Episode 10 - Mermaids

You spent the better part of your childhood watching the ships.

Watching them make their way into the harbor, their crews unload cargo and then venture forth again into the vast world beyond.

You always wanted to sail.

And now, you are. You signed on with a crew, and the ship is preparing to leave for the New World.

You pack the few possessions you have, hug your family goodbye and leave, to seek your fortunes.

The ship leaves at dawn, and as you and your fellow crew-mates work to sail it safely out from harbor into the sea, you gaze westward.

You gaze toward adventure.

One of the most common stories traded by sailors throughout the ages and across the world features a creature that is boon and bane.

A creature that has predicted floods and storms and shipwrecks, and saved people from the same.

Even to the modern era, the ocean and the stories of those who sail upon it are filled with mermaids.

Mermaids first appeared in the myths of ancient Assyria. When the goddess Atargatis transformed herself into a mermaid after accidentally killing her human lover.

Since then, they have appeared across the world and to this day. Taking many forms certainly, but the core remains the same.

Mermaids, or more generally, merfolk, are aquatic creatures generally with the torso and head of a human and the tail of a fish.

Stories of mermen are far less common than their female counterpart, but they also appeared commonly within folklore for centuries alongside mermaids.

Mermaids fill myth and folklore across the world. It seems every coastal society has, at one point or another, spoken of aquatic creatures.

In every sea on Earth, in every culture, there are stories of merfolk.

Starting in ancient times and continuing to the modern day, the stories of these creatures inspired art, music, poetry, and everything in between.

They have been blamed for disaster and credited with preventing floods. They have lured sailors to a death beneath the waves, and they have drawn those lost at sea back to the safety of the surface.

Merfolk may very well be one of the most prolific stories of folklore in the world.

I am Andrew Eagle, and I would like to invite you to join me as we explore a story that spans the globe.

Join me as we go Through the Veil.

Weeks into your journey, having left sight of land far behind, you wake early one morning.

You make your way above deck. The cool pre-dawn air causing the hair on your arms to prick upwards.

You are one of the only people moving. The deck of the ship lit only by the weary light of low-burning lanterns.

A watcher at the front of the vessel faces ahead, scanning the dark horizon for something. Or maybe for anything.

The helmsman at the rear stares skyward, looking to the slowly fading stars for guidance, for direction.

You walk quietly to look out over the water. At night, it is nearly impossible to tell where the ocean met the sky at the edge of the horizon.

So, you just gaze into the distance. Accepting the quiet moment. Accepting the peace of it.

Something breaks your view for a moment. A small shape crests somewhere in the distant waters.

It breaks the surface long enough for the faint moonlight to gleam off it before vanishing again into the slow-shifting sea.

You squint out at the place. Trying to gauge if you actually saw anything at all. Could have just been a reflection, catching an odd angle and reflecting off the water.

You almost convince yourself it was nothing.

You almost turn away to return below deck. But then you see it again. This time closer. Much closer.

The figure breaks the water, lifting out nearly a meter. In the faint light, it is impossible to see details.

They were maybe fifty paces away. But that was impossible. Nobody could be swimming out here, in the middle of the ocean.

Still, you could not question your eyes. Nor could you question your ears when they opened their mouth and sang.

The most beautiful song you could imagine. Beautiful enough that your very thoughts washed away, too troublesome, too distracting, from this perfect sound.

The first depictions of creatures with human upper bodies and the tails of fish appear in Mesopotamia, and are dated back to sometime around 1830 BC.

The oldest of these depictions were almost exclusively mermen, but occasionally a mermaid would appear as well.

Both were associated with protection.

The first stories were of Atargatis from Assyria and made their way to Greece.

One of the most popular mermaid stories claimed that Alexander the Great’s sister, Thessalonike, turned into a mermaid after her brother’s death.

She would ask sailors passing through the Aegean Sea “Is King Alexander alive?” and any who answered “He lives and reigns and conquers the world” were rewarded with calm waters and safe travels through her domain.

Any other answer would cause her to become enraged and she would conjure a powerful storm that would threaten or destroy the ship.

The stories of mermaids continued in Greece and were recorded in the Natural History by Pliny the Elder, where he claimed sightings off the coast of Gaul.

It was during this period that mermaids first began to be associated with the Greek siren, a creature that would bewitch sailors with its beautiful song.

Mermaids continued to show up in stories all over the world. Several of the tales in the One Thousand and One Nights involve societies of underwater creatures dwelling beneath the sea. They were meant to be a society opposite to those on land, and were involved in the quest to find the herb of immortality.

Around 1078 AD, we find the first mermaid depiction in England. A carving on the Norman chapel in Durham Castle.

The folklore of the British Isles also opened up mermaid lore to include the possibility of them swimming up rivers to lakes.

The Irish had their own variants on mermaids, called merrow; the Scottish had a fresh-water mermaid known as a ceasg.

Although most mermaids in the region were omens of misfortune, the Isle of Man was the exception. Their mermaids, known as ben-varrey, were quite friendly and are often represented offering assistance, or gifts in exchange for offerings made by humans.

You don’t realize that several of your crew mates have joined you at the edge of the vessel.

How could you pay attention to something so trivial as them? This masterpiece, this perfect sound fills your mind entirely.

You barely notice the captain arrive on deck and join the rest of the crew. Just standing and listening in awe of this creature.

No. Not this creature. These creatures. There are more. At least three flutter in and out of the water, taking turns singing their mesmerizing tune.

You can’t help but watch their strange dance. Their song compels it.

Even if you noticed the helmsman, and the watchman, had abandoned their posts, you could not have worried. The song would have prevented it.

But you didn’t notice.

Even if you looked away and saw the dark shape of the rapidly approaching storm, you could not have worried. The song would have prevented it.

But you didn’t turn around. Not even when the wind picked up and the rain began to fall.

Not even when the sails ripped under the gale, and some of your crew went overboard.

No, none of that broke the siren song of the mermaids.

Only when the ship jolted against the too large waves, and began to break apart were you able to fight free of the song’s influence. As you were already falling into the storm-roiled waters below.

You fight and fight against the storm, struggling for every breath. Something hits you, a piece of the ship maybe? And the world slowly fades. The dark water fading to black.

Your last thought a simple desire to hear the song one more time. The haunting beauty of it leaves its mark.

Moving forward in time, we find mermaids appearing in one form or another in folklore across many countries.

In Eastern Europe, rusalkas are fresh water spirits that represent temptation and treachery, and often are related to the stories of Greek sirens. They are sometimes depicted as the ghosts of young women who died a violent death, often by drowning.

They are found in the folklore of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

In Korea, stories are told in coastal towns and villages. In one, the mayor of a town saved four mermaids from a fisherman. In exchange, the mermaids brought the town prosperity. In another, a mermaid named Sinjike warned fisherman of impending storms, where the villagers believed her to be a goddess of the sea.

Chinese mythology recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas dating from the 4th century BC includes mermaids, and they appeared again in the fifteenth century in a story about a mermaid who would cry tears that would become pearls.

Mermaids are featured in the Cambodian and Thai versions of the Ramayana. It tells of a mermaid princess who tries to prevent the construction of a bridge, but ends up falling in love with the man who is building it.

In central, west, and southern Africa, there are stories of Mami Water and maneli. Water spirits that are most often female, and are considered diabolical, spending their time luring men to their deaths.

There are examples in Cameroon, the Caribbean, Brazil, Japan, and more. Nearly every culture has told stories about people of the sea.

And of course, who can forget one of the most famous examples of a mermaid tale: a story that has found profound fame. The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen.

You wake up.

You never expected to, but here you are.

Awake, and coughing up seawater, on a sand bar in the middle of the ocean.

This isn’t how it was supposed to be.

You were supposed to be on a grand adventure, you were going to see the New World. And now…

Now, you’re stuck. Shipwrecked.

You struggle to recall what happened. You remember waking up aboard the ship.

You remember going above deck. You remember…

The creature. The mermaids. Their song and the shipwreck.

Then, you notice her. A mermaid nearby. She must have gotten washed ashore during the storm. She is not moving.

Although it takes you time, and though you grit your teeth against the burning pain, you make your way to her side.

She is barely breathing. Although her song caused your shipwreck. You can’t bring yourself to watch this creature die.

You begin to drag her across the sand toward the low water. Each step a labor. She stirs, barely, as you begin to drag her toward the ocean, and then falls still again.

You feel water lapping at your heels, then your shins, and then she is in deep enough for a wave to splash across her whole form.

She snaps awake and in a flash of scales and hair, she is gone.

You are too stunned to move for a moment, and you have not left the water behind when she reappears behind you.

She holds a fish, whole and fresh out to you… And in some moment of understanding you accept it.

For days, this continues. Each morning and evening she arrives at the beach with some food, and occasionally a trinket of some kind, shiny things lost at sea.

Then, one day, she arrives without food and points. You can see a ship. They have seen the small smoke from the fire you built. You are saved.

You turn to your strange fellow, entirely mute after that fateful night. She simply smiles for a moment and then with a laugh flips and disappears into the water.

You never see her again. You never see another creature like her all your life. The creature that nearly killed you and that same very creature that saved you, would haunt your dreams forever.

Throughout history, some claims of mermaids have entered into public record in a manner beyond folktale.

One is an account by Christopher Columbus. He and his crew reports seeing three female forms rising out of the sea.

Another was discovered in the logbook of none other than Blackbeard himself. He records that he instructed his crew to steer away from certain waters out of fear of merfolk, which he and his crew reported seeing more than once. They feared that if they sailed into the merfolk’s waters, they would be enchanted.

Two mermaid sightings were reported in Canada, one near Vancouver and the other Victoria. The first in the late 1800s and the other in 1967.

And a fisherman in Pennsylvania reported five separate sightings of a mermaid in the Susquehanna River in 1881.

Accounts of mermaids are certainly far less common now than they were long ago, but that does not mean they have stopped.

In August 2009, dozens claimed seeing a mermaid off the coast of the Israeli town Kiryat Yam which subsequently offered one million dollars to anyone who could prove its existence. The award remains unclaimed.

And even more recently, in February of 2012, in Zimbabwe, work stopped on two reservoirs abruptly one day. The crews stated that mermaids had chased them away from the work sites and were preventing the resuming of work.

Certainly, some mermaid claims have been entirely disproven. Perhaps the most famous example being the Fiji mermaid. Fiji mermaids were featured in carnival side shows and grotesqueries. They were most commonly the skull and upper torso of a juvenile monkey skeleton attached to the lower half of a large fish so as to appear like a form of strange merfolk. Although they were popular for many years, Fiji mermaids are strictly hoaxes. Although most of these strange exhibits are relegated to the past, pictures of a number of modern Fiji mermaids circulated online for a time following the 2004 tsunami. They were claimed to be among the items that washed up during the crisis.

Mermaids have taken many forms, and found their way around the world.

They have been a blessing and a curse. Luring sailors to their doom, and guiding them safely away from it.

They have saved villages, wrecked ships, mesmerized and inspired fear.

Some art showed them as lovely and friendly, and yet they terrified Blackbeard and his crew so much they sailed around the merfolk.

Like so much in folklore, mermaids are not one thing or another. They are both. They are a combination that reveals something about our relationship with our world.

So the next time you find yourself on the beach, or out at sea, keep an eye on the horizon and at the waters below.

You never know if what comes next will help or hurt.

I hope that you enjoyed this episode of Through the Veil, and that you choose to subscribe to hear new episodes weekly on whatever platform you so choose.

Each week we will continue our exploration of folklore, myth, monsters, and magic.

If you enjoy the show, and you have topics you would like to hear covered: Feel free to email me at throughtheveilpodcast@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter. You can find me @ThroughVeil

And as always, thank you, for listening.