A Freshwater Mermaid in Grimms’ Fairy Tales
1.The Grimms collected “The Water Nixie” (Grimm 79) from Marie Hassenpflug, while “The Nixie in the Pond” (Grimm 181) was drawn from Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum (1842), a journal founded by Moritz Haupt in 1841, focusing on older German literature, customs, and beliefs.
These stories are not legends, but folktales that rely on readers’ suspension of disbelief. Folklorists have classified folk and fairy tales according to “tale types,” which identify characteristic plot and thematic elements in variants and versions collected internationally. This is an imperfect system, but it helps scholars to place a tale within an extended family of stories that share affinities based on common episodes and conflicts. It is common for scholars to identify folk and fairy tales according to their tale type name and number. “The Nixie in the Pond,” like Straparola’s “Fortunio,” also in this volume, belong to ATU 316, The Mermaid in the Pond. ATU stands in for Aarne-Thompson-Uther, the editors of the latest edition of The Types of International Folktales. The Brothers Grimms’ tales have received so much critical attention that they too have their own numbering system, such as Grimm 79 and 181 above.
The Nixie in the Pond
1.The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, trans. Jack Zipes, vol. 2 (New York: Bantam Books, 1987), 224–28.
Three Estonian Water Spirits
1.This legend is classified as ML 4050 in Reidar Th. Christiansen’s The Migratory Legends: A Proposed List of Types with a Systematic Catalogue of the Norwegian Variants (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1958).
Three Tales (Untitled)
1.ERA II 18, 481/2 (1). Source in the collections of the Estonian Folklore Archives in Tartu. Trans. Ülo Valk.
2.Oskar Loorits, Endis-Eesti elu-olu I: lugemispalu kaluri ja meremehe elust. Eesti Rahvaluule Arhiivi Toimetused [Everyday Culture of Old Estonia I: Readings About the Life of Fishers and Sailors] 19 (11) (Tallin: Kultuurkoondis, 1939; Tartu: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum, 2002), 37. Trans. Ülo Valk.
3.Oskar Loorits, Endis-Eesti elu-olu I: lugemispalu kaluri ja meremehe elust. Eesti Rahvaluule Arhiivi Toimetused [Everyday Culture of Old Estonia I: Readings About the Life of Fishers and Sailors] 19 (11) (Tallin: Kultuurkoondis, 1939; Tartu: Eesti Kirjandusmuuseum, 2002), 123. Trans. Ülo Valk.
Two Greek Mermaids
1.In modern Greek, mermaids are called gorgones, but they should not be confused with another set of ancient Greek mythological creatures, the Gorgons. See Nicolaos Politis, Νεοελληνική Μυθολογία [Modern Greek Mythology] (Athens: Perri Bros Booksellers, 1871), 61–65, for further information.
2.The Romance of Alexander, a collection of legends about Alexander the Great, dates back to the third century and is attributed to Pseudo-Callisthenes.
New Tunes
1.Nicolaos Politis, Παραδόσεις [Legends], vol. 1 (Athens: Grammata, 1904), 226–27. Trans. Marilena Papachristophorou.
2.The storyteller shifts to the present tense to underscore the immediacy of Alexander’s action and the speed with which he accomplishes what is presented as an impossible task. At the very end of the tale the present tense instead indicates the reoccurrence over time or iterative nature of humans’ encounters with this mermaid.
The Mermaid
1.Georgios Rigas, Σκιάθου Λαϊκὸς Πολιτισμός [Skiathos’ Popular Culture], vol. 2 (Thessaloniki: The Society for Macedonian Studies, 1962), 36–42. Trans. Marilena Papachristophorou.
2.Here, the storyteller pulls the audience in by placing the dialogue between the Mermaid and the captain in the present tense. Shifting from past to present tense and back to the past tense is not unusual in oral storytelling, with the immediacy of a dialogue or action often presented in the present. In the Greek text, “Mermaid” is capitalized, and the translation reproduces this.
Merfolk from the South of Italy
1.Gigli recounts in his introduction how in the late 1880s he conducted an ethnographic study of traditional beliefs, customs, and narratives in the southern Italian peninsula surrounded by the Adriatic and the Ionian seas. Later folklore scholars are skeptical of his scholarly methods, however. Like Italo Calvino, who nonetheless adapted several of Gigli’s tales in Fiabe Italiane [Italian Folktales] (1959; New York: Harcourt, 1980), they consider him to be more of a creative interpreter of the songs and tales he collected.
Knowing this does not make the clearly fictional tale “Storia di una Sirena” any less interesting, Calvino also reminds us of a Tuscan proverb: “La novella nun è bella se sopra non ci si rappella” (“The tale is not beautiful if nothing is added to it”). When Calvino adapted Gigli’s tale, he composed lines for the sirens’ songs and tweaked the ending so as to have the fairy and the rescued beauty flying away on the back of an eagle. The translation in this volume stays pretty close to Gigli’s text, but takes one liberty having to do with the word sirena, which translates into both the English words “siren” and “mermaid.” Cristina Bacchilega chose “mermaid” in most cases, except for the occasions in which the emphasis on song evoked the mythological Sirens.
2.The two Sicilian tales are translated into English from Fiabe e Leggende Popolari Siciliane, which the renowned Giuseppe Pitrè (1841–1916) collected and edited in 1888. The volume was recently reprinted with Bianca Lazzaro’s expert translations of tales and legends from Sicilian into Italian. Pitrè published over three hundred other Sicilian tales and other volumes of Sicilian lore, and in 1904 an extensive study of Cola Pesce folk and literary legends. A brilliant folklorist and comparatist who made a living as a medical doctor and also taught at the University of Palermo, Pitrè took down tales in dialect as well as each teller’s name and other information. For other Cola Pesce tales in English, see Jack Zipes, ed. and trans., Catarina the Wise and Other Wondrous Sicilian Folk & Fairy Tales, illustrated by Adeetje Bouma (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).
A Mermaid’s Story
1.“Storia d’una Sirena,” Superstizioni, Pregiudizi e Tradizioni in Terra d’Otranto: Con un’Aggiunta di Canti e Fiabe Popolari [Superstitions, Prejudices and Traditions from the Land of Otranto: With the Addition of Popular Songs and Tales], ed. Giuseppe Gigli (Florence: G. Barbèra, 1893), 231–38. Translated by Cristina Bacchilega.
Cola Pesce
1.Bianca Lazzaro, Italian translation of the Sicilian “Cola Pisci,” in Giuseppe Pitrè, Fiabe e Leggende Popolari Siciliane [Sicilian Folktales and Popular Legends] (Roma: Donzelli Editore, 2016), 860–61. Translated by Cristina Bacchilega.
2.From Pitrè’s notation: Collected by the lawyer Franz Cannizzaro in the coastal area of Loccalumera, now part of the larger Messina.
The Sailor and the Mermaid of the Sea
1.Bianca Lazzaro, Italian translation of the Sicilian “Lu Marinaru e la Sirena di lu Mari,” in Giuseppe Pitrè, Fiabe e Leggende Popolari Siciliane [Sicilian Folktales and Popular Legends] (Roma: Donzelli Editore, 2016), 641. Translated by Cristina Bacchilega.
2.From Pitrè’s notation: Told in Palermo by Giovanni Minafò, a fisherman of the Borgo precinct. The same tale tradition was also collected in Siculiana, in the Agrigento area.
Legend of Melusina
1.Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, Illustrative of the Romance and Superstitions of Various Countries (London: H. G. Bohn, 1850), 480–82.
2.Jean d’Arras probably drew on Celtic and other myths of hybrid and thus monstrous female creatures (see Frederika Bain, “The Tail of Melusine: Hybridity, Mutability, and the Accessible Other,” in Melusine’s Footprint, 17–35; and Gregory Darwin, “On Mermaids, Meroveus, and Mélusine: Reading the Irish Seal Woman and Mélusine as Origin Legend,” Folklore 126, no. 2 (2015).
3.*i. e. Cephalonia.
4.*It is at this day (1698) corruptly called La Font de Séc; and every year in the month of May a fair is held in the neighbouring mead, where the pastry-c
ooks sell figures of women, bien coiffées, called Merlusines.—French Author’s Note
5.*A boar’s tusk projected from his mouth. According to Brantôme, a figure of him, cut in stone, stood at the portal of the Mélusine tower, which was destroyed in 1574.
6.*At her departure she left the mark of her foot on the stone of one of the windows, where it remained till the castle was destroyed.
Fortunio and the Siren
1.The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: from Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, trans. Jack Zipes (New York: Norton, 2001), 138–145.
2.*Giovan Francesco Straparola, “Fortunio and the Siren”—“Fortunio per una ricevuta ingiuria dal padre e dalla madre putativi si parte; e vagabandondo capita in un bosco, dove trova tre animali da’ quali per sua sentenza è guidardonato; indi, entrato in Polonia, giostra, ed in premio Doralice figliuola del re in moglie ottiene” (1550), Favola IV, Notte terza in Le piacevoli notti, 2 vols. (Venice: Comin da Trino, 1550/53).
The Day after the Wedding, from Undine
1.Friedrich de La Motte Fouqué, Undine and Other Tales, trans.Fanny Elizabeth Bunnett (London: Samson Low, Son, and Marston, 1867), 45–50.
The Little Mermaid
1.The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, trans. Mary Howitt, illustrated by Helen Stratton (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1899), 125–140.
2.For a contemporary queer adaptation of “The Little Mermaid,” see Maya Kern’s How to Be a Mermaid, available as a webcomic at mayakern.com and in print in Cristina Bacchilega and Jennifer Orme, eds., Inviting Interruptions: Wonder Tales in the 21st Century (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, forthcoming).
The Fisherman and His Soul
1.Oscar Wilde, A House of Pomegranates, illus. C. Ricketts and C. H. Shannon (London: James R. Osgood McIlvane, 1891) 73–147.
2.Lucy Fraser’s The Pleasures of Metamorphosis: Japanese and English Fairy Tale Transformations of “The Little Mermaid” (Detroit: Wayne State University, 2017), provides a developed discussion of this exoticism.
The Golden Mermaid
1.Andrew Lang, ed. The Green Fairy Book (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1892), 340–49.
2.Scottish comparative mythologist and journalist Andrew Lang (1844–1912) wrote about fairy tales and mythology, introduced the 1884 Grimms’ Household Tales in Margaret Hunt’s translation, and produced a few tales of his own, such as “The Princess Nobody” and “Prince Riccardo.” Concerning the fairy tales he published, it should be noted that his wife, Leonora, and several others translated and adapted many of the stories.
Following “The Golden Mermaid” tale in Lang’s book is a terse notation: “Grimm.” Is this simply a reference to a somewhat similar story appearing in Grimms’ Fairy Tales, or is “The Golden Mermaid” more specifically an adaptation of “The Golden Bird” (Grimm 57)? The latter is quite unlikely given their plot differences, but we do not know which text Lang and his collaborators had in mind.
A Mermaid’s Tears
1.Kurahashi Yumiko, “Two Tales Translated from Cruel Fairy Tales for Adults,” trans. Marc-Sebastian Jones and Tateya Koichi, Marvels & Tales 22, no. 1 (2008): 173–77.
Abyssus Abyssum Invocat
1.Genevieve Valentine, LightspeedMagazine.com, February 2013, www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/abyssus-abyssum-invocat.
2.Genevieve Valentine’s first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, won the Crawford Award for Best Novel, as well as a nomination for the Nebula Award; The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, her 2015 novel, retells the “Twelve Dancing Princesses” fairy tale.
3.The legend of the Mermaid of Zennor, first published by Cornish folklorist William Bottrell in 1873, has been adapted in poems, novels, songs, and opera. The so-called “mermaid’s chair”—a medieval chair that features the mermaid carving—is a tourist attraction in Zennor.
African Mermaids and Other Water Spirits
1.Funmi Osoba, Benin Folklore: A Collection of Classic Folktales and Legends (London: Hadada Books, 1993), 97.
2.Osoba, Benin Folklore, 46.
3.Osoba, Benin Folklore, 30, 77.
4.“A Yoruba Festival Tradition Continues: 50 Photos Celebrating the River Goddess Oshun,” OkayAfrica, October 6, 2015.
5.Adetunbi Richard Ogunleye, “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), 60–68.
6.Ogunleye, “Cultural Identity in the Throes of Modernity,” 61.
7.Solimar Otero and Toyin Falola, eds., Yemoja: Gender, Sexuality, and Creativity in the Latina/o and Afro-Atlantic Diasporas (New York: State University of New York Press, 2013), xvii–xxxii.
8.Daniel, “Police Dispel Reports of Mermaid in Ibadan, Says Fish Was Baby-Octopus,” Information Nigeria, July 24, 2013, www.informationng.com/2013/07/police-dispel-reports-of-mermaid-in-ibadan-says-fish-was-baby-octopus.html.
9.Staff reporter, “Mermaid and Incensed Spirits Myth Haunts Zimbabwe Town,” Bulawayo 24 News, February 6, 2012, bulawayo24.com/index-id-news-sc-national-byo-11827-article-mermaid+and+incensed+spirits+myth+haunts+zimbabwe+town+.html.
10.Dan Newling, “Reason for Zimbabwe Reservoir Delays . . . Mermaids Have Been Hounding Workers Away!,” Daily Mail Online, February 6, 2012, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097218/Reason-Zimbabwe-reservoir-delays--mermaids-hounding-workers-away.html.
11.Aldo Pekeur, “Mysterious ‘Mermaid’ Rises from the River,” Independent Online News, January 16, 2008, www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/mysterious-mermaid-rises-from-the-river-385945.
Agangu and Yemaja
1.A. B. Ellis, The Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa (London: Chapman and Hall, 1894), 43–45.
2.*The order, according to some, was Olokun, Olosa, Shango, Oya, Oshun, Oba, Ogun, Dada, and the remainder as above.
Merfolk in The Thousand and One Nights
1.Antoine Galland’s Les Mille et Une Nuit [sic], which appeared between 1704 and1717 and was comprised of twelve volumes, is now understood to be more of an enlarged adaptation than a translation. This publication met with an enthusiastic response in Europe, and the Nights made its debut in English translation shortly after Galland’s first volumes were published.
2.The name of both protagonists is ‘Abdallâh, marking them both as Muslim (‘Abdallâh literally means “God’s slave”) and identifying them as typical folk characters in this tradition, comparable to the English “Jack.” In this story, the children of the sea, like humans, obey God’s laws, but their practice in dealing with the dead are opposite. It is precisely this irreconcilable difference that makes the two ‘Abdallâhs go their separate ways.
Julnar the Mermaid and Her Son Badar Basim of Persia
1.Arabian Nights: The Marvels and Wonders of the Thousand and One Nights. Adapted from Richard F. Burton’s Unexpurgated Translation by Jack Zipes (New York: Signet Classic, 1991), 223–63.
The Sea Fairy
1.From Moḥammad Jaʿfari Qanavāti’s personal collection. Translated by Ulrich Marzolph.
About K——, the River Goddess Who Exists in Jaintia Hills
1.Collected and translated by Margaret Lyngdoh.
2.Clan name changed.
3.Place names changed.
How Water Tied a Covenant with Man and the Divine Nature of Water
1.Coll. and trans. Margaret Lyngdoh.
2.Literally, the people of the Ramhah deity.
3.In the narrative of the origin of ailments among humans, illnesses are also nonhuman entities, the children of the ill-fated queen Maharajari, who was murdered during childbirth by her husband through treachery. Some of these children sought shelter inside Niaring.
4.Jhare is a magical practice in the North Khasi Hills. Everything in nature, including afflictions and illness, has a secret name, the knowled
ge of which gives the practitioner power and authority over the object or illness.
About a Puri Enchantment
1.Collected and translated by Margaret Lyngdoh.
Shoān, a Nicobar Tale
1.Frederik Adolph deRoepstorff, A Dictionary of the Nancowry Dialect of the Nicobarese Language; in Two Parts: Nicobarest-English and English-Nicobarese, ed. Mrs. deRoepstorff (Calcutta: Home Department Press, 1884), 251–54.
2.*Tentioāhlare—to go on board
3.*Wūs—an onomatopoetic word denoting the rush of water at the approach of the whale.
4.*Ilū—a fish, in form not unlike the “belone rostrate” (gar-fish). When hunted or hunting, it glides or skims very gracefully along on the surface of the water, its tail just touching it.
5.*Hiput—the Dugong, is common about the Nicobars. It is hunted, and the Nicobarese have much to say about the great care it takes of its young one, and of the funny way it seizes its calf when in danger.
6.*Ok kandu—The shell of the “tridachna gigantia.” This shell grows to an enormous size. I have seen one 6ʹ across, but I am told that they are found even bigger.
A Hairy Chinese Mermaid
1.In A Manual of Chinese Quotations under “Precious Things,” we find “The mermaid wept tears that became pearls.” The saying is thus annotated: “The mermaid was entertained hospitably when in the upper world by a certain person, and, in order to show some return, wept into a vessel, her tears being turned into precious stones.” J. H. Stewart Lockhart (Hongkong: Kelly & Walsh, 1893), 280. While in European tales and legends the mermaid is often attracted to precious objects and jewelry, the transformation in this Chinese saying links with the mermaid’s tears becoming pearls in Japanese lore as well.
Mermaids
1.Nicholas Belfield Dennys, The Folk-Lore of China (Hongkong: China Mail Office, 1876), 114–15.
The Penguin Book of Mermaids Page 29