the romance writers, where merely authority is to be put against authority." We have thus three out of our four great poets, who are for taking sirens as mermaids; and the fourth is not wanting. Shakspeare's "Mermaid on a dolphin's back," is part of an allegory on England and Queen Elizabeth, and is the most poetical bit of politics on record; but it shows that he entertained the same mixed notion of the mermaid and siren. "Once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, Midsummer Night's Dream. A siren then, in the modern sense of the word, may be regarded as a mermaid who sings. Metaphorically, a siren is any female who charms by singing; and this is the most ancient acceptation of the term, as Plato has shown, by calling the presiders over the spheres of heaven sirens. "Then listen I," says the Genius in Milton's "Arcades," "To the celestial Syrens' harmony, That sit upon the nine infolded spheres." The word, by the way, should be spelt with an i, the Greek word not being syren but seiren; which, according to Bochart, comes from the Phoenician seir, a singer. In this etymology, we are carried back to the probable origin of these and a great many other marvels, which may have commenced with the primeval navigators, who had the world fresh before them, and fanciful eyes to see with. If the fair inhabitants of the south of Italy resembled in those days what they are now (and climate and other local circumstances render it probable), a crew of Phoenician adventurers had only to touch at the coast of Naples to bring away the story at once. In the south, where there is more luxury than fishing, the songs of their mistresses might suggest that of birds, and the sirens be gifted with plumage. Had they gone to the northern seas, where there was more fishing than luxury, the siren would have been the mermaid; and it is possible, that from the romances of the north, the modern idea descended into the poetry of Italy and of Spenser. "The havfrue (half-woman) or mermaid," says Mr. Keightley, whom we meet in all the pleasant places of fiction)," is represented in the popular tradition (of Scandinavia) sometimes as a good, at other times as an evil and treacherous being. She is beautiful in her appearance. Fishermen sometimes see her in the bright summer's sun, when a thin mist hangs over the sea, sitting on the surface of the water, and combing her long golden hair with a golden comb, or driving up her snow-white cattle to feed on the strands and small islands. At other times she comes as a beautiful maid, chilled and shivering with the cold of the night, to the fires the fishers have kindled, hoping by this means to entice them to her love. Her appearance prognosticates both storm and ill-success in their fishing. People that are drowned, and whose bodies are not found, are believed to have been taken into the dwellings of the mermaids. These beings are also supposed to have the power of foretelling future events. A mermaid, we are told, prophesied the birth of Christian IV. of Denmark; and En Harfrue op af Vandet steg, Og spaade Herr Sinklar ilde.' Sinclair's Visa. "A mermaid from the water rose, And spaed Sir Sinclar ill." * These visions have naturally taken a still more palpable shape with some dwellers near the sea, and craft has endeavoured to profit by them in the exhibition of their actual bodies. The author of an agreeable abstract of zoology, published some years back, tells us of a King of Portugal, and a Grand Master of the Order of St. James, who " had a suit at law to determine which class of animals these monsters belong to, either man or fish. This," he adds, "is a sort of inductive proof that such animals had been then seen and closely examined; unless we suppose that, as in the case of the child said to have been born with a golden tooth, the discussion took place before the fact was ascertained." t We ought to know, on these occasions, whether the mermaid is caught fresh, or only shown after death like a mummy; an exhibition of the latter kind took place some years since in London, and was soon detected; but so many deceptions of the sort have been practised, that naturalists seem to think it no longer worth their while to talk about them. A piece of one animal is joined to another, and the two are dried together. Linnæus exposed an imposition of this kind during his travels on the continent, and is said to have been obliged to leave the town for it. The writer just quoted proceeds to inform us, that "in the year 1560, on the western coasts of the island of Ceylon, some fishermen are said to have brought up, at one draught of a net, seven mermen and maids, of which several Jesuits, and among them F. H. Henriquez, and Dinas Bosquey, physician to the viceroy of Goa, are reported to have been witnesses; and it is added," he says, "that the physician who examined them, and made dissections of them with a great deal of care, asserted, that all the parts, both internal and external, were found perfectly conformable to those of men." "Several Jesuits," we fear, will be regarded as no better authority than the five justices" of Autolycus: "Aut. Here's another ballad, of a fish, that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday, the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathom above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts of maids. It was thought she was a woman, and was turned into a cold fish, for she would not exchange flesh with one that loved her. The ballad is very pitiful, and is true. Dorcas. Is it true too, think you? Aut. Five justices' hands at it! and witnesses, more than my pack will hold." Winter's Tale, Act IV. sc. 3. A later edition (if I mistake not, for I had but a glance of it) of the * Fairy Mythology, Vol. I. p. 241. +"A Description of more than Three Hundred Animals, &c., with an Appendix on Allegorical and Fabulous Animals," 1826; p. 363. same work, goes almost so far as to intimate its belief in a mermaid's having been seen by a lady off the coast of Scotland, in company with three other spectators. The names are mentioned, and letters and details given. That the persons in question thought they beheld such a creature, is to be conceded, supposing the documents to be genuine; nor would it become any reasonable sceptic, especially in a time like the present, to say what is or is not probable on the part of creation. But it is to be feared that in this, as in the demands of a less intellectual appetite, your fish must be "caught" before it is swallowed. Extraordinary particulars were given, in this instance, of the human aspect of the vision, of its tossing its hair back from its brow, and its being much annoyed by a bird which was hovering over it, and which it warned off repeatedly with its hands. The most ingenious conjecture I ever heard advanced respecting the ordinary mistakes about mermaids was, that somebody may have actually seen a mermaid, comb and all, dancing in the water, but that it was a figure of wood, struck off from some shipwrecked vessel. I am travelling out of the world, however, when I get into these realms of prose and matter of fact. I will conclude this paper with the two most striking descriptions of the mermaid I ever met with ;-one indeed purporting to be that of a true one, but evidently of the wildest oriental manufacture; the other, in the pages of a young living poet, worthy of the name in its most poetical sense. D'Herbelot, in his article on the Yagiouge and Magiouge (Gog and Magog), tells us of a certain Salam, who was sent by Vathek, ninth Caliph of the race of the Abassides, to explore the famous Caspian Gates, and who being invited by the lord of the country to go and fish with him, saw an enormous fish taken, in the inside of which was ano ther still alive, and of a very remarkable description. It had the figure of a naked girl as far as the waist, and wore, down to its knees, a sort of drawers (caleçon) made of a skin like a man's. It kept its hands over its face, tore its hair, heaved great sighs, and remained alive but a short time.* This circumstance of the creature's keeping its hands over its face, is really a fine instance of the ghastly and the pathetic. She seems to have had something too human in her countenance to wish to be looked at by a similar face. How she contrived to tear her hair, without letting her face be seen, we are not told. As knees are mentioned, we are to suppose that the fish commenced just below them, possibly with a double tail. There is no predicating how such extraordinary young ladies will terminate. Mr. Tennyson's mermaid is in better keeping; as strange and fantastic as need be, but all with the proper fantastic truth: just as such a creature might "live, move, and have its being," if such creatures existed. His verse is as strong, buoyant, and wilful as the mermaid herself and 'the billows around her; and nothing can be happier, or in better or more mysterious sea-taste, than the conglomeration of the wet and the dry, the "forked, and horned, and soft" phenomena at the conclusion. Mark too the luxurious and wilful repetition of the words, "for the love of me," and of the rhyme on that word. * Bibliothèque Orientale. 1783. Tom. III., p. 271. THE MERMAID. Who would be I would be a mermaid fair; I would sing to myself the whole of the day; From under my starry sea-bud crown, And I should look like a fountain of gold With a shrill inner sound, Over the throne In the midst of the hall; Till that great sea-snake under the sea, Would slowly trail himself sevenfold Round the hall where I sate, and look in at the gate Would feel their immortality Die in their hearts for the love of me. But at night I would wander away, away; I would fling on each side my low-flowing locks, With the mermen in and out of the rocks; On the broad seawolds, in the crimson shells, From the diamond ledges that jut from the dells; And if I should carol aloud, from aloft All things that are forked, and horned, and soft *Poems, chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyon. Moxon, p. 27. DELICATE ATTENTIONS. "WHY, Gingerly!" exclaimed Tom Damper, as he entered the public drawing-room at Mrs. Bustle's Boarding-House, at Brighton; "Why, Gingerly! this is one of the finest days of the season, all the world is out enjoying it, yet here are you, at three o'clock, sitting alone, on the self-same chair, in the self-same attitude, and looking through the self-same pane of glass, as at eleven this morning when I left you. What ails you?" Gingerly made no reply; but breathed on one of the panes of glass, drew the letter B on it with his forefinger, and heaved a sigh. "You are the oddest fellow in the universe," continued Damper. "We have been here nearly a month, yet, since about the third day after our arrival, you have hardly stirred out of the house." "It is a very nice house," said Gingerly; and he heaved a heavier sigh than before. "It was at my recommendation you came to it," said Damper; "but, though I am not insensible to the merits of the inside of it, its outside also has many charms for me. Again I ask, what ails you?" "Damper!" said Gingerly. "Well." "I was never out of it till I had turned five-and-forty; but being, at this present talking, within two months of fifty, and a bachelor moreover, I should think myself a fool were I in such a scrape now. You, who are by five years my senior, of course are not." Gingerly made no reply; but, sighing profoundly, took his handkerchief from his pocket and smeared out the large, flourishing B which he had just before drawn. There was a pause of a minute. Damper-may I trust you with a secret?" 66 Yes, so it be not a love-confidence." "In that case, my dear friend, I shall have nothing to thank you for." "Seriously now, my dear Gingerly, do you mean to say you are in love?" "Gingerly expended another sigh, again turned towards his favourite pane, and re-instated his big, bouncing B. "O, Damper!" at length he exclaimed, "if you had a heart you would feel for me." "I should if I saw you hanging, or drowning, or suffering under any reasonable trouble; but to feel for an old bachelor of fifty-five in love, and for the first time in his life, too!-Ridiculous! But, come; I suppose I must listen to you, so tell me all about it." "And who so proper as you for the confidence, when you are to blame for the accident ?" "I!" exclaimed Damper, with unfeigned surprise. Yes, you," answered Gingerly; "because but for your recommendation I never should have set foot in Mrs. Bustle's boarding-house." |