Mermaids

Admin Number of posts : 41 Registration date : 2008-01-01

A mermaid (from the Middle English mere in the obsolete sense 'sea' (as in maritime, the Latin mare, "sea") + maid(en)) is a legendary aquatic creature with the head and torso of human female and the tail of a fish. The male version of a mermaid is called a merman; gender-neutral plurals could be merpeople or merfolk. Various cultures throughout the world have similar figures.

Much like sirens, mermaids in stories would sometimes sing to sailors and enchant them, distracting them from their work and causing them to walk off the deck or cause shipwrecks. Other stories would have them squeeze the life out of drowning men while trying to rescue them. They are also said to take them down to their underwater kingdoms. In Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid it is said that they forget that humans cannot breathe underwater, while others say they drown men out of spite.

The Sirens of Greek mythology are sometimes portrayed in later folklore as mermaid-like; in fact, some languages use the same word for both creatures. Other related types of mythical or legendary creature are water fairies (e.g. various water nymphs) and selkies, animals that can transform themselves from seals to humans.

Prior to the mid 19th century, mariners referred to Manatee and Dugongs as mermaids.

Legends of these half-human, half-fish humanoids have circulated for millennia, even as far back as 5000 BC.[citation needed] It has been widely suggested or implied that manatees or dugongs could be behind the myth of the mermaid.[1] An example supporting this theory would be that Christopher Columbus had logged that he had seen mermaids on his journey to the new world, but thought they would be more attractive. These large aquatic mammals are notable for the way in which they carry their young, cradled in their arms much as a human would carry a baby. It is possible that sailors seeing these unfamiliar beasts for the first time, would assume that they had in fact stumbled across some sort of humanoid species, and consequently spread their accounts of the sightings through their homelands on their return from voyages. It has even been posited that the traditional image of a mermaid with long flowing hair could be attributed to manatees breaking the ocean surface underneath patches of seaweed, and giving the unfamiliar observer the impression of having long hair. Sightings from first-hand witnesses generally describe mermaids who do not talk and have green or black hair. The stereotypical "pretty" mermaid usually has long, flowing golden hair.[2]

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