If I google images I dredge up a
mixture of intriguing gothic beauty, Disneyfied cuteness and hideous desiccated chimeras that have supposedly washed up on beaches.
But Russian folktales tell of
drowned virgins rising from their watery graves as rusalka. Like the mythic sirens,
they would beguile their victims with haunting songs so that, doped up on the
poisonous melodies, the victims would succumb to death without resistance. Anyone
listening to Dvorjak’s moon aria from his opera Rusalka, might have some idea
of how bewitching he imagined this music was.
The theme of seduction is strong
in Scandinavian mermaid legend. Norse goddess, Ran, was the owner of a huge and
pernicious net which she would use to catch men who dared broach her briny
territory. She even loaned her net to Loki for his own misdeeds – but back to
the sex – for once captured in this net Ran’s victims were subjected to
fabulous banquets, entertainment and ultimately a place in the capacious beds
of the goddess and her nine voracious daughters. Just one downside – once
they’d been seduced, the men were drowned. Not a bad way to go, perhaps,
compared to chronic scurvy.
But should stories such as these
lull us with images of alabaster-skinned Pre-Raphaelite sylphs, the rusalki hailing
from more the northern climes are of a more terrifying aspect: ragged, bloated
peeling flesh, knotted hair, glowing green eyes – far closer to the legend of
Jenny Greenteeth who was wont to drown those who wandered too near the water’s
edge.
But the enduring imagery we have is
of mermaids with tumbling locks so personified by Darryl Hannah in Splash, and
so endowed they were of course the bearers of combs and mirrors in order to
preen themselves in preparation to indulge their profligate sexual appetites.
The comb, according to David Cordingly in his book Heroines and Harlots, is an ancient
symbol of female genitals, and thus entwined with the idea of mermaids’ primary
symbolism: that of unfettered female sexual desire, and its threat to men.
I suspect this is not a universal
perception. If I flick through my notes I find Yemaja, the Yoruba ocean goddess
who, having preserved the lives of slaves who endured their
gruelling journey to the Spanish Main, survives herself in African faiths
throughout the Caribbean and Brazil. Indeed New Year in Copacabana Beach
witnesses celebrations and offerings to Yemanja, the great all-giving mother
whose signature blue attire resulted in her being associated her with Virgin
Mary as the Catholic gods and saints were assimilated into the existing
pantheon of the slaves.
But whether nymphomaniacs or
eternal mothers, mermaids, like vampires elicit rational attempts to explain
their prominence in our cultural imagination.
David Cordingly disputes the
enduring myth that weary, sexually frustrated mariners mistook manatees for
mermaids, as most recorded sightings were not anywhere near where these animals
actually live.
Recorded sightings? Of mermaids?
Well, yep.
Colombus claimed he spotted one
off Haiti, and over the following few hundred years hardened seamen such as Henry
Hudson, Richard Whitbourne and John Smith all dutifully recorded their mermaid
observations in their captain’s log.
A possible inspiration for Hans
Christian Anderson’s tragic heroine crops up in 1403 when a mermaid was reportedly
washed ashore in Holland and rescued. She found employment as a spinner and
lived for 15 years without a word ever passing her lips.
A less fortunate mermaid was caught
off the coast of Borneo during the 18th century. Like the fruit of a
child’s afternoon of pond dipping, she was consigned to a container of water where
she emitted sorrowful squeaks and refused to eat. The poor creature, who had
curly brown hair, webbed fingers, breasts and a long eel-like tail, survived a
mere 4 days and 7 hours away from her natural habitat.
What are we to make of these
tales? Is this actually history, folk memory or the phantasmagoric imaginings of
people under the influence of mind-altering substances? Mermaids are impossible, aren’t they? Is it
perhaps it’s an atavistic yearning for our ocean dwelling past?
Maybe. But don’t we want it to be
true?
Why else did viewers get so
excited about a spoof TV documentary that a US scientific agency released an
official denial of the existence of mermaids?
An official denial from a US
government agency…now that sounds fishy…
No comments:
Post a Comment