Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1908-07-29
MERMA|DS OF LEGEND.
Sea Women That Were Vouched
For by Ancient Writers.
ORIGIN OF THE DELUStON.
These Traditional Creatures Were
Probably Dueohss and Manatees.
Seal Maicers Of .FaHe-Mermaids of
Fiction and the Seal of Fact.

TEODdDiJ OCSOHSS dfI EsdHdICSSs
Seal Maiaens Of 'FaHe-Mermaids of
Fiction and the Seal of Fact.
There is decided fascination about
the ulermaids of legend Considering
their traditional form. it does not seem
quite certain whether they can be in
Guided among the fair ''huma mites" OF
old religion. but it would be extremely
to see one. In all serious
ness the truths and poetry underlying
and inherent in the old myths are well
worth attention, but apart from these
there is something distinctly entertain
Ing in the Quasi-historical accounts
that we faVe of mermaids and the he
roic attempts at ratioAalistic explana-
ton. The fancy has taken firmer hold
on popular imagination than many Of
the old legends. OF course they are
recognized as nonexistent; but, unlike
the majority Of NEUROLOGICAL beings.
they are invested colloquially with a
sort of humorous reality.
A History of the Netherlands" gives
circumstantial account of a great
tempest which washed ashore near
HARLEM ''Sea woman" as she was
swimming about. She was captured
and cleansed from the "sea moss that
had grown about her" and became a
humaniZed creature, except that she
was always trying to escape into the
water. And it is added, MANY persons
worthy of credit have justified in their
writings that they had scene her in the
said tOwne of Harlem" In the six
teenth century off CeylOn some sailors
captured seven mermen and mer-
maids" several priests and physicians
testifying to the fact and the latter
leaving it on record that after exami-
nation and dissection they found the
external and internal structures resem-
bled those of human beings. Hudson.
the famous navigator, declared that
bis ships company had seen a mer-
maid, the upper part of her body like
woman, skin very white and long
black hair. An old Iceland history
tells Of one near Greenland, ''the neck
and head in all respects like human
being" The Norwegian Bishop Pontip~
pidan, who wrote in the eighteenth GEN.
fury, records the appearance of a
mermaid which was deposed to Oh oath
by the observers" And not 70 multi
ply quotations proving the belief even
of the learned in the actual existence
of the mermaids, Pliny asserts author
itatively that ''as for the meremaidenS
it is no fabulous tale that goeth of
them, for locke how painters draw
them, so thay are indeed
1t seems hard after all these weighty
testimonies that we should be assured
that the historical" mermaids were
only dugongs or manatees, seals or
sea lions. especially as some of these
Interesting creatures measure some
eighteen feet in length and are by no
means attractive in appearance. Some
, thing in the shape of the head and the
breast is relied on by the rationalistic
scientists as explaining the delusion.
but one is at loss to understand how
this can account for the circumstan-
tial descriptions that have come down
, to US. COevals of those old writers
, have proved to us by their paintings
, that they held very much the same
/ views as to what constitutes feminine
beauty as we have, and we should
certainly not discover in the dugOng or
manatee anything whatever to suggest
, In the very fainteSt degree the idea OF
a pretty woman. Yet there is general
ly the implication of comeIiness in the
verbal pictures the old writer's give
of their mermaidS, though Columbus.
who reported that he had seen two or
three, admitted that he saw no beauty
i'll them. The seal explanation perhaps
does the least violence 10 ones tradi-
tional ideas, as. whatever may bs
thought of its resemblance to, a wo-
man. it is in itself graceful and its face
and eyes are pleasing.
There is. at any rate, a rather sug.
gestive coincidence in the view that
the mermaid Of fiction is the seal of
) fact, for closely allied if not identical
with mermaidS were the ''seal maid
r ems" of a thousand fables The &C.
cepted tradition was that these maid
ems assumed the form of seals, which
they could relinquish at any moment
by divesting themselves of the sea-
skins. Only if while they were dis
: porting themselves in quasi human
/ guise their seal integuments were stol-
en- or hidden they would have to re-
, main as "maidenS" and could not re-
sumo the form of seals. We know on
the authority Of many a song and
legend that willingly or unwillingly a
man has been
| married TO a mermaid
; At the bottom of the deep blue sea-"
but in the case of the fortunate Dur
ioiner of a seal maiden'S troublesome
disguise there was no need for a sub
marine descent. She could quite COM
fortably live on land and, indeed, had
to unless she found her sealskfn again.
though always longing, like the mer-
maid of HARLEM, to become a sea
dweller once more. There is therefore
unqueStionably a certain poetic pro-