The general characteristics of a mermaid are clear and well defined. They date from times of great antiquity and have been retained unaltered almost to the present day. According to this set of beliefs, the mermaids are like beautiful maidens from the waist upwards, but they have the tail of a fish. They carry a comb and a mirror and are often seen combing their long and beautiful hair and singing with irresistible sweetness on some rock beside the sea. They allure men to their death and their appearance is ominous of storms and disasters. According to this set of beliefs, mermaids are not only ominous of misfortunes but actually provoke them, and are avid for human lives, either drowning men or devouring them. In some of the early Celtic descriptions they are monstrous in size, like that recorded with some detail in The Annals of the Four Masters. She was 160 feet in length, her hair eighteen feet (comparatively short), her fingers were seven feet in length, and so was her nose. These exact measurements were possible because she was cast up by the sea. This was said to have happened in about a.d. 887.

Some sea monsters, such as nuckelavee, were allergic to fresh water, but mermaids penetrated up running streams and were to be found in fresh-water lakes. They were still called mermaids. A typical example of a ravening mermaid is to be found in the story of 'The Laird of Lorntie' told by Robert Chambers in Popular Rhymes of Scotland:

The young Laird of Lorntie, in Forfarshire, was one evening returning from a hunting excursion, attended by a single servant and two greyhounds, when, in passing a solitary lake, which lies about three miles south from Lorntie, and was in those times closely surrounded with natural wood, his ears were suddenly assailed by the shrieks of a female apparently drowning. Being of a fearless character, he instantly spurred his horse forward to the side of the lake, and there saw a beautiful female struggling with the water, and, as it seemed to him, just in the act of sinking.

'Help, help, Lorntie!' she exclaimed. 'Help, Lorntie — help. Lor —,' and the waters seemed to choke the last sounds of her voice as they gurgled in her throat.

The laird, unable to resist the impulse of humanity, rushed into the lake, and was about to grasp the long yellow locks of the lady, which lay like hanks of gold upon the water, when he was suddenly seized behind, and forced out of the lake by his servant, who, farther-sighted than his master, perceived the whole affair to be the feint of a water-spirit.

'Bide, Lorntie — bide a blink!' cried the faithful creature, as the laird was about to dash him to the earth; 'that wauling madam was nae other, God sauf us! than the mermaid.'

Lorntie instantly acknowledged the truth of this asseveration, which, as he was preparing to mount his horse, was confirmed by the mermaid raising herself half out of the water, and exclaiming, in a voice of fiendish disappointment and ferocity

Lorntie, Lorntie,

   Were it na your man,

I had gart your heart's bluid

   Skril in my pan.

A charming young girl, whom consumption had brought to the brink of the grave, was lamented by her lover. In a vein of renovating sweetness, the good mermaid sung to him:

Wad ye let the bonnie May die i' your hand,

And the mugwort flowering i' the land?

He cropped and pressed the flower-tops, and administered the juice to his fair mistress, who arose and blessed the bestower for the return of health.

Cromek always gives a favourable view of the fairies, but this story is confirmed by a Renfrewshire anecdote of a mermaid who rose from the water as the funeral of a young girl passed, and said mournfully:

If they wad drink nettles in March,

   And eat muggons in May,

Sae mony braw maidens

   Wadna gang to the clay.

Muggons is mugwort, or southernwood, and was much used for consumptive disorders. Mermaids had a great knowledge of herbs as well as prophetic powers. The most noble of all the mermaids, however, is that in the Orcadian story who gave her life for one of the selkies. This story, by the way, raises an interesting point, for this mermaid, like the Asrai, died from too long exposure to the air of this world, while others, like the selkies or roane, seem native to the air and need a cap or a magical property with which to make their passage through the sea. Some of them, like the selkies, were courted by human lovers and became unwilling wives, bequeathing webbed hands and feet to their children, but often also great skill in medicine, like that bequeathed in the story of Lutey and the Mermaid.

Mermaids were often caught and held to ransom for the sake of the wishes they could grant or the knowledge they could impart. They always held exactly to their bargains, as even the Devil must do by the condition of his being, though the wishes are twisted if it can be contrived.

In Scotland and in Ireland the question of the possibility of final salvation for the mermaids, as for other fairies, is raised; it is always denied in Scotland, but in Ireland there is one mermaid, Liban, who died in the odour of sanctity, though it is only right to say that she was not born a mermaid, any more than Fintan, who was converted by St.Patrick and afterwards canonized, was born a merman.

Anyone who wishes to study this long and complicated subject might well start by reading Sea Enchantress by Benwell and Waugh, which, starting with fish-tailed gods and working through classical myths and early zoology, comes down to the most recent beliefs in mermaids and other water creatures and embraces the beliefs of almost all nations.

See also Mermen.

[Types: ML4071*; ML4080. Motifs: B81.2.2; B81.3.1; F420.5.1; F420.5.1.8; F420.5.2; F420.5.2.1; F420.5.2.7.3]