Play On: Mermaids

What is a mermaid?

Under the strain of voyaging, sailors through the ages have seen in the ocean the embodiment of their deepest desires and fears
On early maps the figure of the enchanting mermaid shared space with the hideous monsters and fearsome beasts who lay in wait for the explorers of unknown waters

According to the Standard Dictionary of Folklore: Mythology and Legend, Merfolk (mermaids and mermen) are supernatural beings who live primarily beneath the sea.
While the common conception of Merfolk is that they are humans from the waist up, but fishes from the waist down, according to myth that is simply not true. Instead, Merfolk are neither human nor fish, but they are mammals that resemble human/fish combinations.
Mermaids are usually depicted as having scaly tails, however, many early descriptions of Merfolk mention their dolphin-like tails
A carving on Puce Church in Gironde, France, shows a young mermaid with two tapering tails instead of legs

in many cases, water spirits that weren't originally mermaids took on that form only after images of mermaids were introduced by outsiders.

It is in Hellenic literature that one finds the first literary description of Merfolk

20TH-CENTURY SIGHTINGS
Mermaid sightings were reported in Ireland as recently as 1910, when one was seen in County Clare. One local said that mermaids were a bad omen, as the last sighting in 1849 was followed by the great potato famine.

Where was the first sighting of mermaids?
What do mermaids symbolize in literature?
What animals are/were commonly mistaken for mermaids?
(http://content.class.com/ewew_content/oceans/03marine/0301ecology/0301_06.htm)

Historically, these animals were mistaken for mermaids, half fish and half woman, even though they are mammals, not fish at all

In European stories, mermaids were thought to be beautiful, seductive and dangerous—like the sea itself. They could bring good luck or bad. Ship figureheads were sometimes carved in the shape of mermaids. Some sailors also carved mermaids from walrus ivory and whale teeth, but many avoided carving mermaids, fearing they would bring bad luck.

Ovid writes that mermaids were born from the burning galleys of the Trojans where the timbers turned into the flesh and blood of the 'green daughters of the sea.'
The Irish say that mermaids are old pagan women transformed and banished from the earth by St. Patrick.
A Livonian folktale says they are the drowned children of an unknown Pharaoh - having met their doom in the depths of the Red Sea.

Play On