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For many of us, Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid was our introduction to this fascinating and compelling myth, but stories of mermaids have appeared in every culture. Her form has been the chosen subject of diverse artists like Münch, Waterhouse, Beardsley, Pyle, Rubens and Bosch. Shakespeare mentioned mermaids and sirens repeatedly in his work, while Yeats, Eliot, Wilde, Barry and Baum welcomed them into their own colorful poems and tales. Who is she, and why are we compelled to seek her out?
Looking Backwards, We See...
The earliest references to a half man/half fish god point to the Babylonians' sea-god, Oannes, or Ea, who rose from the Erythrean Sea and taught us our letters. Oannes was called Lord of the Waves and was depicted as an amphibious creature with the torso and head of a man, with his bottom half resembling that of a dolphin. Early images of Oannes show him as a man wrapped in a fish cloak. A civilizing force for the good, and light and life to his people, he represented the positive values connected with the sea. The Syrians and Philistines worshipped Oannes' partner as a fishtailed moon goddess overseeing generation and fertility and called her Atagartis or Derceto. Atagartis was an important fertility goddess, representing the darker, night forces of love and their potentially destructive power. As Dea Syria, her cult reached as far as Britain.
The Hindus recognized a group of beautiful and talented water goddesses called the Apsaras. In Japanese and Chinese legends, there were not only mermaids but also sea-dragons and the dragon-wives. The Japanese mermaid known as Ningyo wards off misfortune and preserves peace in the land; she is depicted as a fish with a human head.
The British Isles also describe merfolk in their tales. The Cornish knew mermaids as Merrymaids, the Irish as Merrows or Muirruhgach, and some sources describe them as living on dry land below the sea with enchanted caps that allow them to pass through the water without drowning. Commonly, the women were very beautiful but the men had red noses, pig-eyes, green hair and teeth and a penchant for brandy. (No wonder mermaids were always looking to humans for love!) In the Shetlands, the mermaid is called Sea-trow,...