman).; Murray, James A. H. ed. (1908) A New Eng. Dict. VI, s.v."mermaid"
Mermin
Another English word "†mermin" ( in the OED) for 'siren or mermaid' is older, though now obsolete.; Murray, James A. H. ed. (1908) A New Eng. Dict. VI, s.v."mermin" It derives from Old English , ad. 'sea' + 'female slave', earliest attestation , as a gloss for "siren", in Corpus Glossary (c. 725). A Middle English example in a bestiary (dated to 1275–1300) is indeed a 'mermaid', part maiden, part fish-like Its Old High German cognate is known from biblical glosses and Physiologus. The Middle High German cognate , (mod. German ""), "mermaid", is attested in epics,Lexer (1872) Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, s.v. "mer-minne" and the one in Rabenschlacht is a great-grandmother of Wittich; this same figure appears in an Old Swedish text a , and in Old Norse a (siókona [sic.]; "sea-woman"). Old Norse , masculine noun, is also listed as cognate to "†mermin", as well as ON , modern Icelandic , and modern Norwegian marmæle.
Merewif
Old English is another related term, and appears once in reference not so much to a mermaid but a certain sea hag,Bosworth-Toller (1882), s.v. "mere-wíf"Beowulf, Klaeber ed. (2008) . v. 1519 and not well-attested later. Its MHG cognate , also defined as "" in modern German with perhaps ""; Murray, James A. H. ed. (1908) A New Eng. Dict. VI, s.v."merwoman", "name for the mermaid when older or wedded". a valid English definition. The word is attested, among other medieval epics, in the Nibelungenlied,Lexer (1872) Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, s.v. "mer-wîp" and rendered "merwoman", "mermaid", "water sprite", or other terms; the two in the story are translated as ON ("sea-women").
Origins
The siren of Ancient Greek mythology became conflated with mermaids during the medieval period. Some European Romance languages still use cognate terms for siren to denote the mermaid, e.g., French and Spanish and Italian .
Sirens
In the early Greek period, the sirens were conceived of as human-headed birds,Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica IV, 891–919. Seaton, R. C. ed., tr. (2012), p. 354ff. "and at that time they were fashioned in part like birds and in part like maidens to behold". but by the classical period, the Greeks sporadically depicted the siren as part fish in art., citing ;
Medieval sirens as mermaids
The siren's part-fish appearance became increasingly popular during the Middle Ages. The traits of the classical sirens, such as using their beautiful song as a lure as told by Homer, have often been transferred to mermaids.
This change of the medieval siren from bird to fish were thought by some to be the influence of Germanic myth, later expounded in literary legends of Lorelei and Undine; though a dissenting comment is that parallels are not limited to Teutonic culture.
Textual attestations
The earliest text describing the siren as fish-tailed occurs in the Liber Monstrorum de diversis generibus (seventh to mid-eighth century), which described sirens as "sea girls" () whose beauty in form and sweet song allure seafarers, but beneath the human head and torso, have the scaly tail-end of a fish with which they can navigate the sea. "Sirens are mermaids" (Old High German/Early ) may be suggested in the aforementioned Old German Physiologus (eleventh century). The Middle English bestiary (mid-13th century) clearly means "mermaid" when it explains the siren to be a mereman,, note 42, though the remark is shorthanded, stating that the "same word" as the Old High German term is used. stating that she has a body and breast like that of a maiden but joined, at the navel, by a body part which is definitely fish, with fins growing out of her. vv, 391–462, pp. 85–86 Old French verse bestiaries (e.g. Philipp de Thaun's version, written c. 1121–1139) also accommodated by stating that a part of the siren may be bird or fish.
Iconographic attestations
In a ninth-century Physiologus manufactured in France (Fig., top left), the siren was illustrated as a "woman-fish", i.e., mermaid-like, despite being described as bird-like in the text. The Bodleian bestiary dated 1220–12 also pictures a group of fish-tailed mermaid-like sirens (Fig. bottom), contradicting its text which likens it to a winged fowl () down to their feet. In the interim, the siren as pure mermaid was becoming commonplace, particularly in the so-called "Second Family" Latin bestiaries, as represented in one of the early manuscripts classified into this group (Additional manuscript 11283, c. 1170–1180s. Fig., top right).
Mirror and comb
While the siren holding a fish was a commonplace theme, the siren in bestiaries were also sometimes depicted holding the comb, or the mirror. The comb and mirror became a persistent symbol of the siren-mermaid. In the Christian moralizing context (e.g the bestiaries), the mermaid's mirror and comb were held as the symbol of vanity.
Other Greek mythical figures
The sea-monsters Scylla and Charybdis, who lived near the sirens, were also female and had some fishlike attributes. Though Scylla's violence is contrasted with the sirens' seductive ways by certain classical writers,Xenophon, citing Socrates possibly spuriously, apud Scylla and Charybdis lived near the sirens' domain. In Etruscan art before the sixth century BC, Scylla was portrayed as a mermaid-like creature with two tails. This may be tied to images of two-tailed mermaids ranging from ancient times to modern depictions, and is sometimes attached to the later character of Melusine. A sporadic example of sirens as mermaids (tritonesses) in Early Greek art (third century BC), can be explained as the contamination of the siren myth with Scylla and Charybdis.
The female Oceanids, Nereids and Naiads are mythical water nymphs, although they were generally depicted without fish tails. "Nereid" and "nymph" have also been applied to actual mermaid-like marine creatures purported to exist, from Pliny (cf. §Roman Lusitania and Gaul) and onwards. Jane Ellen Harrison (1882) has speculated that the mermaids or tritonesses of Greek and Roman mythology may have been brought from the Middle East, possibly transmitted by Phoenician mariners.
The Greek god Triton had two fish tails instead of legs. The prophetic sea deity Glaucus was also depicted with a fish tail.
According to Dorothy Dinnerstein, human-animal hybrids such as mermaids and minotaurs convey the emergent understanding of ancient peoples that humans were both one with and different from animals:
Ancient Middle Eastern mythology
Kulullû
Depictions of entities with the upper bodies of humans and the tails of fish appear in Mesopotamian artwork from the Old Babylonian Period onwards, on cylinder seals. These figures are usually mermen (kulullû), but mermaids do occasionally appear. The name for the mermaid figure may have been *kuliltu, meaning "fish-woman". Such figures were used in Neo-Assyrian art as protective figures and were shown in both monumental sculpture and in small, protective figurines.
Syrian mermaid goddess
A mermaid-like goddess, identified by Greek and Roman writers as Derceto or Atargatis, was worshipped at Ashkelon. In a myth recounted by Diodorus Siculus in the first century BC, Derceto gave birth to a child from an affair. Ashamed, she abandoned the child in the desert and drowned herself in a lake, only to be transformed into a human-headed fish. The child, Semiramis, was fed by doves and survived to become a queen. In the second century, Lucian described seeing a Phoenician statue of Derceto with the upper body of a woman and the tail of a fish. He noted the contrast with the grand statue located at her Holy City (Hierapolis Bambyce), which appeared entirely human.De Dea Syra, 14 apud
In the myth, Semiramis's first husband is named Onnes. Some scholars have compared this to the earlier Mesopotamian myth of Oannes, one of the apkallu or seven sages described as fish-men in cuneiform texts. While Oannes was a servant of the water deity Ea, having gained wisdom from the god, English writer Arthur Waugh understood Oannes to be equivalent to Ea,: "the first merman in recorded history is the sea-god Ea, or in Greek, Oannes", and proposed that surely "Oannes had a fish-tailed wife" and descendants, with Atargatis being one deity thus descended, "through the mists of time".
Diodorus's chronology of Queen Semiramis resembles the feats of Alexander the Great (campaigns to India, etc.), and Diodorus may have woven the Macedonian king's material via some unnamed source. There is a mermaid legend attached to Alexander the Great's sister, but this is of post-medieval vintage (see below).
Rational attempts at explanation
Sometime before 546 BC, Milesian philosopher Anaximander postulated that mankind had sprung from an aquatic animal species, a theory that is sometimes called the Aquatic Ape Theory. He thought that humans, who begin life with prolonged infancy, could not have survived otherwise.
Naturalistic theories on the origins of the mermaid postulate that they derive from sightings of manatees, dugongs or even seals. Another theory, tangentially related to the aforementioned Aquatic Ape Theory, is that the mermaids of folklore were actually human women who trained over time to be skilled divers for things like sponges, and spent a lot of time in the sea as a result. A proponent of this theory is the British author William Bond, who has written several books about it.
Medieval literature
Merwomen in Germanic literature
Nibelungenlied Two prophetic merwomen (MHG pl.: ), Sigelinde (MHG: Sigelint) and her maternal auntLexer (1872) Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, s.v. "muome swf.".. Hadeburg (MHG: Hadeburc) are bathing in the Danube River when Hagen von Tronje encounters them (Nibelungenlied, Âventiure 25).
They are called sjókonar ("sea women") in the Old Norse Þiđreks saga. There is a swan maiden tale motif involved here (Hagen robs their clothing), but Grimm argued they must have actually been swan maidens, since they are described as hovering above water.Grimm apud and