10.See Thomas King’s The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), Leanne Simpson’s Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2011), and Marie Alohalani Brown, Facing the Spears of Change: The Life and Legacy of John Papa ‘Ī‘ī (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016), 15–20, 27–29. Examples of how history and belief are conveyed through wonder abound in the “Merfolk and Water Spirits Across the Globe” section of this book, and the discussion of mo‘olelo as a genre that straddles the belief/fiction distinction in Hawaiian culture furthers this point.
11.Strikingly, Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid,” currently the most popular mermaid tale, elaborates the interspecies sighting in a romantic way that does not fit either of the other two scenarios.
12.Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” in Professing in the Contact Zone: Bringing Theory and Practice Together, ed. Janice M. Wolff (Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2002), 4.
13.William A. Lessa, Tales from Ulithi Atoll: A Comparative Study of Oceanic Folklore (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961).
14.Elizabeth Segran, “Inside the Mermaid Economy,” Fast Company, September 9, 2015, www.fastcompany.com/3050847/inside-the-mermaid-economy-2. Segran notes: “If you’re suddenly seeing fish tails everywhere, you’re not imagining things.”
15.Information about the parade on the Coney Island USA website reads: “The MERMAID PARADE specifically was founded in 1983 with 3 goals: it brings mythology to life for local residents who live on streets named Mermaid and Neptune; it creates self-esteem in a district that is often disregarded as ‘entertainment’; and it lets artistic New Yorkers find self-expression in public,” www.coneyisland.com/mermaid-parade-faq.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Almqvist, Bo. “The Mélusine Legend in the Context of Irish Folk Tradition.” Béaloideas 67 (1999): 13–69.
Austern, Linda Phyllis and Inna Naroditskaya, eds. Music of the Sirens. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Bacchilega, Cristina and Jennifer Orme, eds. Wonder Tales in the 21st Century: Inviting Interruption. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020.
Bain, Frederika. “The Tail of Melusine: Hybridity, Mutability, and the Accessible Other.” In Melusine’s Footprint: Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth, edited by Misty Urban, Deva Kemmis, and Melissa Ridley Elmes, 17–35. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017.
Barnum, Phineas Taylor. The Life of P. T. Barnum Written by Himself. New York: Refield, 1855.
Bendix, Regina. “Seashell Bra and Happy End: Disney’s Transformations of ‘The Little Mermaid.’” Fabula 34 (1993): 280–90.
Benwell, Gwen and Arthur Waugh. Sea Enchantress: The Tale of the Mermaid and Her Kin. London: Hutchinson and Co., 1961.
Bernardini, Silvio. The Serpent and the Siren: Sacred and Enigmatic Images in Tuscan Rural Churches. Translated by Kate Singleton. Siena: San Quirico d’Oricia, 2000.
Bottrell, William. Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall, Second Series. Penzance: Beare and Son, 1873.
Braham, Persephone, Nettrice R. Gaskins, Philip Hayward, Sarah Keith, Sung-Ae Lee, Lisa Milner, Manal Shalaby, and Pan Wang. Scaled for Success: The Internationalisation of the Mermaid. Edited by Philip Hayward. Bloomington: Indiana University Press and John Libbey Publishing, 2018.
Bronzini, Giovanni B. “Giuseppe Gigli Scrittore di Folklore.” Lares 68, no. 2 (2002): 301–11.
Brown, Marie Alohalani. Facing the Spears of Change: The Life and Legacy of John Papa ‘Ī‘ī. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016.
Calvino, Italo. Italian Folktales. New York: Pantheon, 1980.
Carlson, Amy. “Kissing the Mermaid: Resistance, Adaptation, Popular Cultural Memory, and Maya Kern’s Webcomic How to be a Mermaid.” Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies 33, no. 1 (2019): 60–79.
Carlson, Patricia Ann, ed. Literature and the Lore of the Sea. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1986.
Cherry, John, ed. Mythical Beasts. London: British Museum Press, 1995.
Chesnutt, Michael. “The Three Laughs: A Celtic-Norse Tale in Oral Tradition and Medieval Literature.” In Islanders and Water-Dwellers. Proceedings of the Celtic-Nordic-Baltic Folklore Symposium held at University College Dublin (16–19 June 1996), edited by Patricia Lysaght, Séamas Ó Catháin, and Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, 37–49. Dublin: DBA Publications Ltd., 1999.
Christiansen, Reidar Th. The Migratory Legends. A Proposed List of Types with a Systematic Catalogue of the Norwegian Variants. Folklore Fellows’ Communications No. 175. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1958.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” In Monster Theory: Reading Culture, 3–25. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Croker, Thomas Crofton. Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland. London: Murray, 1828.
Darwin, Gregory. “On Mermaids, Meroveus, and Mélusine: Reading the Irish Seal Woman and Mélusine as Origin Legend.” Folklore 126, no. 2 (2015): 123–41.
Drewal, Henry John. “Performing the Other: Mami Wata Worship in Africa.” TDR: The Drama Review 32, no. 2 (Summer 1988): 160–85.
——— with Charles Gore and Michelle Kisliuk. “Siren Serenades: Music for Mami Wata and Other Water Spirits in Africa.” In Music of the Sirens, edited by Linda Phyllis Austern and Inna Naroditskaya, 294–316. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Eliade, Mircea. Patterns in Comparative Religion. Translated by Rosemary Sheed. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958.
Fraser, Lucy. The Pleasures of Metamorphosis: Japanese and English Fairy Tale Transformations of “The Little Mermaid.” Detroit: Wayne State University, 2017.
Hamilton, Virginia. Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales. New York: Blue Sky Press, 1995.
Heiner, Heidi Anne, ed. Mermaids and Other Water Spirit Tales from Around the World. Nashville: SurLaLune Press, 2011.
Hurley, Nat. “The Little Transgender Mermaid: A Shape-Shifting Tale.” In Seriality and Texts for Young People, edited by Mavis Reimer et al., 258–80. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Jarvis, Shawn C. “Mermaid.” In Folktales and Fairy Tales: Traditions and Texts from Around the World, edited by Anne E. Duggan and Donald Haase, with Helen J. Callow, 2nd edition, 646–47. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood ABC-Clio, 2016.
Jorgensen, Marilyn A. “The Legends of Sirena and Santa Marian Camalin: Guåhananian Cultural Oppositions.” In Monsters with Iron Teeth: Perspectives on Contemporary Legends, vol. 3, edited by Gillian Bennet and Paul Smith. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1988.
Kabwasa, Angèle Kadima-Nzuji. Song of the Mermaid and Other Folk Tales from the Congo. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2008.
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
Lao, Meri. Sirens: Symbols of Seduction. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 1998.
Lessa, William A. Tales from Ulithi Atoll: A Comparative Study in Oceanic Folklore. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961.
Levi, Steven C. “P. T. Barnum and the Feejee Mermaid.” Western Folklore 36, no. 2 (1977): 149–54.
Murai, Mayako. From Dog Bridegroom to Wolf Girl: Contemporary Japanese Fairy-Tale Adaptations in Conversation with the West. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2015.
Ogunleye, Adetunbi Richard. “Cultural Identity in the Throes of Modernity: An Appraisal of Yemoja Among the Yoruba in Nigeria.” Inkaniyiso: The Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 7, no. 1 (2015): 61–68.
Otero, Solimar and Toyin Falola. Yemoja: Gender, Sexuality, and Creativity in the Latina/o and Afro-Atlantic Diasporas. New York: State University of New York Press, 2013.
Paracelsus. “A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies
, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits.” Translated by Henry E. Sigerist. In Four Treatises of Theophrastus von Hohenheim, Called Paracelsus, edited by Henry E. Sigerist, 223–53. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1941.
Pedersen, Tara E. Mermaids and the Production of Knowledge in Early Modern England. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2015.
Phillpotts, Beatrice. Mermaids. New York: Ballantine, 1980.
Pitrè, Giuseppe. “La Leggenda di Cola Pesce.” In Studi di Leggende Popolari in Sicilia, 1–173. Torino: Carlo Clausen, 1904.
Pliny the Elder. “The Forms of the Tritons and Nereids. The Forms of Sea Elephants.” In The Natural History, edited by John Bostock and Henry T. Riley. London, H. G. Bohn, 1855.
Plonien, Klaus. “‘Germany’s River, but Not Germany’s Border’: The Rhine as a National Myth in Early 19th Century German Literature.” National Identities 2, no. 1 (2000): 81–86.
Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession (January 1991): 33–40. Reprinted in Professing in the Contact Zone: Bringing Theory and Practice Together, edited by Janice M. Wolff, 1-18. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2002.
Pukui, Mary Kawena with Laura C. S. Green, collected and translated. Folktales of Hawai‘i: He mau Ka‘ao Hawai‘i. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 2008.
Quintana, Bernardo Mansilla. “Pincoy.” Chiloé Mitológico. http://chiloemitologico.cl/los-mitos-de-chiloe/mitos-acuaticos/la-pincoya.
Sajadpoor, Farzaneh and Ebrahim Jamali. “Fairies in the Folklore of Booshehr.” Anthropology of the Contemporary Middle East and Central Eurasia 3, no. 1 (2015): 36–42.
Segran, Elizabeth. “Inside the Mermaid Economy.” Fast Company. September 9, 2015. www.fastcompany.com/3050847/inside-the-mermaid-economy-2.
Simpson, Leanne. Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2011.
Skye, Alexander, ed. Mermaids: The Myths, Legends, and Lore. Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2012.
Tvedt, Terje and Terje Oestigaard. “A History of the Ideas of Water: Deconstructing Nature and Constructing Society.” In Ideas of Water from Ancient Societies to the Modern World, edited by Terje Tvedt and Terje Oestigaard, Series II, vol. 1. London and New York; I.B. Tauris, 1−39.
Urban, Misty, Deva Kemmis, and Melissa Ridley Elmes, eds. Melusine’s Footprint: Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017.
Valk, Ülo. “The Guises of Estonian Water-Spirits in Relation to the Plot and Function of Legend.” In Islanders and Water-Dwellers. Proceedings of the Celtic-Nordic-Baltic Folklore Symposium Held at University College Dublin (16–19 June 1996), edited by Patricia Lysaght, Séamas Ó Catháin, and Dáithi Ó hÓgáin, 337−48. Dublin: DBA Publications Ltd., 1999.
Warner, Marina. Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
———. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.
Waugh, Arthur. “The Folklore of the Merfolk.” Folklore 71.2 (1960): 73−84.
Yant, Christie. “Author Spotlight Genevieve Valentine,” Lightspeed 33. February 2013. Accessed August 14, 2018. www.lightspeedmagazine.com/nonfiction/author-spotlight-genevieve-valentine-4.
Yolen, Jane and Shulamith Oppenheim. The Fish Prince and Other Stories: Mermen Folk Tales. New York: Interlink Books, 2001.
Zipes, Jack, ed. and trans. Catarina the Wise and Other Wondrous Sicilian Folk & Fairy Tales. Illustrated by Adeetje Bouma. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.
Acknowledgments
Any anthology, and especially those collecting folkloric texts across cultures, will benefit from collaboration. Aiming to foreground place-based scholarship, we were especially fortunate to enlist several scholars who agreed to share their knowledge by authoring the introductions to tales from their respective regions and area studies. It is our pleasure to thank Charity Bagatsing and Regie Barcelona Villanueva, Margaret Lyngdoh, Ulrich Marzolph and Moḥammad ‘Jaʿfari Qanavāti, Mayako Murai, Marilena Papachristophorou, and Ülo Valk, who contributed their scholarly expertise, local knowledge, and/or translation skills to enable the publication of texts, whether oral or in print, from the Philippines, Northeast India, Iran, Japan, Greece, and Estonia that were previously unavailable in English. Combining these scholars’ and our own competence in multiple languages has been crucial to further diversify readers’ exposure to mermaid and water-spirit tales. We are also grateful to Erika Charola, Laurel Fantauzzo and Katherine Diaz, Cynthia Franklin, Terry Adrian Gunnell, ku‘ualoha ho‘omanawanui, Maria Natividad Karaan, Jesse Knutson, Bianca Lazzaro, Jing Li, Laura Lyons, Qiu Xiaoqing, John Rieder, Noenoe K. Silva, Gretchen Schmid, and Jack Zipes, who in different ways helped us navigate as we explored the fascinating storyworlds of mermaids, merfolk, and other water spirits. And finally, as coeditors we acknowledge each other’s expertise, willingness to cooperate, and good humor throughout the process.
WATER DEITIES AND SIRENS FROM OLDEN TIMES
Oannes1
Male and female water beings who are much more powerful than mermaids feature prominently in myths. They may be divine—as in the case of Poseidon and others—or at the very least have extraordinary powers.
The description of Oannes that follows comes from the writings of Berossus (also spelled Berosus), a third-century priest and historian of Babylonia, as processed through nineteenth-century English-language accounts. Oannes is fish shaped, but he also has features that allow him to exist on land and interact with humans: a man’s head and feet and the ability to speak human language. Whether he was a fish god or merely a messenger of the ancient water god Ea, Oannes has been connected with the Mesopotamian god Dagon and the Syrian goddess Atargatis, who in turn, according to some ancient Greek writers, was also associated with Aphrodite or Venus, the Greco-Roman goddess born of the sea. Because at nightfall Oannes plunged back into the waters of what is now the Persian Gulf, some see him as a solar deity.
It is significant that Oannes educates humans: this resonates with the mythological understanding that, as also seen in the Sirens of the Odyssey, hybrid creatures associated with the sea are holders of knowledge.
At Babylon there was (in these times) a great resort of people of various nations, who inhabited Chaldea, and lived without rule and order, like the beasts of the field.
In the first year there made its appearance, from a part of the Erythræan sea2 which bordered upon Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, who was called Oannes. (According to the account of Apollodorus) the whole body of the animal was like that of a fish; and had under a fish’s head another head, and also feet below, similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish’s tail. His voice, too, and language was articulate and human; and a representation of him is preserved even to this day.
This Being, in the day-time, used to converse with men; but took no food at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters, and sciences, and every kind of art. He taught them to construct houses, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and showed them how to collect fruits. In short, he instructed them in everything which could tend to soften manners and humanise mankind. From that time, so universal were his instructions, nothing material has been added by way of improvement. When the sun set it was the custom of this Being to plunge again into the sea, and abide all night in the deep; for he was amphibious.
Kāliya, the Snake1
Drawn from the sacred Sanskrit text Bhagavata Purana, the story of Krishna defeating the Naga (great snake) Kāliya is famous in the Hindu tradition not only as a depiction of young Krishna’s power, but because he does not kill the Naga, and allows the snake and his family instead to move away from the river and out into the ocean. Krishna thus helps the people livin
g near the river Yamuna, which had been polluted with the snake’s venom, while acknowledging the Naga’s place in creation.
The description of the serpent king and his water-snake entourage aligns with those of other mythological sea “monsters” that are portrayed as dangerous. Homer tells us of Scylla’s six long necks and multiple rows of powerful teeth in each mouth; along with Charybdis, Scylla challenges Odysseus just after his encounter with the Sirens, in the area that we now identify as close to the Messina Strait in Sicily. But like other water deities in myth, the Naga is also an important symbol of transformation, an object of worship, and a significant living tradition.
Serpent worship is among the world’s oldest and most widespread religious practices. Whether major or minor divinities, water serpents’ interactions with humans run the gamut from benevolent to malevolent. Like other water beings, water snakes embody the life-giving and death-dealing aspects of water. As cosmic forces, they may symbolize creation and order or destruction and chaos—and at times, these opposing influences merge, when destruction becomes the catalyst for creation.
Moreover, in many cultures past and present, snakes—especially those associated with water—are phallic symbols. As benign entities, serpents may be tutelary spirits associated with healing, knowledge and arts, or fertility; or progenitors of certain lineages or entire peoples. As destructive beings, they may be predators, sexual or otherwise, or the origin of diseases and afflictions.
Once Kṛṣṇa went into Vṛndāvana unaccompanied by Rāma. Radiant with a garland of forest flowers, he roved about in the company of cowherds. Then he came upon the river Yamunā, whose waves were tossing about as if she were laughing, throwing patches of foam on the banks. But in the water he saw a dreadful sight—it was the hideous pool of the snake Kāliya, whose water was mixed with a fiery poison! The trees on the bank nearby, splashed by the burning poison, had been scorched while the birds were singed by sprays of that poisoned water tossed aloft in the wind.
The Penguin Book of Mermaids Page 3