Tezin Nan Dlo is a Haitian Creole folktale with many versions. It deals with the relationship between a human girl and a fish she summons with a magical song; eventually, her family discovers the secret meetings and kills the fish, and the girl dies out of grief for losing her friend.
According to scholarship, the story is well-known in Haiti, and similar tales have been located across the West Indies, the Caribbean and in West Africa.
Summary Taizan, My Dear Friend In this tale, a girl lives in Haiti with her father and stepmother, and goes to the river to sing and be with her fish lover. The girl's stepmother forces her to do tasks around the house, and becomes annoyed that her step-daughter takes so long to come back from the river, so she decides to follow her one day. After the girl reaches the river, she summons the fish, called Taizan, by singing some verses; the fish appears to her and both play and make love in the water. The stepmother goes home and hurries to the fields to tell her husband about his daughter's amorous encounter. The following day, the girl's father and the stepmother follow the girl again, and the man sees the liaison between his daughter and the fish. He decides there is no harm in what his daughter is doing, but his wife wants the animal dead and convinces him that same night to prepare the manchet (knife). The next morning, they send the girl to sell some sweet potatoes, while the man goes to the river to kill the fish. It happens thus: the man repeats his daughter's verses, the fish appears to him and the man strikes the animal with the knife, almost decapitating it. The girl comes home from the market and goes to the river to be with the fish. She summons him once, but he does not come; so she sings a second time, and still he does not appear. She then notices the blood on the water's surface and dives to the river's depths. Down there, she sees the fish in agony, its head almost cut off, and, in tears, goes to kiss it. However, she holds the fish, and its head falls off. The story then explains the girl's love for the fish was so strong, she becomes one with it, and that is how mermaids come to be.
The Love Story of Thézin and Zilla In a Haitian tale titled Les amours de Thézin et de Zilla ("The Love Story of Thézin and Zilla"), Zilia, the beautiful daughter of Ménélas, turns men's heads around with her beauty and charm. This includes a silver fish named Thézin, who professes his love for the girl and they spend time together by the river margin. The girl also brings fresh water in her calabasse, but, when her brother Jean is sent to fetch water himself, the water is always muddy. One day, Jean decides to trail behind Zilia and finds her engaging with her fish lover by a rock in the river, then goes to tell their father about it. After Zilia returns, Ménélas tells the girl he is worried by her prolonged absences, but she says nothing. Some time later, when Zilia is with Thézin, the fish predicts that when three drops of blood stain a white robe, that portends that Thézin is dead. She heeds his words with concern, and goes to sell vegetables at the market. While she is occupied, her father and her brother reach the river margin, and Jean mimics his sister's voice to call out for Thézin. The fish appears to them, and Ménélas, uttering some spells, draws the fish to his sabre and kills it, staining the water with red, then returns home. Back to Zilia, she sees the drops of blood on the white robe and rushes to the river, calling out for her lover, but he does not answer. The girl then goes back home, takes a seat at the back of her house, and sings for hours, when the ground opens up and swallows her whole, leaving only a lock of her long hair.
Sister and Brother: Clean and Dirty Water Linguist Robert A. Hall Jr. collected a Haitian Creole tale he titled Sister and Brother: Clean and Dirty Water. In this tale, a woman has two children, a girl and a young boy. Whenever the girl goes to fetch water, she returns with clean water, unlike her younger brother, who returns with dirty. The mother questions the boy about it, who answers that his sister lets him go ahead of her, so he decides to spy on her the next time she goes to fetch water. The next day, the girl waits by the water and sends her brother ahead of her, but the boy hides behind a tree and sees his sister singing some verses to someone named Tezeng; a big fish appears to her and fills her calabash with clean water. The boy returns home and tells her mother about it, and the woman waits for her husband's returns to warn him. After he learns of the story, he plans a course of action: the girl is to be given errands to do in town (buying pepper, salt, onions, thread and anything). The next morning, the girl visits Tezeng before she goes to town, and the fish predicts that, by noon, three drops of blood will appear on her handkerchief, which will mean that Tezeng is dead. The girl rushes to town to do her errands as quickly as possible, but her father goes to the water. The girl's brother summons Tezeng, the fish, the man shoots the animal to death and kills it, then takes it home to cook it and prepare a meal for the girl. When the girl returns home from town, her mother gives her the cooked fish to eat; she goes behind the house and begins to sing, as she slowly sinks to the ground. The girl's brother alerts his mother the girl is disappearing into the ground, but the mother refuses to believe it, until she herself goes to check on her daughter, who has all but disappeared under the earth, a lock of her hair all that is left of her.
Thézin Haitian anthropologist Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain collected a tale titled Thézin. In this tale, a girl named Noémi lives with her brother and parents in a house atop a hill overlooking a river. Noémi's mother sends both her and her brother to fetch water from the river. One day, Noémi is by the river, when she drops her gem-encrusted golden ring in the water. Inside the river, a red fish named Thézin finds the ring and comes up to the surface, meeting the girl. They introduce themselves to each other, and Thézin returns her ring and fills her water bucket with fresh water. She keeps coming back to the river and whenever she wants to meet with the fish, she summons him by a magical command: "Thézin, Thézin nan d'lo", eventually falling in love with each other. Some time later, Noémi's mother notices her daughter always brings fresh water, while her son brings muddy water. The girl's brother decides to follow Noémi to the river, and discovers her encounters with the fish, then returns home to inform his mother. The mother, not believing it at first, follows her daughter to the river and finds it for herself, then goes back home and tells her husband a loup-garou (in the tale's context, meaning 'a sorcerer') in the shape of a fish cast a spell on her, and he must be killed. Noémi's father then orders the girl to go to her godmother the next morning to fetch some grains of Palma Christi. The next morning, Noémi talks to Thézin by the river and the fish predicts that, if she sees three droplets of blood on her handkerchief, it means he died, and she must hurry to the river, but he assures her they will still live happily. Worried about his prediction, she goes to his godmother, while her father and little brother go to the river. The man tries to summon the fish with his low voice, and the fish pays no heed to it, but the little brother mimics Noémi's voice and he comes up to the surface. Noémi's father seizes the chance to capture Thézin, beat him down, and take him home with him to make a court-bouillon out of it. Back to Noémi, after she finishes her errands, she produces her handkerchief and notices the three droplets of blood, just as Thézin predicted. so she rushes to the river margin to check on her lover. She desperately sings the song to summon him, but the water remains still. Noémi then returns home and, seeing the house empty, finds pieces of the fish's flesh strewn about by the window. Finally, she sits on a chair and begins to sing the same song to summon Thézin, and the chair slowly sinks to the ground just as she keeps singing. Her brother, Ti-Frè, finds her like this and shouts at her to leave, but she remains catatonic and keeps singings. Ti-Frè rushes to his father to seek help, but he is too distant, and, when both come back to their house, there is only a tuft of Noémi's hair visible in the place where she stood. The father tries to pull it out, but can only draw some locks of hair. Comhaire-Sylvain also reported the ending of a variant found in northern Haiti: after Noémi's father kills the fish, she goes to the river margin and finds a handsome man, which is Thézin after being released from his curse. In a later article, Comhaire-Sylvain stated that the source for this tale was a girl from Baconoir (Nippes). Accessed 12 July 2023.
Tezeng Comhaire-Sylvain collected another Haitian Creole tale and published it in the Journal of American Folklore. In this tale, titled Tezẽ or Tezeng, a girl named Naomi lives with her parents and her little brother, and goes to fetch water by the river, where she meets her lover, a fish named Tezeng, by singing a song. They spend time together and fall in love with each other, and the fish fills her water bucket with fresh water. One day, Naomi's mother notices that her son, Naomi's brother, always brings home with him muddy water, and warns the boy to fetch clean water. The next day, the boy only finds muddy water and is scolded by his mother, so he questions where his elder sisters finds such clean water, and decides to investigate. The next time Naomi goes to meet Tezeng, the boy spies on her through some reeds and learns the secret song, then goes home. Some time later, his mother orders him to fetch clean water for the family, and the boy blurts Tezeng's name, which catches his mother's attention, so the woman trails behind Naomi the next time she meets the fish, then goes home to warn her husband. She tells her husband a "witch" turned into a fish and cast a spell to steal Naomi's soul, and her husband decides to kill it and cook it. The following morning, Naomi's family sends her to town with a load of beans, and she goes to talk to Tezeng one last time before she goes: the fish warns her that, if three drops of blood appear on the left breast, on the dress, it means Tezeng has been killed. While she is away, her father and brother go to the river: the boy summons Tezeng to fill his pitcher, which the fish means to do, when the boy's father shoots him twice. The man cuts Tezeng's body and brings it home to be cooked as fish soup. Back to Naomi, she finds the blood omen on her dress and rushes to the river margin to summon Tezeng, but he does not answer, so she goes home crying, knowing her lover is dead. After she goes home, she notices the pieces of the fish and the broth, realizing what her father did, then puts on her New Year's dress, takes a doll and goes to a chair behind the house. She sits on the chair, then starts to sing the verses she used to call Tezeng, and begins to sink into the ground. Her brother tries to rescue her, but he is too weak to pull her out of the hole, so he goes to fetch his father to help. Naomi's father appears and can only see a lock of her hair visible, which he tries to pull. Accessed 12 July 2023.
Mr. Tezeng