The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1873-06-20


" they lifted up the net and made tbeI
escape"
In l7Ol, according to Brands "De
scriptiOn of the Orkney and Shetland
Islands, . A boat at the fishing drew hel
lines; and one of them, as the fishers
thought, having some great fish upo1
it, was with greater difficulty than the
rest raised from the ground. But whe1
raised, it came more easily to the sur.
| face of the water; upon which a crea,
ture like a mermaid presented itself al
the side of the boat. It had the face,
| arms, breast, and shoulders of a wo.
man, and long hair hanging down the
back; but the neither part was beneath
the water, so that they could not I'M
derstand the shape thereof. The two
fishers who were in the boat being sur
prised at this strange sight, one of them
unadvisedly drew a knife and thrust it
into her bosom, whereupon she cried,
as they judged, 'AIasp The hook Civ
ing way, she fell backward, and was no
more seen; the hook, being big, went
in at her chin and out at the upper lip. -
Brand didn OF see all this indeed, most
of the mermaid stories come second or
third hand. The fishers told a baiIIie.
to whom the boat belonged; the baillie
told a lady, and the lady told Mr.
Brand. The man who cruelty stabbed
the poor mermaid was much troubled
afterward. He IS now dead, and, as
was observed, never prospered after
this, but was haunted by an evil spirit
in the appearance of an old man, who,
it is thought, used to say unto him,
'Will ye do such thing? Who killed
the woman?' The other man then in
the boat is still alive in the isle of Bur-
ra." The man was certainly more like
a brute than a fisherman, or he would
not have drawn his knife for such pur-
pose whether human or non-human,
she would have been worth more to him
alive than dead, even as an exhibition
to villagers at baubee a head.
In 1877, according to Scottish maga-
zine, the crew of a ship newly arrived
in the Thames from the East Indies,
reported that in the island of Mauri-
thus they had partaken of a mermaid,
the flesh of which was a good deal like
veal. The mermaid weighed three or
four hundted-weight, rather a buxom
specimen! The head was particularly
large, and so were the features, which
differed but little from those of a man
or woman. The story tells of two of
them, one with a beard four or five
inches long, the other much more femi-
nine. when they are first taken, -
the narrator proceeds to say, which is
often on the ground, they cry and grieve
with great sensibility." About the
same time a story came from Vigo, in
Spain, to the effect that some fisherman
on that coast had caught a sort of mer-
man, five feet and a half from head to
foot. The head was like that of goat,
with long beard and mustache, black
skin, somewhat hairy, very long neck,
short arms, hands longer and larger than
they ought to be in proportion, and
long fingers, with nails like claws :;
webed toes, and fin at the lower part
of the back.
The magazines for 1775 gave an ac-
cOnnt of a mermaid which was captured
in the Levant and brought to London.
One of the learned periodicals graveIy
told its readers that the mermaid had
the complexion and featurees of a Eu-
ropean, like those Of a young woman :;
that the eyes were light blue, the nose
small and elegantly formed, the mouth
small, the lips thin, "but edges of them
round like those of Goldfish :" that the
teeth were small, regular, and white :;
that the neck was we'll rounded and
that the ears were like those of the eel,
g but the placed like those of a human
species, with gills for respiration, which
appear like curls." There was no hair
on the head, but "roIls, which, at a
distance, might be mistaken for curls -
There was a fin rising pyramidaIIy from
the temples, forming a fore-top, like
that of a lady's hegd dress" The
bust was nearly like that of a young
damsel, pOrper orthodox mermaideD,
but, alas all below the waist was exact
Iy like a fish Three sets of fins below
the waist, one above the other, enabled
her to swim. Finally, cit is said to
have an enchanting voice, which it
never exerts excepts before a storm. -
The writer in the annual Register pro-
badly did not see this mermaid, which
the GentJen1an's magazine described as
being only three feet high. It was af-
terward proved to be a cheat, made
from the skull of the angle-shark.
a Welsh farmer named Reynolds,
living at Pen-y-holdin 1882, saw a some
thing which he appears to have believed
to be a mermaid he told the story to
DR.. George Phillips, who told it to
Mrs. Moore, who told it to a young
lady pupil of hers, who wrote out an
account of it for Mrs. Morgan, who in
serted it In her "TOur to Milford
Haven" How much the story gained
on it's travels, like the Three Black
Crows, or the parlor game of Russian
Scandal, we are left to find out for our-
selves; but its ultimate form was nearly
as follows: One morning, just outside
the cliff, Reynolds saw what seemed to
him to be person bathing in the sea,
with the upper part of the body out of
the water. On a nearer view, it looked
like the upper part of a person in a tub,
a youth, say, sixteen or eighteen years
of age, with nice white skin; a sort OF
brownish body and n tail were under
the water. The head and body were