‘Well.’ There was nothing he could do. He started looking down into the water, where she disappeared into the water, leaving him for good.
The man still stood there. ‘She might come up yet.’ He looked and looked, but she’d disappeared into the water, gone for good.
He started to realise that they’d been right. ‘Don’t take her to the river, even if she’s happy with you. You don’t know that she won’t return to the water.’ He was heart-broken and left feeling helpless. That’s all.
—RONNIE WAVEHILL
—translated by ERIKA CHAROLA and RONNIE WAVEHILL
A CHAMORRO GIRL BECOMES A MERMAID
This tale is from Guam, an unincorporated U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean (Micronesia). Sirena is a well-known and beloved figure in Chamorro culture. While it is true that Guam was once colonized by the Spanish, and thus some might argue that the Sirena story is ultimately based on Spanish tales about las sirenas, it diverges from typical European tales of mermaids in that it is not a story about a human-mermaid encounter, but a cautionary tale about the negative consequences of not attending to one’s responsibilities. In this intergenerational plot focused on the young girl Sirena, the grandmother’s wish means to alleviate the mother’s curse.
Sirena1
An ancient grand-mermaid sits on top of her pearly throne, brushing her long white hair. Upon her lap perch two little mergirls, their sparkling tails twisting and twirling.
“Oh, Auntie Sirena, tell us how the mermaids first became!”
“Haven’t you heard that story enough? I must have told it to you a hundred times already!” the ancient one chuckles.
“Oh please, Auntie Sirena! We’ll be oh-so-good if you will tell of our great-grand-mermaid Sirena, your mama!” the youngest pleads. Her large, charcoal-black eyes fill with shy tears, her black hair settles around her face. A butterfly fish peeps out from behind her ear, looking at the old mermaid reproachfully.
“All right, sit down and behave. I’ll tell you the tale of Sirena,” laughs the grand-mermaid. Looking at the two little mergirls with their rapt eyes, she slowly nods. And so the story begins . . .
* * *
—
On the faraway island of Guam lived Sirena, a graceful Chamorro girl. Sirena had silky hair and big dark eyes that surveyed her world in constant wonder. Her face was round and lovely; her hair was long and black. When Sirena laughed, her face smoothed into bliss and it seemed that nothing could be as sweet and innocent as this young girl.
As lovely as Sirena was, she was also very careless. She was constantly reminded by her mother to work hard. Sirena was good at weaving and could cook savory fish and find the most fragrant flowers and vines. Her flaw was that her whole self was always yearning for the water.
Sirena would start her work, weaving, cooking, or fishing, but soon her thoughts would turn to the river. She would run off to play in the cool water, her hair glistening in the warm tropical sun. Her mother was very patient with Sirena and usually excused these errors. She was fond of Sirena and knew that her beautiful daughter was still blessed with the naiveté of youth.
However, one day her mother was in a particularly bad mood. She had so much work to do. Her cousin was preparing a huge feast, and the mother’s job was to cook heaps of tapioca, fish, and coconut crab. All of Sirena’s brothers and sisters were busy. Sirena was splashing in the river when her youngest sister came down to fetch water.
“Sirena, you’d better get up there and help. Mama needs you. She is already angry because she can’t find you,” her sister warned. She giggled at Sirena’s nonchalant glance, then bent to dip her urn into the cool water. Once the vessel was filled to the brim, she gave Sirena an entreating tap on her shoulder, but Sirena brushed her away.
Sirena’s sister ran back up the shaded path to their thatched dwelling. She knew her mother would be angry.
“The water looks especially nice,” Sirena thought. I will have one quick swim before wasting the whole day cooking.” Sirena swam and then reluctantly trudged up to her house. Inside her mother was shouting at her brother to get breadfruit from their auntie across the bay.
“Sirena, there you are! I’ve been looking all over for you! Come, take this basket from your brother and fill it with breadfruit from auntie’s. Hurry, come directly back.” Her mother looked stern and angry. “Do not swim!”
Sirena took the basket. She raced from her house down the trail to her auntie’s. Her feet padded quickly along the soft, sandy path until she reached a small resting hut that looked out on the river. There Sirena sat down and waited for her heartbeat to slow down as she took deep breaths of the warm tropical air.
Suddenly, a flock of birds screeched. Sirena looked up. Right in front of her, the birds dipped and dove into the river, beckoning her to play. The sun shone off the clear waters sparkling like laughter. Fearless fish jumped and let the bright sun leap off their silver scales.
“Oh, if I play only a moment, then it won’t matter,” Sirena said to herself. She ached to step into the water! She put down her basket and ran to the glistening waters. They lifted her up and carried her out to deeper slopes where her feet barely touched the sandy bottom. Sirena splashed and swam. She didn’t notice that the birds had flown away.
Sirena was diving from a small rock when she looked up with alarm. The sun had disappeared behind the horizon, and dusk was coating the island. Sirena was very afraid of the night spirits that might leap out of the river. She sped up the beach to her empty basket. In the dim light, it looked emptier than ever! A frightened, hopeless tear slid down her cheek.
“Mama will be so mad when she finds out I didn’t get the breadfruit! She needed it for the cooking. Now she will be so disappointed in me!” Sirena cried. Her soft, whimpering voice received no pity from the night as it spread its lightless cloak over the sad girl.
Fear of the darkness soon caused her to forget her woes. Sirena turned her back to the river and darted up to her house. At first she cowered in the dark, but then she tiptoed up the doorway when she saw a branch of the flame tree tremble. Was it a taotaomo’na about to snatch her?
“Sirena!” Her mother’s face loomed out of the darkness. Her angry eyes burned with wrath. “Shame, shame, shame on you! Careless, idle child! Your own sister of six can do better! Shame, Sirena! I had to walk over to your anutie’s house myself for the breadfruit. Sirena, if you ever go in the water again, you will become an ugly, fat fish!” her mother screamed.
Sirena knelt trembling in a corner, her godmother’s hand on her shoulder. “No, please, no!” Sirena wailed when she heard her mother’s curse.
Sirena leaped from the house and began to streak down the path toward the water.
“Wait, Sirena, wait!” the godmother called. Tears coursed down the godmother’s wrinkled face. She knew the power of a mother’s curse. If Sirena touched the river, she would become a fish with slimy gray scales, staring eyes, and an ugly, wordless gaping mouth.
“Oh, spirits in your haunts, hear me! Save Sirena! Let her not become a disgusting fish! Save her beautiful face and her joyful spirit! Let the power of this curse be dimmed! She is but a foolish child, help her!” the godmother prayed.
Tears streamed down the mother’s cheeks and her body shook with sobs. Too late she realized what she had said.
Sirena stopped at the water’s edge. She saw the full orange moon rising above the distant horizon. Not a sound echoed from the watery silence. Sirena wept in fear and in pain. She didn’t want to leave her family—her mother and her godmother. She didn’t want to leave the soft grass and the waving palms. But her whole body wanted, needed the water. Its songs and hypnotic rhythms were a part of her as much as the fragrant flowers and tender breezes of her tropical birthplace. Sirena knew in her heart that she could not survive a day without swimming freely in the river.
As her godmother was chanting and h
er mother weeping, Sirena ran into the water. She dove from the shallows and swam down the river until she reached the deep sapphire depths of the ocean.
At once she began to change. She felt her legs binding, twisting, and turning, but not into ugly gray scales. Instead, an iridescent tail stretched down from her waist. Sobs shook her body, but her clear voice and beauty remained unchanged.
Sirena looked one last time at her beloved island. She whispered her last good-bye, a call that her mother heard with sadness and her godmother heard with a painful but understanding smile.
Some say that to this day, Sirena’s whispered call continues to echo across the vast, rippling sea.
* * *
—
“And so our story ends,” whispers the old grand-mermaid to the two sleepy mergirls.
“What a sad story. I like it, but it makes me cry,” murmurs the one, curling up in a pile of soft seaweed.
“I think so, too. Too bad it’s only pretend,” sighs the other.
The grand-mermaid smiles at her two yawning granddaughters. “Legend is the only truth, my children.”
THE FEEJEE MERMAID HOAX
In his autobiography, written in 1854, Phineas Taylor Barnum outlines his efforts to cash in on “the general incredulity in the existence of mermaids” by exhibiting what he claimed was a mummified mermaid, known as the “Fejee mermaid” (also Feejee or Fiji), to the public.1 Barnum gives the following account of his acquistion of the mermaid:
Early in the summer of 1842, Moses Kimball, Esq., the popular proprietor of the Boston Museum, came to New-York and exhibted to me what purported to be a mermaid. He stated that he had bought it of a sailor whose father, while in Calcutta in 1817 as captain of a Boston ship (of which Caption John Ellery was principal owner), had purchased it, believing it to be a preserved specimen of a veritable mermaid, obtained, as he was assured, from Japanese sailors.
Barnum wrote letters to three newspapers in New York, dated within a week or two of each other, and gave them to his friends to mail them from different locations. The first two letters gave local news, but also mentioned an agent of an important London museum, Dr. Griffin, who had purchased a mummified Fejee mermaid. The third letter asked the editors if they would consider asking Dr. Griffin to see the mermaid before he left for England. Barnum then ordered his employee, Mr. Lyman, to pretend to be Dr. Griffin and show the mermaid to the owner of a major hotel in Philadelphia. As Barnum explains, “Suffice it to say, that the plan worked admirably, and the Philadelphia press aided the press of New-York in awakening a wide-reaching and increasing curiosity to see the mermaid.”
On August 8, Barnum exhibited the Fejee Mermaid to the public for the first time. His assessment of how the mermaid was received is phrased in a manner befitting a man who was a master at pulling off hoaxes:
The public appeared to be satisfied, but as some persons always will take things literally, and make no allowance for poetic license even in mermaids, an occasional visitor, after having seen the large transparency in front of the hall, representing a beautiful creature half woman and half fish, about eight feet in length, would be slightly surprised in finding that the reality was a black-looking specimen of dried monkey and fish that a boy a few years old could easily run away with under his arm.
The first of the three letters that Barnum asked his friends to send for him was to The New York Herald. That letter inspired the following article, “The Mermaid,” which was published on July 17, 1842. Notably, the editorial took up half of the paper’s front page and included an engraving of the “mermaid.” Only the first paragraph discusses the “Fejee mermaid”—the rest is essentially a chronology of mermaid sightings.
The Mermaid1
Our readers will recollect that a few weeks since, we published a letter from a correspondent in Montgomery, Alabama, giving a description of a mermaid, which he had seen there in possession of an English gentleman, who had brought it from the Fejes Islands. A young artist at the south has had a peep at this strange animal, and has sent us a perfect drawing of it, from which we have had the above engraving executed for the gratification of our readers. The artist assures us that the drawing is perfectly correct, with the exception of the hair, which he has taken the liberty to make a little longer than the original would warrant.
The Mermaid has long been considered by many as a fabulous animal; but some naturalists have declared that there is too much evidence of the existence of these animals to warrant them in pronouncing the mermaid to be a mere creature of fancy.
We discover in the ourang outang the connecting link between the human and animal race. The flying squirrel or bat is the link between birds and quadrupeds, the platipus, has the body of a seal and the webbed feet and bill of the duck; the flying fish connects the bird and sealy inhabitant of the deep, and why may we not suppose that there is also a connecting link between fish and the human species?
Had not fossil remains of the great Mastedon been discovered, few would be found at the present day who would believe that such an animal had ever existed. We have seen many sea captains and sailors, whose honesty could not be questioned, who would take their bible oath that they have seen among the rocks of barren islands, animals with a body and head resembling a woman, and the lower extremity bearing the scales, fins and tail of a fish. Doubtless there are twenty such men now in this port.
When the animal of which the above is a picture, shall arrive here, we hope our citizens and the professors of natural history especially, will have an opportunity of testing this question in such a manner as to put the subject forever hereafter to rest. We learn that the gentleman who owns this animal is about taking it to London as a present to the British Lyceum of Natural History.
With regard to the real or fabulous existence of this animal, we find that in the year 1187, as Laray informs us, such a monster was fished up on the coast of Suffolk, and kept by the governor for six months. It bore so near a conformity with man, that nothing seemed wanting to it but speech. One day it took the opportunity of making its escape, plunging into the sea, was never more heard of.
In the year 1430, after a huge tempest, which broke down the dikes in Holland, and made way for the sea into the meadows, &c., some girls of the town of Edam, in West Friesland, going in a boat to milk their cows, perceived a mermaid embarrassed in the mud, with very little water. They took it into their boat, and brought it with them to Edam. It fed like one of them, but could never be brought to offer at speech. Some time afterwards it was brought to Herlem, where it lived for some years, though still showing an inclination to the water.
Another creature of the same species was caught in the Baltic, in 1531, and sent to Sigismond, king of Poland, with whom it lived three days, and was seen by all the court. Another very young one was taken near Rocca da Cintra, as related by Damien Goes. The king of Portugal and the grand master of the order of St. James, are said to have had a suit at law to determine which party these monsters belonged to.
In the year 1560, near the island or Manar, on the western coast of Ceylon, some fishermen brought up at one draught of a net, seven mermen and mermaids of which several Jesuits, and among the rest, F. Hen. Henriques and Dimas Bosquer, physicians to the viceroy of Goa, were witnesses. The physician, who examined them with a great deal of care, and made dissection thereof, asserts, that all the parts, both external and internal, were found perfectly conformable to those of men.
We have also another account of a merman seen near the great rock called the Diamond, on the coast of Martinico. The persons who saw it gave a precise description of it before a notary. They affirmed that they saw it wipe its hand over its face, and even heard it blow its nose.
In Pontoppidan’s Natural History of Norway, also, we have accounts of mermaids; but not more remarkable, or any way better attested than the above.
More modern instances are the following:—In 1613 a mermaid was ta
ken in the harbor of Cherbourg, after a violent storm, and was carried by the mayor of that place as a present to the French court; but, dying before it reached Versailles, it was afterwards shown publicly in the streets of Paris.
In the year 1758, a mermaid was exhibited at the fair of St. Germaine’s in France. It was about two feet long, very active, sporting about in the vessel of water in which it was kept, with great agility and seeming delight. It was fed with bread and small fish. Its position, when at rest, was always erect. It was a female, with ugly negro features. The skin was harsh, the ears very large, and the back parts and tail were covered with scales. M. Gautier, a celebrated French artist, made an exact drawing of it.
Another mermaid, which was exhibited in London in 1775, was said to have been taken in the gulf of Stanchio, in the Archipelago, or Ægean Sea, by a merchantman, trading to Natolia, in August, 1774. It was, therefore, an Asiastic mermaid. The description is as follows:—Its face is like that of a young female—its eyes a fine light blue—its nose small and handsome—its mouth small—its lips thin, and the edges of them round like that of the codfish—its teeth are small, regular and white—its chin well shaped, and its neck full. Its ears are like those of the eel, but placed like those of the human species, and behind them are the gills for respiration, which appear like curls. Some are said to have hair upon their head; but this has only rolls instead of hair, which, at a distance, might be taken for short curls. But its chief ornament is a beautiful membrane or fin rising from the temples, and gradually diminishing till it ends pyramidically, forming a fore-top like a lady’s head-dress. It has no fin on the back, but a bone like that of the human species. Its breasts are fair and fall; the arms and hands are well proportioned, but without nails on the fingers; the belly is round and swelling, but there is no navel. From the waist downward, the body is in all respects like the codfish; it has three sets of fine, one above another, below the waist, which enable it to swim erect on the sea.
The Penguin Book of Mermaids Page 23