Merpeople: A Human History 9781789143140, 1789143144

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merpeople

Merpeople A Human History Vaughn Scribner

reaktion books

For Kristen, whose siren song enchants me more every day

Published by Reaktion Books Ltd Unit 32, Waterside 44–48 Wharf Road London n1 7ux, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 2020 Copyright © Vaughn Scribner 2020 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers Printed and bound in China by 1010 Printing International Ltd A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library isbn 978 1 78914 314 0

Contents Introduction 7 one Medieval Monsters 29 two New Worlds, New Wonders 59 three Enlightened Experiments 95 four Freakshows and Fantasies 125 five Modern Mermaids 173 six Into Global Waters 213

Conclusion: Tail-ending 237 references 249 bibliography 289 acknowledgements 309 photo acknowledgements 311 index 315

Introduction

M

erpeople are everywhere. A mermaid is the mascot for the most popular and profitable chain of coffee shops in the world, films and television shows featuring merpeople abound and a child – or indeed an adult, if they so wish – can partake in ‘mermaid lessons’ through ‘Mermaid University’ programmes in North America. But humanity’s obsession with merpeople is hardly new. No matter where or when humans have lived, they always seem to find mermaids and mermen. It is in this universal pattern that Merpeople: A Human History finds its core, as it uses merpeople to gain a deeper understanding of one of the most mysterious, capricious and dangerous creatures on Earth: humans. Although representations of merpeople transcend temporal and geographical constraints, this book analyses how, from roughly 1000 bce to the present, Westerners’ changing perceptions of mermaids and mermen (also called tritons) reveal deeper understandings of myth, religion, science, wonder and capitalism. Whether gracing an English cathedral wall or an American cinema screen, images of merpeople have always enchanted Western audiences. But these creatures’ relevance exceeds stone or screen – physical imagery, in fact, accounts for only a portion of merpeople’s importance in understanding humanity’s fascination with these strange hybrids. Like those flawed creatures who created 7

1 Arthur Rackham, ‘Clerk Colvill and the Mermaid’, illustration from Some British Ballads (1919).

merpeople

them, mermaids and tritons are multifaceted, volatile entities wedded to a variety of equally volatile ideologies. Of course, merpeople were hardly the only hybrid creatures that Westerners chased to the ends of the Earth. Mythical hybrids such as the unicorn, sphinx, centaur, griffin and satyr (to name only a few) long enthralled medieval, Renaissance and early modern thinkers, while late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century scientists grappled with oddities like the opossum, platypus and kangaroo. For philosophers and religious leaders, these hybrid creatures represented danger as much as hope, wonder as much as horror. They were unnatural manifestations of a realm that humans did not fully understand, and thus might lead mankind into a strange, disorderly world of confusion and destruction. Yet they also, importantly, might help humanity to better understand its place in the world of wonders that seems to reveal more of itself with every day.1 Monster theory and hybrid studies are imperative for Merpeople: A Human History, especially in their ability to reveal the humanity in such seemingly foreign, incongruous manifestations of the natural world. The historian Erica Fudge recently posited that ‘reading about animals is always reading through humans . . . paradoxically, humans need animals in order to be human.’ Harriet Ritvo preceded Fudge’s assertions, arguing that ‘the classification of animals . . . is apt to tell as much about the classifiers as it is about the classified.’2 In this case, reading about half-human, half-animal mythological creatures ‘is always reading through humans’, just as the classification of merpeople ‘is apt to tell us as much about the classifiers as it is about the classified’. Merpeople, after all, were more than simply animal or monster; they were also part human. For this reason, Western thinkers had to come to terms with what it meant to be human as much as what it meant to be animal in their debates over merpeople. How might such a creature change their understanding of humanity’s origins? How might it alter our 8

Introduction

conceptions of classification, and even humans’ supposed supremacy on the planet? These were not questions to be taken lightly. Merpeople’s hybridity has helped them maintain a presence in both scientific and mythological camps. In many people’s minds, mermaids and mermen remain mythical creatures more suitable for bedtime stories than scientific tracts. Yet for others merpeople symbolize the outer limits of our scientific and mythological investigations. Just as the evolution of science has not done away with lingering notions of wonder and myth, so too has our innate need to push boundaries of knowledge led humanity into strange – often mind-blowing – frontiers of research and self-reflection. Humanity’s interaction with merpeople demonstrates our ongoing need for discovery as much as our attempts at regulation and classification. Like the hybrid monstrosities with which humankind has always grappled, humanity maintains a tenuous balance between wonder and order, civilization and savagery. 2 ‘Oannes Blessing the Fleet’, from an 8th century bce sculpture uncovered in the ruins of the palace of Sargon ii at Khorsabad by Paul-Émile Botta. Reproduced in Paul-Émile Botta, Monument de Ninive (Paris, 1849).

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3 ‘Derceto [or Atargatis] Dominating the Sea’, from Athanasius Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652).

Perhaps nowhere is this fragile equilibrium more obvious than in the early Christian Church’s myriad representations of mermaids and tritons. As will be explored further in Chapter One, murky ideologies of mermaids and mermen originated in ancient gods and goddesses of the sea. Although mermaids now rule as the more popular of the two, merpeople’s predominance began with mermen. The Babylonians had their fish-god Oannes dating back to 5,000 bce (illus. 2), while the Philistines, Assyrians and Israelites created the ‘female prototype’ for the mermaid with Atargatis, a fertility goddess who was the female counterpart to Oannes. Importantly, Atargatis also symbolized the danger of love and lust, an association which Christians would later embrace wholeheartedly (illus. 3).3 A spate of pagan representations of merpeople followed Oannes and Atargatis, ranging from Greek and Roman depictions of Aphrodite and Venus, respectively, to Pliny the Elder’s descriptions of mysterious human-fish sea creatures in 80 ce, to the Greeks’ incorporation of Triton (the origin for the merman) and his wife Amphitrite, to Odysseus’ fateful encounter with the harpies 10

Introduction

(airborne daughters of sea-goddesses) on his famous voyage. Oddly, harpies and the Greek ‘Scylla’ – hybrid monstrosities with little resemblance to half-fish, half-women mermaids – would ultimately spawn modern interpretations of mermaids. Over time, artists and writers took the helm in transforming the monstrous representations of Scylla and Homer’s harpies into our modern interpretations of mermaids, replete with sexual overtones, siren songs and the overtly feminine (often naked) form. Thus, while mermen found their origins in a Greek god, mermaids largely originated from hideous beasts who only intended to bring man to destruction through his own lust for sex and power. As would be demonstrated by the early Christian Church, such connotations of sex, lust and power were no coincidence.4 Beginning in the third to fifth centuries ce, Church leaders simultaneously adopted, transformed and harnessed ancient pagan symbols of merpeople to assert notions of piety, faith and selfcontrol. Although mermen had long been associated with rape and violence, the early Christian Church was on a mission to dethrone femininity, and had little use for these male monstrosities. Rather, churchmen hoped to transform notions of the Homerian harpy to fit their own means, and in doing so adopted more sexual connotations and imagery in their representations of mermaids.5 Physical representations of merpeople were critical to this process. Our modern conception of the mermaid stems directly from early churchmen’s depictions of these mysterious creatures. Traditionally shown as human females above the waist, with long, flowing hair and bare breasts, a mirror in one hand and a comb in the other (illus. 4), these half-women, half-fish served as ideal symbols of wonder and danger for Church leaders. Beyond utilizing such ‘monsters’ to demonstrate God’s ability to ‘alter his own laws of nature’, churchmen especially adopted these pagan creatures in an effort to depreciate the feminine – hence the overtly sexual representation of mermaids in church carvings, bestiaries, illuminated 11

Introduction

texts and artwork. Nakedness – especially as a vehicle for sexual lust – was rare in early Christian and medieval art. Thus, as topless women (who also boasted scaly fish-tails), mermaids would have harnessed a shock factor through image alone.6 Oftentimes, in fact, church sculptors portrayed mermaids ‘spreading’ their tails apart, thereby exposing their reproductive area – or vesica piscis (Latin for ‘vessel of the fish’) – in graphic detail (illus. 5).7 A mermaid’s accessories also revealed deeper symbolism, with her mirror and comb representing vanity (not to mention the duality of one’s soul outside the body) and her flowing

4 A classical siren – clutching a mirror in one hand and a comb in the other – has gazed down upon worshippers from the fan-vaulted roof of Sherborne Abbey, Dorset, since 1490.

5 A spread-tailed siren carved into the interior of the Sarriod Castle tower, Valle d’Aosta, Italy, early 13th century.

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6 ‘Mermaid and Merman Holding a Drum’, misericord, Exeter Cathedral, c. early 14th century.

hair signifying fertility. Sometimes, mermaids would hold a fish instead of a comb, which probably further symbolized her link to the fish as an early symbol of Christianity.8 By the medieval period (the fifth to fifteenth centuries ce), churchgoers throughout Europe worshipped in spaces decorated with overtly sexualized mermaid imagery. Church leaders, meanwhile, cultivated an intimate knowledge of these strange creatures through myriad texts, art and sculpture. Such ubiquity helped to facilitate general acceptance of, and belief in, mermaids. In symbolism used by the early Christian Church, mermen were not as popular as mermaids. When mermen occasionally appeared in church carvings, they were almost always paired with mermaids (illus. 6).9 This representation correlated with early Christian and medieval imagery – especially cultivated in illuminated texts and bestiaries – which generally depicted mermen as partners of mermaids. Mermaids were much more likely to appear alone than were mermen. In contrast to the beautiful (and dangerous) female form of the mermaid, moreover, authors and 14

Introduction

illustrators represented mermen either as ugly creatures intended to oppose the mermaid’s striking femininity and sexuality, or as symbolic of Christian piety. Ultimately, mermaids – hybrid creatures of myth and lore – symbolized the early Christian Church’s willingness to hybridize itself (that is, embrace a mix of pagan and Christian belief systems) in its larger attempts to cultivate the largest following possible. Here, the Christian Church deliberately adopted and adapted pagan symbols in its holy spaces, thereby bridging the gap between the supposedly ‘savage’ and the civilized; the past and the present. And it largely worked, as Christian doctrine steadily decentred symbols of the sacred feminine by the medieval period.10 However, such efforts had unexpected side effects, as by utilizing these hybrid monstrosities to support religious tenets the Christian Church legitimatized such creatures, which in turn created the foundation for belief and acceptance for generations to come. While the first chapter of Merpeople: A Human History necessarily paints in broad strokes, temporally and thematically, in uncovering merpeople’s ancient roots, the second chapter concentrates on a more specific time period (roughly 1500 to 1700 ce) to investigate how the ‘Age of Discovery’ only solidified Westerners’ long-standing beliefs and cultural traditions surrounding merpeople. By 1492 Westerners had long lived in a world of merpeople: especially in wealthy, sea-faring societies like Venice or Genoa, merpeople became almost ubiquitous mainstays of art, ranging from tombs to tomes, sculptures to tableware. Unsurprisingly, by the time Westerners pushed further east and west into what were, for them, uncharted territories, they fully expected to find mermaids and tritons (illus. 7). They had, after all, lived their lives surrounded by these mysterious creatures.11 Importantly, before the ‘Age of Discovery’, Europeans placed Jerusalem in the centre of the globe in terms of religious tradition. The further one got from Jerusalem, the stranger and more dangerous the world became. If merpeople 15

overleaf: 7 Gerrit Lucasz van Schagen, Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula, 1682, copperplate engraving depicting the four classical elements (fire, air, water and earth).

merpeople

lived anywhere, many early modern Westerners believed, it must be at the ends of the Earth, where monstrosities and curiosities thrived. As Westerners heightened their interactions with the Pacific and Atlantic worlds in a search for monetary, religious and imperial power, recorded sightings of merpeople multiplied exponentially. The Atlantic Ocean and its ‘New World’ shores were especially rife with such interactions, as famed explorers integrated merpeople into their understandings of strange – and potentially lucrative – environments. Yet, where in the medieval period interactions with mermaids and tritons usually uncovered a deeper lesson over lust, vanity or religion, early modern explorers transformed such contact beyond manifestations of the Christian creed and instead began to reflect in their ‘mer-sightings’ emerging notions of exploration, growth and national prowess.12 Each Western country had its own stories of merpeople, and in each of these interactions the nation tried to assert its understanding of the globe. Monstrosities abounded in the New World, and Europeans were intent on uncovering their secrets. This was a period of legitimization for merpeople. As sightings proliferated and European Christians steadily colonized the Americas, Western mapmakers began in earnest to chart these strange new worlds. Of course, such cartographic creations were as much about Europe’s effort to position itself as a world power as they were about accurately recreating the New World topography. These maps were also, importantly, intended to demonstrate the exotic opportunity of the world, while also shrinking its size to suit Europeans’ imperialist efforts. Therefore ‘strange’ or ‘foreign’ lands like the Americas and the ‘Far East’ were often depicted with merpeople in their surrounding seas. This was no mistake, nor can it be boiled down to a temporary flight of fancy. Mapmakers intentionally included merpeople in their evolving representations of the world in an effort to demonstrate the 18

Introduction

strange quality of these environs, while also signalling to viewers the possibility of interactions with such creatures (illus. 8). Such representations only further primed explorers to find mermaids that, in turn, only further encouraged mapmakers to include them in their illustrations, and so on.13 In many ways, then, the ‘Age of Discovery’ was also a new age of interaction with merpeople. As demonstrated in Chapter Three, such heightened instances of ‘strange facts’ created an interesting confluence of science and wonder during the Enlightenment period (roughly 1700 to 1800) in Western Europe. Many of the smartest men in the eighteenth-century Western world expended considerable time and effort searching for, drawing and analysing merpeople. Their efforts reveal that the ‘Enlightenment’ was not simply a time of rationalism and science, when Western thinkers threw off the supposedly mythological, wondrous cloak of their forebears. 19

8 ‘Mermaids in South America’, in Diego Gutiérrez and Hieronymous Cock, Americae sive quarte orbis partis nove et exactissima (1562), detail of a map.

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Instead, it was a period of massive change and expansion when European thinkers were perhaps more open to the wonders of the natural world than ever before; they simply had more scientific, theoretical and analytical tools at their disposal. By the end of the eighteenth century, gentlemen philosophers had drawn numerous specimens of merpeople ‘from life’, collected mermaid hands in their cabinets of curiosities, funded global voyages to capture merpeople and penned numerous analytical pieces on merpeople’s existence, not to mention their anatomy and lifestyles. Ultimately, Enlightenment thinkers’ efforts to discover mermaids and tritons demonstrated their ongoing hope to gain a deeper understanding of the world and humanity’s place in it. Even with this proliferation of the study of merpeople, many European philosophers, scientists and anatomists remained sceptical of the existence of merpeople. Nevertheless, by the early nineteenth century, ‘mer-mania’ had reached fever pitch. This explosion of interest was especially revealed through newspapers. A nineteenth-century Westerner would have encountered a sighting, specimen, show or study of a merperson in his local newspaper at least once a month during the first half of the nineteenth century; Western readers were primed to finally figure out the mystery of merpeople. Industrialists pushed into hitherto underexplored regions, scientists classified and ordered the world with increasingly fine precision, and communication expanded to new heights. Newspaper publishers, of course, were more than happy to satisfy this insatiable thirst, printing stories of merpeople with little credulity and fuelling underlying belief in these creatures. Purveyors like the English Captain Samuel Barrett Eades only added to this mania with his physical specimen of a supposed mermaid caught in the East Indies (it was really just a fake constructed by Japanese craftsmen for the Western market). Londoners flocked to see Eades’s mermaid in 1822, and a flurry of copies followed his example (illus. 9). Newspapers could not get enough of it, printing 20

Introduction 9 E. Purcell, ‘A Grotesque Mermaid, Amidst Luxurious Cushions and Drapes, and Framed by Two Shells’, coloured lithograph, 1822.

daily advertisements, studies, reviews and think-pieces on these mysterious creatures. Perhaps the mystery had finally been solved?14 In a word, no. P. T. Barnum, the famous American showman known worldwide for his lavish (usually misleading) exploits, both crested and destroyed Westerners’ belief in merpeople in 1842 with his infamous ‘Feejee Mermaid’ (which was actually just Eades’s 21

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10 ‘The Ruse Continues! The Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum in Seaside, Oregon (usa) Still Exhibits a “Feejee Mermaid” Which They Claim is Barnum’s Original (It Isn’t). It is, However, a “Crawling” Feejee Mermaid from the Nineteenth Century.’

mermaid repurposed for American audiences). A slew of scientific studies, public viewings and advertisements throughout North America made Barnum’s mermaid the most popular instance of human interaction with merpeople ever. Yet it also drew the curtain back from the mysteries of merpeople, thereby revealing these long-debated creatures as little more than ‘humbuggery’. Combined with the development of scientific classification and evolutionary studies, the revelation of Barnum’s fakery largely disintegrated multi-century belief in mermaids and tritons as living creatures (illus. 10). Although mer-folklore lived on in the Western world, such stories descended into little more than flights of fancy, with Barnum – and the mythical mermaid – becoming a punchline more than a point of speculation.15 Despite scientists’ efforts to destroy popular – and academic – perceptions of merpeople’s reality, nineteenth-century scholarly investigations remained wedded to these perplexing creatures. Whether key thinkers of the day were arguing that mermaids and tritons were actually seals, manatees and dugongs, or debating the efficacy of Linnaeus’ classification system and Darwin’s theory of 22

Introduction

evolution, merpeople remained central in ongoing scientific analysis. By the end of the nineteenth century, Western historians began to produce volumes dedicated to merpeople’s long history, while aquariums and zoos advertised manatees and dugongs as ‘real mermaids’ (they are still categorized under the order ‘Sirenia’) (illus. 11).16 Of course, this overlap of science and myth was nothing new for mermaids and tritons. Since the third century ce, Westerners embraced merpeople for their very ability to blur these lines. At the turn of the century, Westerners had simply altered the parameters for such murky intersections of science and wonder, past and present. Nevertheless, by the early twentieth century, belief in the existence of merpeople had largely dissipated in Western culture. But this is not to say that mermaids and tritons became irrelevant. On the contrary, as Chapter Five investigates, merpeople – especially the mermaid – became a critical symbol of

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11 Percy Macquoid, ‘Real and Ideal, a Suggestion which occurred to our Artist on seeing the New Manatee at the Zoological Gardens’, illustration for The Graphic, 18 May 1889.

Introduction

sex, media, capitalism and profit. As Westerners transitioned into an era of disbelief, interestingly (and somewhat ironically) they vaulted mermaids to the highest popularity these sensuous sirens have ever enjoyed. Mermaids’ commercial popularity relied upon their long association with sex, lust and wonder. Where the early and medieval Church had utilized such characteristics to warn against indulging desires, twentieth-century media embraced mermaids’ sexual nature for marketing purposes. Especially after the Second World War – a time when America’s capitalistic future seemed brighter than ever – advertisers, film-makers, showmen and artists seized upon mermaids as poster-creatures of profit. The American media wanted the sex and danger that the Christian Church had created so 25

13 Ramakien mural painting of Hanuman and Suvannamaccha, 1782, detail (of illus. 108), Wat Phra Kaew, Bangkok, Thailand.

12 Pete Hawley, Jantzen print advertisement for Esquire, 1 June 1951.

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as to damn (illus. 12). Although the media managed to exploit the centuries-long development of merpeople’s sexual nature for their own commercial purposes, mermaids also became an icon of postmodern feminist discourse. By the second half of the twentieth century, the mermaid (and, to an extent, the merman) returned to prominence in academic circles, simply in new ways. Modern scholars were not trying to prove or disprove merpeople’s legitimacy. Unlike their early modern and Victorian predecessors, rather, theorists began to employ the mermaid as a symbolic vessel through which to challenge and unpack complicated notions of femininity, gender and queer studies. Chapter Six rounds out our study by demonstrating that merpeople provide a unifying lens through which to better understand the human condition. Humans throughout time and across the globe have consistently integrated water deities and hybrid creatures into their historical, geographical, cultural and religious lives: African peoples revered ‘Mami Wata’ (mother water); the Japanese have long associated themselves with the ningyo (人形, human fish); the Chinese constantly sought out (and allegedly collected) the meirényú (person fish); the Russians have often contemplated the rusalka (water nymph, or mermaid); and Indian and East Asian peoples worshipped various fish-tailed deities (illus. 13). Humanity’s modern interpretations of merpeople are the products of a centuries-long process of adoption, adaptation and recycling. Early Christians adapted ancient Middle Eastern water deities like Atargatis and Oannes to fit their own religious beliefs. Westerners then steadily transmitted their image of merpeople to the rest of the world through complicated processes of empire, commercialization and cultural exchange. Diverse cultures continued this cycle by adopting merpeople into pre-existing beliefs surrounding water deities, religion and lifestyle. This process continues to our present, as merpeople have become perhaps the most recognized, universal and beloved mythical creatures in the world.17 26

Introduction

Like the mirror which the medieval mermaid often clutched in her delicate hand, merpeople serve as symbolic reflections of humankind’s changing conceptions of myth, religion, science and capitalism. As the following pages demonstrate, our relationship with merpeople seems to ebb and flow with the tides of time. No matter such shifts, humans keep coming back to mermaids and tritons in their ongoing quest to comprehend the boundaries of knowledge and power.18 To be human is to be hybrid, contradictory and perplexing. Perhaps nowhere is this ongoing balancing act better demonstrated than in humanity’s murky, ever-shifting perceptions of merpeople.

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The Englishman’s eyes adjust to the juxtaposition of dark recesses and streaming light in Exeter Cathedral’s vaulted interior. It is the late fourteenth century and the deacon has lived most of his life within the English Church’s comfortable, if sometimes suppressing, confines. But today his eyes – and his thoughts – are not wholly focused on God. In fact, they are scanning the Chapel of St Paul for a monster. As the man’s beady eyes frantically dart about, they fall upon on a small carving at a boss in the roof. He knows this monster well. Her sensual form often haunts his readings, not to mention his dreams, tempting him and challenging his mortal weaknesses. For a moment he thinks he hears someone entering and begins to step towards a nearby door. But no one is in the chapel’s holy interior – it is just him and his festering guilt. The deacon looks back up at the monster. Her flowing locks, taut breasts and sculpted torso lure him in, while her grinning face makes him long for a girl he once knew. These are foolish thoughts, he reminds himself. As an unmarried deacon, he can never wed. And besides, she was married off long ago. Nevertheless, he feels strangely enticed by this monster; her lusty figure depicted so overtly, yet casually, in his place of worship. But now he does hear someone coming, and flees with a manuscript in hand. He sheepishly admits to himself that he will be back soon. The stone-carved mermaid, meanwhile, seems to watch him as he escapes, softly singing her seductive siren song into his ringing ears.1

One

Medieval Monsters

D

uring the medieval period, merpeople defined – and reflected – Westerners’ understanding of religion, sex and power. The Christian Church led this charge, simultaneously adopting, transforming and harnessing ‘pagan’ (that is, non-Christian) ideas of merpeople in an effort to denigrate the feminine and, in turn, bring as many followers to Christ as possible. Interestingly, the Church’s efforts were almost too effective. As more followers interpreted Christian Church leaders’ message as creed during the Middle Ages, they also increasingly understood the Church’s carefully cultivated collection of merimagery as proof of the legitimacy of merpeople’s existence, not to mention the dangers of the feminine flesh. The Church created our modern understanding of mermaids and mermen in addition to nurturing popular belief in these mysterious hybrids. Ultimately, the Church’s adoption of mermaids and tritons not only demonstrates its willingness to hybridize itself in a bid for relevance, but reveals churchmen’s ongoing efforts at using myth and wonder to assert the Christian creed. Like the humans who worshipped in its holy halls, the early Christian Church’s representations of merpeople were characterized by hybridity, contradiction and power struggles. But where did the early Christian Church even get these ideas of merpeople? There is no simple answer to this question, as 29

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mermaids’ and tritons’ ancient origins remain shrouded at best. What we do know is that depictions of merpeople began with mermen and were often correlated with humanity’s never-ending quest for knowledge and power. Dating back to sometime around 5000 bce, the Acadians worshipped a half-man, half-fish ocean god named Ea. The Babylonians adopted Ea as their own god, Oannes, who represented light, wisdom and civilization. A fourth century bce scholar described Oannes as ‘an animal endowed with reason’ who gave men ‘an insight into letters and sciences, and every kind of art . . . he instructed them in everything which could tend to soften manners and humanize mankind’. Ea and Oannes therefore symbolized humanity’s long-held fascination with the sea, as well as its ongoing efforts at improvement.2 These efforts only continued as time passed – the Philistines had Dagon, a fish-tailed deity immortalized in the Old Testament as finally bowing to the power of Yahweh, God of the Israelites. The historian Henry Lee argued that many early Christians recognized Noah as ‘the second father of the human race, and the preserver and teacher of the arts and sciences as they existed before the Great Deluge’. Early Christians often depicted Noah as halfman, half-fish. In many ways he was simply the extension of Ea and Oannes, as were the Greek, Etruscan and Roman gods of the sea such as Poseidon and Neptune. Westerners, from their very origins, have looked to mermen as arbiters of knowledge, civilization and religion.3 But what of mermaids? The modern eye, after all, generally envisions mermaids as key icons of merpeople. Yet ancient peoples did not hold such visions, and generally depicted mermaids as secondary figures to tritons. Oannes, for instance, married his sea-deity wife Atargatis, but she did not boast the same sort of influence as him. While mermen originated as gods of knowledge and improvement, modern mermaids emerged from more dangerous forms. 30

Medieval Monsters

The mythical Greek monster Scylla was critical to mermaids’ ugly origins, as were the sirens from Homer’s Odyssey (eighth century bce). In both cases, these aquatic females were horrible beasts who intended to bring human men to agonizing deaths. They also, importantly, had little-to-no physical resemblance to those halfhuman, half-fish creatures that we now envision as mermaids. Homer described Scylla as ‘yelping terribly . . . [with] twelve feet, all misshapen, and six necks, exceeding long, and on each one an awful head, and therein three rows of teeth, thick and close, and full of black death’. She was no maid. Homer did not provide a physical description of the infamous sirens, choosing only to stress their danger to Odysseus and his men as arbiters of death and destruction. Importantly, their ‘siren song’ did not promise sex, but rather infinite knowledge. In this way Homer managed to change Ea’s promise of improvement into one of death. By the third century bce, Apollonius Rhodius provided sirens with a physical form, describing them as ‘fashioned in part like birds and in part like maidens to behold’. Once again, these were not beautiful halfwomen, half-fish, but instead were bird-women, replete with claws and wings.4 Looking at these ancient interpretations of female sea monsters, one has to wonder how – and why, for that matter – the early Christian Church adopted such hideous beasts in its holy spaces. How could such monstrosities fit into the Christian narrative of salvation, and why would an entity that prided itself on improvement and civilization want to associate with such supposedly savage, pagan creatures? The answer rested with the hybridity of these strange monsters. Just as ancient peoples had adopted and adapted merpeople for their own purposes, so too did the early Christian Church utilize these hybrid creatures in its efforts to hybridize itself and, in turn, spread its message to the most people possible. This journey would change Westerners’ relationship with merpeople forever, as mermaids and tritons steadily emerged from the murky 31

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14 Roman funerary plaque with christian symbols, including the fish, Catacomb of St Callisto, Rome, c. 200–400 ce.

waters of ancient history as modern representations of sex, religion and power. Early Christian interpretations of merpeople proved as abstracted as their ancient predecessors. From the second to the fifth centuries ce, Roman Christians utilized the symbol of the fish as a marker of their religious affiliation – still today visitors to the Roman catacombs will come across carved fishes scattered throughout those close tunnels (illus. 14). Besides fish symbols, early Christian belief systems were firmly tethered to the sea in other ways. From Noah’s survival of the deluge (recall that he was also represented as a merman) to Jonah being swallowed by the fish (or whale), humans, according to biblical assertions, had always existed in close proximity with water. In fact, the earliest known imagery of Jonah dates back to a third-century ce Roman carving of him being half-swallowed by a fish-monster (illus. 15). Although we cannot be entirely positive of the ultimate links to the medieval Christian Church’s use of merpeople, these monsters most likely influenced Christians’ ongoing depictions of human-fish hybrids. Beyond references to humanity’s long relationship with the ocean, the early Christian Church also adopted pagan symbols with gusto. This was a conscious choice driven by pragmatism. If Christians were to gain popularity among peoples who for thousands

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15 Jonah Cast Up, c. 280–90 ce, marble.

of years had worshipped other gods, they needed to demonstrate some knowledge of those ancient creeds (in an ultimate attempt to repress pagan practices). Hence the predominance of ‘green men’ sculptures in medieval Christian churches. Often depicted as a man’s face, covered with foliage or with foliage sprouting from his mouth and other facial orifices, green men sculptures probably symbolize ancient traditions of natural rebirth and plenty (illus. 16). Christian Church leaders obviously embraced these same themes throughout biblical narratives and lessons, and were thus more apt to integrate these symbols into their holy spaces. At once frightening, grotesque and mystical, green men provided medieval Christian 33

merpeople 16 Green man misericord, c. 14th century, St Botolph’s Church, Boston, Lincolnshire.

churches with a link to Europe’s ancient past, while also encouraging worshippers to contemplate their Christian futures. Modern worshippers and visitors to medieval Christian churches still gaze upon these strange carvings. They are intentionally jarring, designed to stop viewers in their tracks.5 Masculine representations of green men point to the medieval Christian Church’s coinciding efforts at demonstrating men’s predominance and denigrating the feminine. The historian Rosemary Radford Ruether argued that, in the early medieval period, Church leaders began to stress the father–son relationship of the Christian religion – God and Jesus’ relationship reigned supreme in heaven, while Christian ‘sons . . . born to God through baptism’ should lead Christianity on Earth. Accordingly, this ‘relation of father to son on the inter-divine level, recapitulated on the divine-human level’ foregrounded men in Christianity, from God to Jesus, to priests and their followers. Even Jesus’ image steadily changed from the early Christian age to the Middle Ages: because the Bible never actually describes what Jesus looked like, the earliest GrecoRoman iconography used the pagan god Apollo as their model, 34

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representing Jesus as a happy boy with short-cropped, curly hair (in the style of a contemporary nobleman) who often used his staff to realize miracles. Even more interestingly, because pagan gods could be both male and female, many early Christian images of Jesus appeared androgynous, with Jesus boasting feminine hips, suggestions of breasts and a beautiful face (illus. 17). The tortured, overtly male Jesus was a creation of the Middle Ages, a time when guilt reigned supreme and the Christian Church hoped to distance itself from the sacred feminine of the pagan past.6 In pursuing this masculine goal, Church leaders also began to adapt various ancient stories to their paternalistic narrative. Homer’s Odyssey served the Church quite well, especially in its representation of Odysseus (Ulysses in the Roman interpretation) as repelling the feminine dangers of the Sirens. As the historian Jacqueline Leclercq-Marx noted, ‘the religious representation of virtue is almost always defined by its opposition to vice. In this perspective, Ulysses, son of Virtue, and the Sirens, Incarnate Vice, appear both as antinomic and complementary elements.’ Christians also began to represent the mast of Ulysses’ ship, to which he strapped himself when braving these dangerous women-creatures, as a Christian cross.7 Men needed women as their opposite if the Church’s message was to resonate across time and space (illus. 18). Just as the early medieval Christian Church focused on asserting men as the most virtuous leaders, it also sought to decentre and denigrate the feminine. Ruether found a ‘deep ambivalence toward the feminine’ in medieval Church leaders’ messages, arguing that ‘females symbolized a carnality linked to vice and a weak softness that should abase itself before virile manliness, even in the male–male relation of monk to bishop’. Ruether also investigated how Church leaders steadily altered representations of Mary, the mother of Jesus, to make her more passive and deferential in relation to God and Jesus’ masculine relationship. Beyond Ruether’s in-depth analysis, one might also let early writers speak for 35

17 Ceiling mosaic of the Arian Baptistry (400–500 ce) in Ravenna, Italy.

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themselves. A scriptural passage from The Wisdom of Sirach simply stated, ‘better the wickedness of a man than a woman doing good’.8 Women, for early Christian leaders, represented lust, weakness and man’s fall from grace. But Mary – the mother of Jesus and thus still a representation of good on Earth – was no ideal mascot for such denigration. Church leaders needed a feminine, dangerous and lustful counterpart to their upstanding men. This is where mermaids came in. Although early Church leaders had already begun to represent Ulysses as the virtuous opposite to the sirens, mermaid imagery did not emerge in its current form until the medieval period, when churchmen altered Greek and Roman depictions of Scylla and the sirens into what they considered an even more ghastly personification of death, power and sex: the naked (not to mention hybrid) female form. While medieval interpretations of Scylla and the

18 ‘Odysseus Straps Himself to his Ship’s Mast as the Sirens Attack’, detail from Greek ‘Siren Vase’, c. 480–70 bce.

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sirens no longer boasted ‘awful heads’ and bird bodies, they still held considerable shock value with their exposed breasts, flowing hair, split fish-tails and knowing smirks. Although nudes began to take hold in the early medieval period through biblical imagery (including the bare-chested Jesus being crucified), not until the Renaissance did such imagery become common and popularly accepted by the Church. Medieval mermaids would have shocked viewers. This is exactly what many illustrators wanted – as with green men, paganChristian symbolism defined medieval church interiors. What better way to demonstrate the titillations of the flesh than to display an enticing image in the holiest of spaces?9 The Christian Church wielded considerable power in Western society by the ‘High Middle Ages’ (800–1300). Although no solid numbers exist for early Christian conversion, we know that Christianity took firm root in Ireland in the fifth and sixth centuries ce (the religion largely came from Gaul and Rome; Britain was mostly Christianized later by Irish missionaries from Iona). Missionaries like St Patrick helped to establish an Irish brand of Christianity which proved popular throughout the rest of Britain and northern Europe/the Mediterranean world over the next few centuries.10 Christianity’s growing acclaim coincided with Church leaders’ inclusion of merpeople into their imagery and message. This was no coincidence. Just as Church leaders harnessed more power than ever in the Western world, so too did this religious and cultural currency put new demands on the clarity and purpose of their Christian mission. With priests and missionaries establishing themselves as social and political leaders in their own right, the Christian Church had to demonstrate a clear path forward, while also leveraging their followers’ religious pasts. Issues of masculinity, femininity, wonder and danger emerged as critical tenets of the Christian message, and merpeople – those mystical creatures of humanity’s pagan past – became perfect vessels through which to reflect upon such matters. 38

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By around 800 ce, Christian illustrators, artists and sculptors took the lead in this endeavour by fusing ideas of Celtic and German water goddesses to depict fish-tailed mermaids, even when Homer’s Odyssey alluded to sirens as bird-like creatures.11 Christian artists diverged from the original descriptions because they no longer needed a hideous siren or Scylla. They needed a wondrous, beautiful and titillating female form that would most effectively resonate with modern audiences. She was still hideous to medieval audiences, just in different ways. Medieval Christian sculptors especially adopted these tactics, repeatedly carving three-dimensional, sensuous mermaids (sometimes accompanied by a demurer merman) into church roofs, corbels, bosses, misericords and columns. At least 55 mermaid sculptures grace British churches, while England’s twelfth-century Exeter Cathedral boasts a number of separate stone-carved merpeople. From France to England to Italy, medieval church sculptors steadily relied upon mermaids for their not-so-understated message. And they did so with panache. Interestingly, sculptors sometimes combined the foliate nature of green men with the hybridity of merpeople to create mermaids with flowing, foliate tails. In many ways green men and mermaids were two sides of the same shocking coin. Whether staring down from a roof corbel or surprising a worshipper as he kneeled at a misericord, mermaid sculptures became critical facets of the medieval Church’s Christian mission.12 Medieval sculptors intended their mermaid carvings to send a series of messages to viewers. As the French liturgist Bishop Durandus opined in the thirteenth century, ‘Pictures and ornaments in churches . . . [are] the lessons and scriptures of the laity . . . for what writing supplies to him which can read, that doth a picture in our churches supply to him which is unlearned and can only look.’13 Although medieval churchmen hoped to supply the ‘unlearned’ with a variety of messages through their depictions of mermaids, their ultimate goal remained tethered to decentring 39

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the feminine. Hence the repeating image of mermaids as dangerous, passionate, sexual beings, with topless torsos, long, flowing hair, split tails and a fish or mirror in their hands. Two exemplary sculptures reside in the south of England at the Chapel of St Paul, Exeter Cathedral, and St Mary’s Church, Adderbury. The first represents our modern mermaid in perfect form – she has long, flowing hair, pronounced breasts and a shapely, naked torso (illus. 19). She would have leapt out at medieval onlookers, her beauty entrancing them as the fish clutched in her left hand reminded them of her ability to steal their souls (remember, the fish dated back to the earliest Christian iconography of hope and salvation, and many scholars wonder if it also represented the soul or vagina). The second three-dimensional mermaid carving is perhaps even more overt in her expression of feminine lust and danger (illus. 20). Where the Exeter mermaid leans backwards somewhat and invites the viewer to look closer, the Adderbury mermaid juts her face and larger bare breasts forward towards onlookers. She still boasts long hair, but it is pulled back, perhaps as a consequence of her momentum forward. In an even more conspicuous move, this mermaid spreads her tail fins apart to reveal her genitalia, thereby expressing the ultimate power – and danger – of her feminine form. A third mermaid carving took the Adderbury mermaid imagery even further into the realm of overt sexual expression. Located in the medieval church of Saint Thiébault, Switzerland, this benchdecoration mermaid also spreads her tail fins apart to welcome the penetration of a fish into her vagina. While modern eyes might scan over this sculpture (‘a mermaid and a fish, so what?’), medieval onlookers would have paused at such a sexual image. Here was a mermaid, the symbol of female lust and sexuality, with a fish – the symbol of the Christian Church – penetrating her vagina. This was the ultimate expression of feminine denigration sullying a Christian symbol. It was shocking to say the least.14 40

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19 Mermaid roof boss in the Chapel of St Paul, Exeter Cathedral, c. early 14th century. 20 Carved frieze of a mermaid in St Mary’s Church, Adderbury, c. 1300–1500 ce.

The Exeter, Adderbury and Saint Thiébault mermaids are only three examples of hundreds (if not thousands) of sculpted mermaids throughout Western European Christian churches.15 And while they represent the most common, overtly sexual form of the carved mermaid, they do not reflect all of their progeny. In some cases, sculptors carved mermaids alongside mermen. Such depictions 41

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21 ‘Mermaid’, detail from the Campbeltown Cross, late 14th century carved cross of chlorite schist, drawing printed in Sculptured Stones of Scotland, vol. ii (1867).

usually represented mermaids as more demure; ‘tamed’ by association with men.16 Demonstrating their long correlation with pagan religious ideology, mermaids also sometimes appeared on Celtic and Pictish crosses. Created around 1380 to stand outside the chapel at Kilkavan, Scotland, the ‘Campbeltown Cross’ represents an interesting confluence of Christian and pagan symbolism. Not only is the silhouette of the Celtic cross a popular icon of the early Christian Church’s hybrid nature, but this particular cross also boasts a mermaid – itself a hybrid of pagan and Christian symbolism – at its apex (illus. 21). The stone cross stands about 3 metres (11 ft) high and is decorated with an intricate Celtic foliate pattern (much like the popular green men, as well as those many mermaid sculptures whose tails transform into foliage). But this cross is hardly pagan. It bears a Latin inscription which names the Christian parson who created it, and it was intended to mark the entrance of a Christian chapel. Today, visitors can still gaze upon the cross and its mermaid at its new location in Campbeltown city centre. While the Christian Church utilized the mermaid as an effective symbol of the supposed dangers of feminine lust, sex and power, it managed to squeeze even more symbolism out of these popular church sculptures. Realizing that common churchgoers associated mermaids with their deadly ‘siren song’, Church leaders also utilized the carvings to remind its followers of the dangers of profane music and, in turn, the effeminate lure of such rhythms. As scholars Inna Naroditskaya and Linda Phyllis Austern recently argued, ‘in Western cultures, where the siren has most often been a dangerously seductive water-woman whose song envelops its listener in an open void, both space and the immaterial art of music have most often been conceived as feminine.’ It should come as no surprise that a sculpted mermaid-triton pair at Exeter Cathedral 42

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hold a drum between them, and that a mermaid in St Botolph’s Church in Lincolnshire boasts a carved mermaid who plays a double pipe. Driving home the dangers of the mermaid’s song, a 1600 English poem warned men against singing ‘with a maiden voice, and mincing pace’ lest they be mistaken for a woman because of their ‘Syren notes’. By using the mermaid as a symbol for such unharnessed sounds, medieval sculptors used her hybridity against her even further, urging onlookers to think about their eyes as well as their ears, their souls as well as their bodies.17 Sculptors of mermaids remained firmly attached to the mercurial nature of these creatures, wondering how they might force onlookers to think about the murky connections between this world and the next, and God’s ability to transform nature in wonderful – seemingly impossible – ways. Mermaid sculptures often descended into outright mystical forms, with foliate tails or exaggerated feminine silhouettes, and it was this shocking imagery as well as their monstrous nature that caused unease. Just as Church leaders intended such carvings to teach onlookers various lessons (not least the myriad dangers of femininity, lust and instrumental music), so too did they hope that these jarring monstrosities might remind followers of the infinite power of God. Merpeople’s scandalous hybridity – especially when exhibited in three dimensions in the holiest of spaces – forced onlookers into an intimate, uncomfortable relationship with their faith, not to mention their own sinful nature. While mermaid carvings in churches maintained perhaps the most public popularity throughout the medieval period, their physical form relied largely upon representations in medieval texts, especially bestiaries and illuminated manuscripts. Realizing the ‘growing medieval audience for wonders’, writers and illustrators produced a wide variety of manuscripts in their efforts at understanding these strange creatures: humans. Merpeople came into their own in these manuscripts, for their hybrid, mysterious nature 43

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allowed writers and illustrators to delve into the deepest trenches of the human condition. Echoing Durandus’ celebration of church sculptures, the English churchman Thomas Cobham argued in the thirteenth century that ‘the Lord created different creatures with different natures not only for the sustenance of men, but also for their instruction . . . for the whole world is full of different creatures, like a manuscript . . . in which we can read whatever we ought to imitate or flee from.’ 18 Like sculptors, medieval authors and illustrators of bestiaries and illuminated manuscripts intended their creations as sources of information, wonder and ‘instruction’. And, as in their representations of merpeople, medieval churchmen often adopted the descriptions of the world from the ancients. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, for instance, penned his monumental Natural History in Latin between 77 and 79 ce. Like other works of ‘paradoxography’, Pliny’s Natural History grew ‘out of the Aristotelian project of compiling descriptive histories of natural phenomena . . . in the form of catalogues of things that were surprising, inexplicable, or bizarre’.19 From astronomy to botany to metallurgy to the animal kingdom, Pliny’s work proved broad – if not wondrous – in scope. Among other creatures, Pliny described merpeople: An embassy from Lisbon sent for the purpose reported to the Emperor Tiberius that a Triton had been seen and heard playing on a shell in a certain cave, and that he had the well-known shape. The description of the nereids is also not incorrect, except that their body is bristling with scales even in the parts where they have human shape.20 Medieval scholars latched on to Pliny’s description in their own interpretation of mermaids and tritons, understanding the ‘wellknown shape’ of tritons as half-human, half-fish, and steadily transforming ‘nereids’ (tritons’ female counterparts) into modern 44

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mermaids. As documented thus far, the medieval Church did not need scaly, vague nereids. They needed sexualized sea nymphs. Medieval bestiaries and illuminated manuscripts overflowed with mermaid imagery intended ‘to instruct individuals in Christianity through the compelling and entertaining example of animals’. The manuscript Physiologus (created sometime between the third and fifth centuries ce, but most popular by the medieval period) accordingly described mermaids as: like a maiden; In breast and body she is thus joined; From the navel downward she is not like a maid; But a fish certainly with sprouted fins . . . She sings sweetly – this siren – and has many voices, Many and resonant, but they are very dangerous . . . They have said of this siren, that she is so grotesque, Half maid and half fish: something is meant by this.21 Here we see the modern interpretation of mermaids in clear, damning detail. Yet words alone were only so effective. By the late seventh or early eighth century ce, the Latin bestiary Liber monstrorum provided mermaids with their own entry distinct from Scylla. Like Physiologus, this volume described mermaids in terms of danger, lust and sexuality. ‘Sirens are mermaids,’ it began, ‘who, with their most beautiful form and the sweetness of their songs, deceive sailors, and from the head down to the naval they have a maiden’s body and are most like the human species; nevertheless, they have the scaly tails of fish which they always hide in the sea.’22 The mermaid was no trifling monster. She lured humans into her embrace through beauty and song, only to damn them to eternal hell. Where Physiologus relied upon prose alone to warn its readers of mermaids’ charms, Liber monstrorum began a trend by including an accompanying image of this frightful beast (illus. 22). Here was the medieval mermaid in all her sexual danger, 45

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22 A siren pulling a sailor from a boat by the hair, while another sailor stops his ears to avoid hearing the siren’s song, with a centaur holding a bow below, from a 13th-century bestiary.

with bare breasts, a toned torso, long, flowing hair, a beautiful face and a comb and mirror in her hands. She lured the poor sailors to sleep before she dragged them to the depths of sin and lust. One might imagine how a pious bishop, not accustomed to such overt images of sexuality, might have reacted to this iconography. Not all were as approving as Cobham – St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090– 1143) wondered, ‘what is the meaning . . . of that deformed beauty, that beautiful deformity, before the very eyes of the brethren when reading?’23 Whether invoking positive or negative reactions, sex always sells. Yet the imagery in Liber monstrorum took time to solidify in the popular imagination. Illuminated manuscripts like the Book of Kells (ninth century ce) continued to represent merpeople in more abstracted ways (illus. 23), while Hermann de Valenciennes’thirteenthcentury Recueil depicted mermaids with musical instruments, but lacking breasts or other overtly sexualized features (illus. 24). The 46

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Rutland Psalter (c. 1260) verged closer to Liber monstrorum’s eroticized iconography, with bare-chested, toned merpeople clutching fishes (illus. 25). However, neither figure is overtly feminine. Like a similar illustration in the Bury Bible (1100–99), housed in the Corpus Christi College Library, Cambridge, these merpeople lacked the large breasts and long, flowing hair of the Liber monstrorum’s alluring form and did not enjoy the shock factor of their

23 Siren in Saint Columba, Book of Kells, 9th century. 24 Sirens in Hermann de Valenciennes et al., Recueil (13th century).

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merpeople 25 Sirens in the Rutland Psalter (c. 1260).

predecessors. Bartholomew Anglicus’ De proprietatibus rerum (midthirteenth century), described mermaids in grisly, sexual detail, but provided no accompanying images. These ‘strong whores . . . wonderly shapen [who] draweth shipmen to peril by sweetness of song’ only had so much pull without colourful illustration.24 Not until the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries did Western bestiaries and illuminated manuscripts begin to adopt the overtly sexual, bare-breasted form of the medieval mermaid. The transition makes perfect sense, as such texts became more popular, and thus more numerous, in the High Middle Ages. Take illustrations of the mermaid in other thirteenth-century bestiaries (illus. 26, illus. 27), for example. She has a beautiful, feminine face with long, flowing blonde hair, a bare, toned torso and prominent breasts, not to mention a fish-tail. She also maintains the everimportant combination of sexuality and danger. The author of the Bestiary of Philippe de Thaon (1300 ce) compared the siren to ‘the riches of the world’, which might steal one’s soul through the false promises of beauty or music.25 48

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The writer of the Luttrell Psalter (1325–40) provided perhaps the most suggestive illustration of a mermaid to date. Although at its core a narrative of everyday life in medieval England, this tome also included a variety of mysterious, fantastical creatures throughout its beautiful, intricately illustrated parchment pages, including a mermaid. While not diverging radically from previous imagery, the illustrator of the Luttrell Psalter realized the mermaid as a wholly seductive, arresting figure: medieval viewers would have curiously scanned her naked feminine form (illus. 28). Further demonstrating the intentionally eye-catching imagery, the Luttrell mermaid clutches a gilded mirror and comb in her hands. The shiny

26 Mermaid in the Ashmole Bestiary, early 13th century.

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gold of her mirror and comb would have reflected the light of a candle as a medieval reader pored over its pages, his eyes inexorably drawn into the siren’s embrace. By the end of the fifteenth century, medieval, modern-style mermaids took illustrated manuscripts by storm. The author of the Biblia Germanica (1483) included two mermaids in his otherwise staid woodcut of Noah’s ark (illus. 29). One mermaid gazes at her own reflection in a handheld mirror, combing her flowing golden locks. She also boasts taut breasts and a curvy midsection that transitions seamlessly into her scaly nether regions. Her partner, also with bare breasts and blonde hair, seems to beckon to Noah as he fearfully glances out of a window on his crowded ark. Eight years later, Jacob Maydenbach published the encyclopaedia Hortus sanitatus, including a section on marine creatures, De piscibus, in which a mermaid was depicted in all her sexualized glory (illus. 30).

27 Sailors and sirens in a 13th-century bestiary.

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Medieval Monsters 28 Mermaid in the Luttrell Psalter (1325–40).

In this case, the mermaid is shown wholly out of the water and – much like the Adderbury mermaid sculpture – spreading her tail fins apart. As in other contemporary depictions, she also has long, flowing blonde hair, a pleasant, feminine face and a naked, curvaceous torso. The Hortus sanitatus mermaid exemplifies the sexual imagery that these hybrid creatures represented to Western Church leaders, artists, sculptors and illustrators by the end of the fifteenth century. She was a monstrosity in every definition of the word; a suggestive reminder of the dangers of femininity. But where were mermen in medieval bestiaries and illuminated manuscripts? As in three-dimensional stone carvings of mermaids, medieval illustrators generally neglected mermen, markedly so in comparison to their feminine counterparts. This makes perfect sense, as the figure of the merman could be used to demonstrate far fewer lessons than the mermaid – and with a modicum of the physical impact. The mid-thirteenth-century Liber de naturis bestiarium’s (Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms 533) depiction of a merman provides solid evidence of this difference. In contrast to the naked, sexualized iconography so associated with mermaids, this merman is fully clothed in a monk’s robes and hood, further demonstrating men’s proclivity for piety and religious self-control (illus. 31). He seems 51

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29 ‘Mermaids and Noah’s Ark’, handcoloured woodcut in Anton Koberger’s Biblia Germanica, vol. i (1483).

to offer a fish to readers in a reminder of God’s blessings, but does so with none of the mermaid’s sexual ‘forwardness’. This mermonk was by no means a unique image. In the second half of the sixteenth century, Conrad Gessner illustrated and described a ‘sea monk’ in his well-known Renaissance encyclopaedia, Historiae animalium. Clad in a monk’s robes and sporting a short-cropped haircut, Gessner’s sea monk built upon Liber de naturis bestiarium’s mer-monk by exhibiting his arms and tail in a more abstracted form (illus. 32). Nevertheless, mermen remained clear reflections of the Church’s ability to merge the wondrous and the religious in an effort to denigrate femininity while vaulting men to positions of prominence and piety. In an interesting twist, the Christian Church was almost too good at denigrating the feminine through mermaid iconography. The majority of ordinary medieval Westerners, after all, viewed Church leaders as trusted sources of critical information and advice. The Church’s various and repeated implementation of sexualized, 52

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shocking mermaids not only reminded worshippers of the dangers of the flesh at every turn, but created a culture of general belief in merpeople. In a keen example of this growing acceptance among Christian scholars and laypeople, medieval cartographers began to depict Christian-style merpeople in maps of the world.26 It made perfect sense to many in the Western world that mermaids and tritons should exist in the furthest reaches of the globe. Armed with this general belief (not to mention the affirmation of the Church), Western peoples often integrated merpeople into their folklore. And they did so with considerable historical precedent. Pliny the Elder (23–79 ce) argued in his Natural History not 30 ‘Mermaid’, in Hortus sanitatus (1491).

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only that merpeople existed, but that various people had seen them. Alexander the Great’s half-sister, Thessalonike, apparently turned into a mermaid after her untimely death, and thereafter haunted sailors in a never-ending search for her brother, while a popular medieval story concerned Melusine, a mermaid who married a mortal man only to be discovered when he broke his promise never to enter her chamber when she bathed.27 While the Thessalonike and Melusine tales rested upon myth more than fact (and many medieval peoples would have accepted this as such), Pliny’s assertions still garnered considerable trust. Combined with the legitimacy that the Christian Church’s bestiaries and carvings afforded, Western peoples began to integrate merpeople into their local cultures.28 English, Scottish and Irish peoples especially embraced stories concerning merpeople, with Scotland’s mer-tales ‘outnumber[ing] all the others in the British Isles’.29 Generally speaking, these early folktales continued the mission of the Church by depicting mermaids as dangerous sirens who might lure men into sadness, danger and death. Mermaids often pursued men’s souls: in a Scottish story

31 ‘Merman Monk’, in Liber de naturis bestiarium (mid-13th century).

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from Ross-shire, a mermaid came to a man reading his Bible upon the shore and asked if his holy book might promise her salvation. When he told her it would not, she shrieked and plunged into the sea. In other tales, men took mermaids as their wives, only to find that their mer-spouses brought about personal grief, and sometimes even death to their entire community.30 Such stories steadily integrated themselves into Western society, and, while one might devote an entire chapter (or ‘a book itself ’ according to historians Benwell and Waugh) to such tales, suffice it here to say that they all presented mermaids according to a set of general rules: namely, they had the power of prophecy or the ability to grant wishes; they were vengeful creatures if thwarted; they often married mortal husbands; and they often brought humans to horrible ends.31 These were dangerous hybrids who might lead mortal males, as well as their progeny, to misfortune. During the medieval period, Western Europeans also supposedly interacted physically with merpeople. Like their folktales, these encounters resonated with the Christian Church’s imagery, not to mention the latter’s efforts to denigrate the feminine and, in turn, demonstrate its own civilizing impulses. Importantly, reports of actual encounters helped to further bridge the gap between myth and legitimacy, demonstrating to medieval believers that Christian stories did not simply reside in stone and paper; they were only further proof of God’s majesty and power. As Cesare Cesariano opined in 1520, merpeople ‘need not appear marvellous or incredible to one who knows how to consider divine omnipotence, capable of having made more stupendous and admirable things than perhaps have yet been seen either in the sea or on earth’.32 In 1187, for instance, fishermen off the coast of England caught a strange creature resembling ‘in shape a wild or savage man’. They 55

32 ‘Sea Monk’, (based on Gessner’s illustration), in Guillaume Rondelet, Libri de piscibus marinis (1554).

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soon thereafter ‘presented [the merman] unto Sir Bartholomew de Glanville Knight’ at the castle of Orford in Suffolk. The poor merman’s fortunes did not improve from there. His captors fed him only raw meat and fish, which led to a life of ‘miserable’ torment within the castle’s walls. Unsurprisingly, the dejected mercreature escaped into the ocean’s depths the first chance he got.33 Yet the Orford merman was hardly the only merperson in the medieval sea. In 1211 an English nobleman, Gervase of Tilbury, declared in his Otia imperialia that mermen and mermaids abounded off the coast of England, while in 1250 a Norwegian author explained that ‘the waters about Greenland are infested’ with tritons and mermaids. Following the Christian Church’s description of these mysterious creatures, the writer explained that mermaids had ‘the form of a woman from the waist upward, for it has large nipples on its breast like a woman, long hands and heavy hair, and its neck and head are formed in every respect like those of a human being’. He also linked such sightings to folklore, noting that if mermaids turn towards a ship with a fish in their hand ‘the men have fears that they will suffer great loss of life’.34 These were not idle tales, nor were they attempts to fool readers, for medieval writers and thinkers continuously integrated mermaids and tritons into their expanding Christian worldviews. While these interactions reflected larger impulses of legitimacy and wonder surrounding merpeople during the medieval period, the most popular – and enduring – interaction occurred in the early fifteenth century in Holland, when a group of women came across a ‘naked and dumb’ mermaid floundering in flood waters just outside the town of Edam. The women took the mermaid to nearby Haarlem, where they made a true Christian out of her, teaching her ‘to wear clothes, to spinne, to eate bread, and white meates’. One writer even argued that they managed to give the Haarlem mermaid ‘some Notion of a Deity and . . . it made its Reverences very devoutly, whenever it passed by a Crucifix’.35 This was not 56

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the escaped Orford merman, nor was it the elusive merpeople described in other texts. Rather, the Haarlem mermaid was the perfect example of the Christian civilizing mission at work. The Dutch had turned the ultimate female monstrosity into a demure, Christian woman who embraced her role in society. If Christians could transform a mermaid into a civilized woman, many must have thought, what couldn’t they achieve? By the end of the medieval period, Western people had long fostered a well-documented, deeply ingrained understanding of merpeople. They had a litany of ancient references, carvings in churches, images in bestiaries, descriptions in texts, circulating folktales, and detailed interactions and sightings at their disposal. It only made sense that they should integrate these wondrous creatures into their everyday lives. Western Europeans began to cultivate a culture of legitimacy surrounding merpeople, especially in seafaring cities. Merpeople defined everything from tomb to table in early Renaissance Venice and gained ‘political charge’ in the process.36 Yet, as our next chapter demonstrates, merpeople well transcended the beautiful Italian port town of Venice during the Renaissance period, or ‘Age of Discovery’. In fact, mermaids and tritons came to define Westerners’ interactions with the larger world, as well as their self-perceptions of imperial might, religious devotion and philosophical curiosity. As Europeans set sail throughout the world, they expected to find merpeople – and find merpeople they did.

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The ship’s mate already feels exhausted. He has spent most of the last two months as a crewmember of Captain Henry Hudson’s journey to the Northeast Passage, getting bossed around: swabbing the deck, climbing the towering masts (he still hates heights) and peeling rotting vegetables. But on this afternoon of 15 June 1508 he manages to shirk his duties, at least for a few minutes. He leans against the ship’s rails, pulling up his collar to fight the suffocating frost and gazing into the foaming waves. He lets his mind drift back home; hopefully he can get back to London, and fast. He already misses the punch bowls and gaming tables of his favourite Cheapside alehouse. Watereddown grog and crowded hammocks full of sick sailors prove a poor substitute for a good buzz and a fine friend. The cries of two of his crew mates break his daydream. As he rushes to the stern, he realizes that the sailors are rambling about a mermaid breaching next to the ship. He knows mermaids well – old tars often speak of these beautiful sea-women after they have had a few drinks too many. While the sailor struggles over whether or not to believe those who left the sea years ago, he knows that he trusts Thomas Hilles and Robert Raynar with his life, and they are screaming about a living, breathing mermaid. He lunges forward, leaning over the rail to catch a glimpse of the monster, but finds nothing. He scans the Atlantic’s white caps, briefly thinking that he sees a creature’s tail splash through a wave. ‘The cap’n needs t’hear ’bout this!’ Hilles exclaims as he rushes off with Raynar. The ship’s mate lingers behind, absent-mindedly grinding his fingernails into the ship’s soggy wooden rails and peering into the ocean’s depths. They seem stranger than ever.

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estern Europeans fully integrated merpeople into their cultural, religious, artistic and imperialist mindset during the Renaissance (1450–1700). Cities like Venice, Genoa and London fostered thriving art scenes that overflowed with representations of mermaids and tritons, while Christians seemed to carve more merpeople into their cathedral walls every year. Writers, artists and explorers, meanwhile, laboured in describing and illustrating these strange monstrosities, especially after the printing press restructured literature forever in the mid-fifteenth century.1 Suddenly, one did not need a hand-drawn image or handwritten text to encounter merpeople in all their glory; anyone could simply pick up a machine-reproduced copy at their local printer. At the same time as this culture of merpeople exploded at home, Western Europeans pushed into strange new lands. From Africa to the ‘Far East’ to the ‘New World’, European explorers simultaneously expanded and shrank notions of space and time, producing detailed maps and narratives that allowed a Westerner to investigate the world from the comfort of his desk with more accuracy than ever before. And in these monumental travels, Europeans found merpeople in abundance. One might wonder whether such obsession fuelled, or was fuelled by, Westerners’ push into unknown worlds in the fifteenth 59

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century. In many ways, this ‘chicken or egg’ conundrum is critical for this chapter, as two developments – local belief and far-off sightings – created a legitimized belief in merpeople during the Renaissance. It made sense to early modern Europeans that such creatures as mermaids and tritons would reside in the furthest, strangest and most ‘savage’ corners of the globe. Europeans thus found merpeople in every new land they explored, thereby fuelling the Christian Church’s centuries-old narrative surrounding these monstrosities, while also validating Westerners’ interest in them. Europeans not only wanted to ‘see’ merpeople at home and abroad – they expected to, even needed to. Early modern Europeans’ deepseated acceptance of mermaids and tritons cannot be discounted in investigations of this ground-breaking era. As is still the case today, when humans presume the legitimacy of a belief, they often adjust their worldview to fit these supposed realities. This confidence, moreover, is contagious, as surrounding individuals also begin to believe in those same alleged truths. Perception, in short, is everything.2 For laypeople, churchmen and philosophers alike, the ‘strange facts’ of merpeople and other monstrosities not only confirmed, but also complicated, long-held assumptions about the Earth and humanity’s place in it.3 Monsters, in this framework, had as much to tell Westerners about themselves as they did the mysterious new worlds that they seemed to ‘discover’ by the day. Yet, even with Europeans’ willingness to push the limits of their knowledge, long-held prejudices continued to colour their analysis of the world around them. The denigration of the feminine in particular reared its ugly head in early modern Europeans’ worldviews. This, of course, was nothing new, as the Christian Church had spent the last ten centuries equating femininity with inferiority. Renaissance women accordingly experienced a fringe existence in public society. One Englishman opined that ‘hath no language [as English] so many proverbial invectives against women’, while 60

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another described women in simple, damning language: ‘you live here on earth as the world’s most imperfect creature: the scum of nature . . . the guardian of excrement, a monster in nature, an evil necessity, a multiple chimera.’4 Mermaids continued as mascots for the defamation of the feminine, representing religious traditions as well as folk-portents of storms, doom and death. Perhaps even more overtly, sixteenth-century Westerners often called prostitutes ‘mermaids’ or ‘sirens’.5 Here was the ancient mermaid repurposed for modern ideologies, and she was not alone. Europeans found all sorts of monstrous creatures in the Americas. Just as Marco Polo noted a variety of wondrous flora, fauna and creatures in his eastern travels, so too did New World explorers like Sir Walter Raleigh and Christopher Columbus claim to interact with everything from headless men to cyclops to the cynocephalus (illus. 33). Though hindsight relegates these creatures to fantasy, other animals proved very real and just as terrifying to early modern Europeans. The female opossum, for instance, was a strange New World ‘composite creature’, combining parts from Old World animals and humans to create ‘an inorganic multiplicity’.6 She especially exposed Europeans’ perception of the New World as a place that might hybridize their bodies and minds, thereby steadily transforming these supposedly civilized Old World people into vulgar, weakened reflections of their savage surroundings.7 In many ways, because of New World habitation, Europeans worried that they themselves might become monsters.8 These climatic, environmental and biological fears coalesced around Europeans’ perceptions of merpeople. Western travellers expected to find mermaids and tritons in the oceans, rivers and lakes of the Americas. Europeans had, after all, already encountered merpeople off the coasts of their own nations; surely the distant, foreign, hybridized New World must boast even more of these monstrous creatures. Interacting with and understanding these beings might pull back the veil on the mysteries of the world and 61

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help Europeans to better understand mankind’s ever-evolving place in it. In a more practical sense, a deeper knowledge of merpeople might also allow Westerners to more effectively adapt to – not to mention conquer – the New World. As the English naturalist John Josselyn remarked after hearing an alarming tale of a merman encounter in Maine in 1638, ‘there are many stranger things in the world, than there are to be seen between London and the Stanes [present-day Staines]’.9 Before the fifteenth century, Europeans’ mermaid sightings were few and far between, and generally rested on ancient stories, bestiary descriptions and folklore.10 The twelfth-century contacts in England and Holland proved most enduring, but still remained tethered to allegorical lessons or religious impulses. As Europeans pushed into strange new worlds filled with mysterious creatures, their interaction with merpeople skyrocketed, both at home and in the mysterious locales they visited. As already mentioned, it is impossible to know which influenced the other – were heightened interests at home driving sightings abroad, or were Europeans’ foreign interactions with merpeople leading them to find more of these strange hybrids in their own waters? These heightened fifteenth-century global interactions revealed much about Europeans’ evolving worldviews. Not only did Europeans’ relationships with mermaids and tritons steadily transcend mere religious lessons or folklore in the Renaissance Period, they also reflected Europeans’ visions of imperial might, natural plenty and philosophical wonder.11 Any investigation of Western Europe’s fifteenth-century push into the Americas must begin with Christopher Columbus; doing so through the lens of merpeople is no exception. Upon arriving in the West Indies in 1493, the intrepid explorer claimed to see three mermaids splash out of the choppy waves surrounding his ship. While Columbus found mermaids ‘not so beautiful as they are painted’, he conceded that, ‘to some extent they have the form 63

33 Monstrous creatures in Hartmann Schedel, The Nuremberg Chronicle (1493).

merpeople 34 ‘Voynich Mermaid’, in the Voynich manuscript (1404–38).

of a human face’. The importance of Columbus’s sighting cannot be underestimated. Here was the first European to visit the New World (as far as most fifteenth-century Western Europeans knew), and what was one of the first strange creatures he saw? A mermaid.12 Just as Columbus helped to create the perception in Europe of an ‘opened’ or ‘discovered’ New World, so too was he vital in the fabrication of Europeans’ beliefs that merpeople lived across the Atlantic Ocean. This was a strange land defined as much by ‘utopian visions of benign plenty’ as ‘negative images of monstrosity’.13 Interestingly, over the next hundred years Europeans’ sightings of merpeople occurred everywhere but the New World. Much of this probably boiled down to simple numbers. Before the seventeenth century, the English, French and Portuguese had little success in the Americas, as Spain ruled the seas with its vast armada protecting vessels riding low from loads of South American silver and gold. Other nations could not send as many men across the Atlantic, nor could they establish permanent settlements. Closer to home, however, Western Europeans began to thrive, as did their interactions with merpeople.14 64

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In the early fifteenth century, many of these merpeople sightings occurred in and around Italy. The mysterious Voynich manuscript (published somewhere in Italy in the early fifteenth century in a language that scholars still cannot translate) depicted a hybrid fish-human creature (illus. 34), while the Italian lawyer Alessandro Alessandri claimed in 1522 that merpeople were real and that a merman had accosted human women on the shores of Epirus, Greece. In 1523 the Swiss philosopher Conrad Gessner contended that ‘a man fish, about the size of a boy [was] seen at Rome’.15 It was probably no coincidence that Italy proved the initial hotbed for merpeople sightings, as in cities like Venice, Rome and Genoa these hybrid creatures decorated everything from tombs to tables to texts to monuments during the Renaissance era. Italians saw mermaids everywhere, including their physical world. As Western Europeans increased their trading relationships with Africa, the Ottoman Empire and Asia during the fifteenth century, they also (rather predictably) found mermaids in these distant realms. In classical theory, the further one travelled from Jerusalem (often considered the centre of the world), the stranger and more monstrous the world’s creatures and environments became. This is why medieval Westerners often described Asia as ‘a place of human and bestial abnormalities’.16 Africa, the Ottoman Empire and Asia proved just as mysterious as the Americas to fifteenth-century Europeans. They accordingly expected to encounter merpeople in these strange lands; and they did. In 1533 the Spaniard Diego Hurtado claimed to confront a merman off the coast of Polynesia. ‘Seen by all the crew . . . near a desert island, thirty leagues from the continent’ the merman leapt ‘about in the water, like a monkey . . . with his eyes fixed on the crew, like a creature endued with reason’. Then, 23 years later, the French priest André Thevet reported his interactions with a mermaid and a merman in Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia). Apparently the merman had been washed ashore by a flood and ‘was heard to 65

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crie’. His female companion followed, ‘crying aloud and sorrowing for the absence of her mate’. After witnessing this ‘wonderfull and strange thing’, the Frenchman could only remark, ‘the Sea doeth nourish and bring forth diverse, and strange kinds of monsters, as well as the land.’ In 1560 fishermen apparently caught seven mermen and mermaids ‘on the western coast of the island of Ceylon’ (just off the southeast tip of India). Luckily, there were trusty witnesses aboard the vessel, including Jesuit priests and ‘F Hen. Henriques, and Dimas Bosquez physicians to the viceroy of Goa’. The physicians (who the author was sure to name for legitimacy) ‘examined them with a great deal of care, and made dissection thereof ’, attesting ‘that all the parts both internal and external were found perfectly conformable to those of men’.17 Here were three verified sightings that spanned Western Europeans’ sixteenth-century trade routes: the Far East, Africa and India. These sightings not only validated the existence of merpeople, they also confirmed for Europeans the extraordinary nature of these foreign lands. Even owing to increased sightings which extended more into scientific analysis than religion or folklore, sixteenth-century Christian writers continued to use merpeople as vessels for their pious message. The Englishman Andrew Laurence described and illustrated mermaids according to the medieval Christian tradition in his bestiary, The Noble Life and Natures of Man, Beasts, Serpents, Fowls, and Fish that Be Most Known (1527). Laurence ‘mermaid is a deadly beast that bringeth a man gladly to death . . . from the navel up she is like a woman & a dreadful face’. The French encyclopaedist Conrad Lycosthenes also depended on classical depictions of merpeople in his Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon (Chronicle of Portents and Prophecies, 1557), as he drew a hybrid mer-pair according to earlier representations that showed them with forelegs (illus. 35), while the English antiquarian Peter John Resenius reported that in 1577 a mermaid foretold the birth 66

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of the future king of Denmark, Christian iv. Just because Europeans saw mermaids abroad did not mean that they necessarily abandoned their Christian cores.18 Yet not all were so convinced, either of the reality of merpeople or, conversely, of their usefulness for communicating Christian messages. As the Frenchman Pierre Boaistuau opined in 1566, many Europeans ‘have persuaded themselves, that there is none such [thing as merpeople]’, and ‘justify their opinion by the authority of the Scripture, which making no mention of such things, affirmeth absolutely, the earth is the only house and tabernacle of man’. Recall that, while medieval Christians had to rely upon second-hand accounts of the Bible based on narrative commentaries, the printing press made the Bible more accessible to Latin-literate Europeans by the sixteenth century. Europeans now understood the printed Bible ‘to be the direct, un-glossed and uninterpreted Word of God’. In this way, ‘the Bible, like America and Africa as we know them, was also discovered and invented’ during the Renaissance.19 For certain pious Europeans, because the Bible made no mention of merpeople, they must not exist. The Spaniard Antonio de Torquemada drove this message home in The Spanish Mandeville of Miracles (1600), recounting various mermaid sightings only to conclude that ‘I have

35 ‘Merpeople Pair’, in Conrad Lycosthenes, Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon (1557).

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36 ‘Bathing Mermaids’, frontispiece to Thomas Bartholin, Opuscula nova anatomica (New Anatomical Essays, 1670).

never seen any Author worthy of credit, that make mention hereof ’, and that mermaids were ‘a mere fable’.20 By the beginning of the seventeenth century, Western Europeans had cultivated a complicated narrative of merpeople interactions which still straddled the line between the medieval, Christianinfluenced past and the modern, exploration- and trade-driven present. Yet, as the seventeenth century unfolded, Europeans’ interactions with merpeople at home and abroad became so common – and legitimated – that the English philosopher Thomas Browne famously exclaimed in 1646 that ‘few eyes have escaped the picture of the mermaid’. Further driving home the popularity of merpeople in more ‘erudite’ European circles, by 1670 the world-renowned Danish physician Thomas Bartholin featured mermaids on the frontispiece of his respected New Anatomical Essays on the Thoracic Lacteals and the Lymphatic Vessels (illus. 36). From art to science, merpeople had become critical facets of the European worldview. Sightings and interactions with these strange beasts proved vital to this process.21 As in the sixteenth century, merpeople sightings around Europe and in the New World fed into each other during the seventeenth century, creating a culture – and expectation – of interactions with mermaids and tritons. In 1601, for instance, the English sailor Anthony Knivet claimed that he had ‘seen a Mermaid and many other strange fishes’ off the coast of Brazil (in modern-day Rio de Janeiro). Because Samuel Purchas reprinted this account in his renowned Purchas His Pilgrimes, Knivet’s interaction took on an air of legitimacy.22 Seven years later, the famed English explorer Henry Hudson noted in his ship’s log for 15 June 1608 that two of his crew members caught sight of a mermaid in the northern Atlantic Ocean: This morning, one of our companie looking over board saw a Mermaid, and calling up some of the companie to 68

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see her, one more came up, and by that time she was come close to the ship’s side, looking earnestly on the men: a little after, a Sea came and overturned her: From the Navill upward, her backe and breasts were like a woman’s (as they say that saw her) her body as big as one of us; her skin very white; and long haire hanging down behind, of colour blacke; in her going downe they saw her tayle, which was like the tayle of a Porposse, and speckled like a Macrell. Their names that saw her were Thomas Hilles and Robert Raynar.23 Like those physicians who dissected the merpeople caught off the coast of Ceylon in 1560, Hudson was sure to provide the names of the men who spied this mysterious creature, as well as an in-depth description of the mermaid. Only three years later, another wellrespected English sailor, Richard Whitbourne, claimed to have seen a mermaid in St John’s harbour, Newfoundland. Whitbourne recounted that the hybrid creature ‘very swiftly came swimming towards me, looking cheerfully, as it had been a woman: by the face, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, eares, necke, and forehead, it seemed to be so beautifull, and in those parts so well proportioned, having round about upon the head, all blue strakes, resembling hayre, downe to the Necke’. Like Hudson, Whitbourne provided the name and reputation of another man, William Hawkridge, who also interacted with the mermaid. Unfortunately for the sea creature, neither Whitbourne nor Hawkridge was looking to make friendly. When she ‘put both hands upon the side of the Boat’ the frightened crew members ‘struck it a full blow on the head, whereby it fell off from them’.24 Three verified, detailed sightings from trusted sources in only ten years. More were to come, and they were even more fantastic. The Hudson and Whitbourne sightings became enmeshed in popular Western representations of merpeople, especially in 70

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the world of book publishing. In 1631, for example, the German scholars Ludwig Gottfried and Matthaeus Merian published his Historia Antipodum oder Newe Welt (History of the Antipodes or New World), in which he reproduced a variety of images from the famous Spanish engraver Theodore de Bry’s Dreyzehender Theil Americae (1628).25 One illustration (illus. 37) depicted Richard Whitbourne being greeted in St John’s harbour by two mermaids. The mermaid closest to Whitbourne – replete with flowing hair, bare breasts and a taut midsection – seems to beckon the Englishman into the waves, while in the background his men flee from another mermaid who does the same. By 1647 George Stengel published his Des monstris et monstrosis in which he attributed Whitbourne’s mermaid sighting to the famous English explorer John Smith. Why he did this is still a mystery, but the decision probably stemmed from Smith’s celebrity by the mid-seventeenth century – John Smith and a mermaid? Now that would sell books.26

37 ‘Richard Whitbourne Meets New World Mermaids’, in Ludwig Gottfried and Matthaeus Merian, Newe Welt vnd Americanische Historien (1631).

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As publishers rushed to capitalize on this mer-craze, other explorers continued to come across these mysterious hybrids in the New World. John Josselyn, an English traveller well known for his scientific investigations of the flora and fauna of the Americas, reported in 1638 that one Mr Mittlin, a ‘Gentleman’ and ‘great Fouler’, had recently encountered a triton in Maine. Apparently a merman had clambered up the side of Mittlin’s fishing boat, forcing the gentleman to hack off its hand with a hatchet: ‘the Triton presently sunk, dying the water with his purple blood, and was no more seen.’27 In 1671 three Frenchmen and three Afro-Caribbeans from Martinique (West Indies) claimed to see a merman with ‘a large and plain face, an enormous snub nose, black hair tinged with grey which hung to his shoulders, and a long beard of seven or eight inches’.28 Four years later a French Jesuit, Father Louis Nicolas, further confirmed French belief in New World mermen. The priest 38 Mermaid in Father Louis Nicolas, Codex canadensis (1700).

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not only reported seeing a Merman in New France (Canada), but also drew it, on folio 35 of his Codex canadensis. Nicolas’ illustration showed a ‘sea monster killed by the French on the Richelieu River in New France’ alongside insects and frogs (illus. 38). The creature was reminiscent of Conrad Gessner’s sixteenth-century representations of ‘mer-bishops’, with serpentine arms and a long fish-tail. Yet this merman also boasts a long beard and shaggy hair, perhaps reflecting the popular hair styles of Frenchmen at the time. Most importantly, Father Nicolas – a trusted figure in French society – drew this seemingly wondrous creature alongside more mundane animals, thereby characterizing merpeople as real entities in this strange New World.29 Two final seventeenth-century interactions hinted at future enquiries, as their witnesses not only concluded that merpeople existed, but argued for further study and reflection. In 1676 Thomas Glover, ‘an Ingenious Chirurgion [Surgeon]’ who had lived in Virginia for years, submitted his detailed account of a merman sighting to one of the most respected and judicious bodies of scholars in the Western world: the Royal Society of London. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Royal Society’s genteel members had established their organization as a clearing house for the Englishspeaking world’s most ground-breaking scientific studies.30 Glover’s willingness to submit a seemingly fantastical account to this respected entity demonstrates the co-mingling of science and wonder which began to take hold in Western society by the end of the seventeenth century. As will become clear in the next chapter, scientific societies like the Royal Society of London became critical in the study of merpeople over the next 150 years, as did the testimony of trusted sources such as Columbus, Hudson, Whitbourne, Josselyn, Father Nicolas and Glover. As historians Daston and Park recently noted, ‘only a vanishingly small percentage of strange facts reported in learned journals of the late-seventeenth century were ever challenged.’ Much of this overt dependence came down to 73

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simple societal norms, for in early modern England it remained ‘a grave insult, even an invitation to a duel’ to challenge ‘the word of a gentleman’. Most members of the Royal Society considered themselves gentlemen, and thereby legitimized those sailor witnesses in publishing their accounts. By the end of the seventeenth century, this confluence of civil society, wonder and philosophy helped to cultivate a sincere belief in the existence of mermaids and tritons.31 Returning our attention to Glover, this gentleman-surgeon was sincere and precise in his analysis, and embedded this interesting encounter within his straightforward ‘Account of Virginia, Its Scituation [sic], Temperature, Productions, Inhabitants, and their Manner of Planting and Ordering Tobacco’. In describing Virginia’s rivers, the Englishman exclaimed, ‘I shall here insert an account of a very strange Fish or rather a Monster, which I happened to see in Rapa-han-nock River.’ When Glover’s boat arrived at a calm estuary, he let the crew go ashore so that he might read in peace at the stern of his vessel. Yet his reading time was soon interrupted by ‘a great rushing and slashing of the water’. To the naturalist’s amazement, ‘about half a stone’s cast from me appeared a most prodigious Creature, much resembling a man, only somewhat larger, standing right up in the water with his head, neck, shoulders, breast, and waist, to the cubits of his arms, above water; his skin was tawny, much like that of an Indian.’ Boasting a ‘pyramidal’ slick head, large black eyes and accompanying eyebrows, a gaping mouth (with a moustache) and a humanoid midsection, the triton’s countenance was ‘grim and terrible’. Glover – a trained surgeon familiar with both human and animal anatomies – concluded his account by remarking, ‘At last [the triton] shoots with his head downwards, by which means he cast his tayl above water, which exactly resembled the tayl of a fish with a broad fane at the end of it.’ Convinced of the importance of this observation, the Royal Society of London published Glover’s piece in the January 1676 issue of their Philosophical Transactions.32 74

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John Barbot and Girolame Merolla rounded out trusted Europeans’ investigations of merpeople in strange new worlds. A Frenchman who explored the west coast of Africa between 1678 and 1682, Barbot published his A Voyage to the Congo River in 1682, in which he detailed the peoples, places, customs and animals of what was then still referred to as the ‘dark continent’. It should come as no surprise that he found mermaids and tritons in the rivers of the Congo. As Barbot explained, ‘in the province of Massingan’ fishermen often caught merpeople ‘both male and female, some eight foot long, with short arms, and hands, and long fingers . . . the males have genitals like horses, and the females two strutting breasts’.33 Yet Barbot was not alone. An Italian priest named Girolame Merolla had also described these same creatures in his own Breve e succinta relatione del viaggio nel regno di Congo nell’Africa meridionale (Short and Succinct Report of the Trip to the Kingdom of Congo in Southern Africa, 1692). Although Merolla basically copied Barbot’s account word for word, he added an interesting twist with a detailed illustration (illus. 39).34 In Merolla’s contention, merpeople looked like seals or manatees when viewed from above, but when flipped on their back they exhibited all the hallmark features of a mermaid or triton: humanoid face, naked midsection and fish-like tail. Here was a quasi-scientific approach to these wondrous creatures which would surely catch the eyes of aspiring philosophers throughout the Western world. It did. As Europeans ravaged the globe in a quest for imperial and religious supremacy in the seventeenth century, the mer-craze continued to rage closer to home. Further reflecting the growing tendency to legitimize and study these strange creatures, sightings in the Old World steadily grew and became more detailed with trusted, named witnesses. In 1603, for instance, Thomas Raynold of Pendine Islands (off the south coast of Wales) – who the recorder described as ‘a very honest and substantial Yeoman . . . a man of good sense and sprightly, having reason and judgment, more than 75

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39 ‘Congo Mermaid’, from a later edition of Girolame Merolla, Breve e succinta relatione del viaggio nel regno di Congo nell’Africa meridionale (1726).

many of no better education’ – reported sighting a mermaid ‘not far from a high land of Doynt in the same parish, called Hollogoho, between Gylmanes Point and Tolwen’. Right off, the reporter was sure to be clear in his description of the witness and his character, as well as the exact spot of the interaction. He continued to provide an in-depth depiction of the ‘most strange and wonderful thing’, explaining that it had ‘the shape of a very lively Woman, from her waist upwards, which was all above the water . . . everything normally as a woman’. And, in a move that seemed to grow more common by the year, the reporter also included a drawing of the mermaid (illus. 40). She seemed part woman, part fish, part animal, with the head of a dog, the hair and midsection of a woman, and the tail of a fish. Most importantly, however, she was verified. Amazed at such a sight, Raynold eventually rushed into town and brought others to the point to see this strange sight. Shrewdly, Raynold was sure to get ‘those of the better sort’ to gaze upon the mermaid, which they did. Having seen the mermaid, these credible witnesses (remember, class had everything to do with legitimacy in the seventeenth century) were then more than happy to sign their names to the witness report, thereby imbuing it with even more authenticity.35 Similar verified accounts resonated throughout Europe over the next century. In 1619 the German historian John Philip Abelin argued that councillors of the Court of Denmark spotted a merman while sailing between Norway and Sweden. Apparently, they lured the creature into their ship with a piece of bacon before it escaped. Reflecting lingering notions of folklore and religious symbolism, the merman apparently ‘threaten’d to sink the ship unless he was let go’. Nevertheless, scores of scholars cited this account as fact over the next century.36 By sometime around 1636 the French, too, 76

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had embraced mer-mania. For example, Pierre Gassendi reported in his biography of Nicolas Claudius Fabricus (Lord of Pieresk, Senator of the Parliament at Aix) that sailors had reported seeing ‘a certain Sea-man . . . at Belle-Isle in Bretaigne’ (that is, in Brittany, where the French coast looks over the sea to the north). Fabricus had the Governor of the Isles look into this report and ‘certifie him by writing’, which he did: ‘the information was, that as much as was seen of him, was in the shape of a man . . . he had thick white hair hanging down over his shoulders, and a beard reaching to his stomach.’ Although the sailors netted the merman, he escaped amidst a flurry of musket shots. A few days later some other sailors reported seeing a mermaid near the same spot.37 The list goes on. In the summer of 1669, residents of Copenhagen ‘faithfully related’ seeing a mermaid with ‘a human face’ and a ‘forked tail’. Seven years later, a mermaid emerged ‘close by the land’ just off the Faroe Islands (between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic). Like the Copenhagen mermaid, ‘she stood upright above the water, having long hair on her head spread on the water round about.’ Yet the Faroe witnesses also linked their sighting to medieval Christian depictions of mermaids, alleging that she was ‘holding

40 Mermaid in P. G., A Most Strange and True Report of a Monsterous Fish, who Appeared in the Forme of a Woman, from her Waste Upwards (1603).

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a Fish in her hand with the head downwards’. Realizing that he could not determine whether the mermaid might do ‘any evil hereafter’, the Danish priest who recorded this interaction exclaimed only that ‘much is hidden in nature that is yet undiscovered, and in time will be brought to light’.38 An English naturalist named Philip Falle similarly listed ‘the Sirene or Mermaid’ among the British isle of Jersey’s fish in 1694, while the English reverend John Brand rounded out the seventeenthcentury interactions with his profession of multiple sightings around the Orkney Islands between 1698 and 1700. Brand’s accounts perfectly demonstrated the ongoing overlap between contemporary and medieval interpretations of merpeople. In one sense, Brand acted as the modern philosopher, providing verified witnesses and detailed analysis in the first sighting he reported. In this case ‘several gentlemen’ passing through the Voe of Quarf in a boat caught sight of a creature ‘with the face of an old man, with a long beard hanging down’. The gentlemen determined ‘the sight . . . so very strange and affrighting’ that they fled the incoming merman. Yet, in Brand’s next report, he played up medieval interpretations of merpeople, explaining that some other Orkney fishermen accidentally netted a mermaid around the same time. One of the men rashly stabbed the creature with a knife and watched as she fell back into the water with a hook through her chin. Killing such a portentous creature proved his undoing. As Brand explained, ‘the man who thrust the knife into her is now dead, and, as was observed, never prospered after this, but was still haunted by an evil spirit, in the appearance of an old man, who, as he thought, used to say unto him, “Will ye do such a thing, who killed the woman?”’39 From verified sightings to portents of femininity, mermaids and tritons continued to force Europeans to confront their Christian origins and supposedly modern, ‘civilized’ present. Yet, even with medieval-era folktales and symbols lingering well into the seventeenth century, ‘modernizing’ ideas of wonder 78

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and philosophy were also beginning to take hold throughout the Western world.40 Westerners’ obsession with curating ‘cabinets of curiosities’ or wunderkammern are a keen example of such simultaneously backward- and forward-looking impulses. In many ways, cabinets of curiosities were little more than physical manifestations of medieval-era bestiaries which boasted a wide variety of ancient and exotic objects, specimens, artworks and relics that transcended Renaissance systems of classification and knowledge. Many of a cabinet’s contents (especially items like a unicorn’s horn or a monstrous creature) would have seemed common to anyone familiar with a medieval bestiary. Yet these elitist collections also pushed Europeans’ understanding of the world into new realms, especially in their physical identities. Where bestiaries relied upon little more than hearsay and legend, and were represented only in two-dimensions, a Renaissance collector might hold and feel these three-dimensional objects. Cabinets of curiosities allowed seventeenth-century collectors and viewers to come into contact with ‘strange facts’ in the physical realm.41 Unsurprisingly, physical specimens of mermaids and tritons made their way into these wondrous collections. These were not the full, intact and scientifically studied creatures that their eighteenthand nineteenth-century successors boasted. Nevertheless, by the end of the seventeenth century, mermaid hands, skins and occasionally full specimens became popular features of private collections and public exhibits. This compulsion began as early as the sixteenth century. In 1565 the German philosopher Christopher Fürer claimed to have examined ‘a Mermaids skinne’ in El Tor (modern-day Egypt) which was ‘taken there many years before, which in the lower part ends Fish-fashion: of the upper part, onely the Navill and Breasts remaine, the armes and head being lost’. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, a tavern in London offered prospective customers the opportunity to view ‘at any hour of the day, a living 79

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Mermaid, from the waist upwards of a party colour, from thence downwards is very strange and wonderful’. Further signalling the owner’s learned inclinations, he added French and Latin quotes to his advertisement, promising a creature ‘of various colors with many other curiosities that cannot be expressed’.42 Private collectors, meanwhile, spent the seventeenth century scouring the globe for physical mer-specimens. In 1638 the London naturalist John Tradescant boasted all sorts of strange items in his private museum, ranging from ‘two ribs of a whale’ to ‘a piece of human flesh on a bone’ to ‘the hand of a mermaid’. By 1654 the world-renowned Danish physician Thomas Bartholin took the investigation of physical merpeople specimens out of the cabinet and into the anatomy house. Not entirely satisfied with the skeleton hand or rib bones of a mermaid that his friend, the Dutch geographer Jan de Laët, had recently supplied him, Bartholin claimed to have dissected a mermaid while living in Leiden, which he dutifully drew in his 1654 Historiarum anatomicarum rariorum. Bartholin’s ‘Sirene’ would be met with consternation by later scientists (illus. 41). Here was a gruesome creature with certain popular features of a mermaid (exposed breasts and a humanoid face) and other less familiar ones (odd, webbed hands, buttocks at the front of the body). Ever confident, Bartholin asserted: So great is the discrepancy between the ancients and more recent witnesses as to the appearance of mermaids, that it is no wonder some people regard them as fictitious. I myself have keen-sighted hands, and I describe such mermaids as have actually been seen. Their hand and ribs cannot delude us, and I have supplied images fashioned according to the truth of nature.43 It only makes sense that our specimen survey should conclude by returning to one of the most prestigious up-and-coming learned 80

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societies in seventeenth-century Europe: the Royal Society of London. In 1681 the English plant anatomist Nehemiah Grew – still known today as the ‘Father of Plant Anatomy’ – recorded his Catalogue & Description of the Natural and Artificial Rarities Belonging to the Royal Society and Preserved at Gresham College. At first glance, the annotated list comes across as occasionally interesting, but more often a bit mundane. Here the ‘nest of a little bird of Brasile’ and there the ‘skeleton of a crocodile’. ‘Chequer’d

41 Siren in Thomas Bartholin, Historiarum anatomicarum rariorum, centuria i et ii (1654).

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shells’ also filled in some gaps, while in another section Grew described the Society’s beloved ‘reflecting telescope’. All, it seems, was well and in order. Yet the Society was not without its wonders, for under the heading of ‘Chapter One: Of Viviperous Fishes’ Grew nonchalantly listed: The Rib of a Triton or Mareman. About the same length with that of a Mans, but thicker and stronger; and nothing near so much bended. The fish to which it belonged, was taken near Brasile. Of this kind, Wormius, in his Musaeum, gives us divers Relations, together with the Descriptions of several Species. See also Joh. De Laet. (a) of the same. And Barloeus, who saith, that in Brasile it is called Ypupiapra. A Bone said to be taken out of a Maremaids Head. It is in bigness and shape not much unlike that called Lapis Manati; but the knobs and hollows thereof are somewhat different.44 It is important to note that Grew did not introduce these fantastical items with any sort of explanation or even a hint of incredulity. He described the merman’s rib and mermaid’s head in the exact same fashion as he detailed the item which followed this rib, ‘one joynt of the neck bone of a whale’. Increasingly, for thinkers like Grew and his Society friends, the rib of a merman seemed just as legitimate an artefact for a scientific collection as the neck bone of a whale or a Brazilian bird’s nest. Times were changing, and merpeople served as key vessels of Western thinkers’ critical approach to the world around them. Europeans’ efforts to map the ever-expanding world especially reflected their changing worldviews and, as always, merpeople abounded in these Eurocentric – if not, indeed, inherently flawed – visions of the world’s geographies, peoples and animals. The fringes of the known world invoked equal parts fear and wonder 82

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for early modern philosophers and cartographers. These latter often equated certain geographical areas with specific animals. The historian Wilma George argued that ‘long-tailed parrots, long-tailed monkeys and an animal with a pouch were considered representative of South America’, while Meri Lao noted that ‘the phrase hic sunt leones – “here be lions” – was placed in the very center of maps of Africa to convey the impression of the mystery and dangers of unexplored lands.’ Cartographers understood mermaids and tritons (along with other monsters) in a similar fashion, employing these hybrid creatures to demonstrate the danger and opportunity of the world’s most distant waters. As in other investigations at the time, merpeople represented for early modern Europeans the wonder of the world and how humans might ultimately conquer it.45 Although the majority of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century maps did not have any decorations (usually because the client did not want to pay for embellishments), those mappaemundi and nautical charts which did sport artistic flourishes displayed an overwhelming bias towards merpeople. Generally speaking, Renaissance mapmakers employed three tropes when depicting mermaids and tritons. First, these artists relied upon beautified representations of merpeople, which helped them to demonstrate their artistic prowess while also hinting at the unexplored wonders of the sea. Second, merpeople almost always resided in areas far from Europe, which was an interesting choice considering just how many sightings remained huddled around Europe’s coasts in the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, in the world of cartography mermaids and tritons primarily symbolized the strange dangers that awaited European explorers on the edges of the globe. Third, cartographers helped to instigate a resurgence in triton imagery. Before the seventeenth century, visual depictions of merpeople – whether in bestiaries or church carvings – generally leaned upon the mermaid as a prime symbol of feminine lust and danger. Yet, as sightings picked up and more Europeans reported seeing both mermaids and tritons, 83

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so too did cartographers begin to draw these masculine creatures more regularly.46 While a complete survey of mermaids and tritons in Renaissance maps is beyond the scope of this volume, some specific examples will serve to demonstrate cartographers’ and artists’ understanding of mermaids, as well as how early modern peoples probably interpreted such maps.47 Take Cosmographia universalis (1554), for instance. The first German-language description of the world, Sebastian Münster’s six-volume set, replete with 471 woodcuts and 26 maps, took the Western world by storm and proved key to future geographical thought. His world map (‘Typus cosmographia universalis’) alone is staggering, and was the most accurate rendering of the globe according to contemporary knowledge. And, sure enough, Münster depicted a giant mermaid off the eastern coast of India, which philosophers and mapmakers at the time understood as ‘a place of human and bestial abnormalities’. Münster drew the mermaid in all of her medieval glory. Long hair, large breasts and a taut frame defined her upper half, while on her lower half she spread her tails apart to reveal her pubic area. She – like her distant residence – was a dangerous manifestation of wonder and exploration.48 Münster was hardly alone. In 1562, the Spanish cartographer Diego Gutiérezz inserted two medieval-style mermaids seducing a ship in the strait of Magellan off the west coast of South America, while in 1550 the French cartographer Pierre Desceliers included in his own world map a similar mermaid swimming through the southern ocean (illus. 42).49 By 1570 the Dutchman Abraham Ortelius produced his Theatrum orbis terrarum, the first modern atlas of the world. A collection of all the most cutting-edge European knowledge of cartography up to that point, Ortelius’ map emerged as an essential work for philosophers, scientists and explorers throughout the Western world. Yet such ‘modernity’ hardly excluded merpeople. In fact, mermaids and tritons were scattered 84

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throughout the Theatrum orbis terrarum. A mer-couple embrace off the southwest coast of Italy (illus. 43), a triton plays a stringed instrument off the far western coast of Ireland (illus. 44) and a pair of mermaids admire themselves in the East Indies (illus. 45). These were calculated decisions. Ireland and Italy boasted a thriving culture of merpeople sightings, not to mention art and sculpture, while Asia was considered a hive of such monstrosities. Only one year earlier, Gerard Mercator had included Neptune riding a seahorse in the South Pacific in his world map, while in 1593 Cornelius Jode depicted a mer-couple embracing off the coast of New Guinea in his Novae Guineae forma, & situs.50 This analysis could continue, but suffice it to say here that by the seventeenth century, Europeans would have found merpeople on many of their most trusted maps.51 Combined with sightings, 85

42 Pierre Desceliers, Planisphere (1550), detail of ‘Mermaid with Mirror’.

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43 ‘Italian Mercouple’, in Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum (1570).

physical specimens and religious symbolism, such representations not only solidified existing beliefs in mermaids and tritons, but helped to convert new believers. Such ideological shifts had noticeable effects on Western culture, especially in terms of politics and art. For Renaissance Europeans, ‘sirens lurked everywhere.’52 Mermaids even managed to infiltrate political culture in the late sixteenth century, especially the English monarchy. This makes sense, as some of the smartest and most influential Englishmen fostered a sincere belief in these hybrids. They also knew that the image of the mermaid carried considerable currency across a wide swathe of the general population. Scottish detractors of Mary, Queen of Scots and her new suitor, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, used mermaid imagery in March 1567 to deride the 86

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controversial couple. In this ‘Mermaid and Hare placard’ (illus. 46), Scottish propagandists represented Queen Mary as a medievalstyle mermaid, thereby sullying her reputation through association with this monstrous, lustful form. Mary had slept with Hepburn – represented in the piece by his personal badge, the hare – while he was still married; and he was also suspected of killing her late husband, Lord Darnley. This scandal opened the radical bedfellows to public and brutal derision. Although scholars continue to delve deeper into the symbolism of the placard’s figures, stars, swords, letters and organization, Mary’s depiction as a mermaid is most important for this book, for it demonstrates the deeper impact and association that these hybrid creatures invoked across Western society.53 87

44 ‘Merman with Instrument’, in Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum (1570).

45 ‘Admiring Mermaids’, in Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum (1570).

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Monarchical mermaid associations continued in 1588 with none other than Queen Elizabeth i, the deadly rival of Mary, Queen of Scots. Elizabeth had ordered Mary’s beheading only one year before George Gower completed the ‘Armada Portrait’ of Elizabeth, which celebrated her recent victory over the seemingly impervious Spanish Armada. In the lavish piece, Queen Elizabeth is seated in her finest garb, her right hand resting upon the globe, the crown of England over her right shoulder and two separate paintings of the victorious English ships bathed in light contrasted with the doomed Spanish Armada under dark, stormy skies (illus. 47). Elizabeth is, in every way, ‘the ruler of a victorious realm . . . aspiring Empress of the world’. But that is not all that accompanies the queen in this elaborate image, for in the bottom-right corner of the Armada Portrait also stands a mermaid statue. Unlike in the case of poor Mary, here the symbol was not intended to denigrate Elizabeth. Rather, Gower included the mermaid statue in an attempt to celebrate the ‘Virgin Queen’. Scholars still disagree on quite how the hybrid creature was to accomplish this, however. Some contend that Gower’s lustful mermaid was supposed to contrast with Elizabeth’s controlled sexuality, while Kristen Brookes recently argued that the Armada Portrait ‘figures Elizabeth as an erotic agent who exercises power and takes pleasure in taking possession of and manipulating others, while remaining in possession of herself ’. Regardless of its precise meaning, it is clear that Gower purposely and intentionally employed the mermaid. He was not alone – in the late sixteenth century, the Flemish painter Frans Francken used the imagery of mermaids to demonstrate the 89

46 ‘Mermaid and Hare placard: sketch of Mary, Queen of Scots’, c. June 1567.

merpeople 47 Armada Portrait of Queen Elizabeth i (1588).

political tumult that raged between the Protestant Low Countries and Catholic Spain. Francken’s Allegory: The Ship of State (illus. 48) depicted the Spanish Catholic Church as a ship (complete with the pope on board) sailing through rocky, mermaid-infested waters. An onlooker did not need to know much about politics to understand the message of this painting. Whether as symbols of derision (as in the ‘Mermaid and Hare placard’), danger (Francken), or as celebrations of imperial might (the Armada Portrait), mermaids – like monarchy – remained mutable entities ingrained in Western society.54 These artworks were only ripples in the merpeople cultural boom that resonated throughout Western Europe in the Renaissance. In the seventeenth century England’s leading literary figures, such as Ben Johnson and William Strachey, congregated once a month in London’s Mermaid Tavern, while William Shakespeare included 90

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mermaids in three separate plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Comedy of Errors and The Tempest. As historian Tara Pedersen recently demonstrated, mermaids were ‘visible in the writings of some of the most popular authors’ in early modern England, ‘including Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe, Jonson, Cavendish, Dekker, Middleton, and Milton’. This was no coincidence, Pedersen continues, as leading literary figures and artists utilized sirens and tritons as a way to reflect upon ‘the sexed and gendered body that resists clear categorical frameworks and that holds erotic potential’.55 Such efforts, of course, were intimately connected with impulses dating back at least ten centuries. Elite Renaissance Europeans

48 Frans Francken the Elder, Allegory: The Ship of State, late 16th century, oil on panel.

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merpeople 49 Pendant shaped as a mermaid, 1575–1600, with later modifications, Spanish or Spanish Colonial, and a gold and pearl toothpick pendant in the form of a mermaid, late 16th century, Italian or German.

decorated their bodies and homes with objects ranging from jewellery (illus. 49) to dishes to steel-plate armour. The English philosopher Thomas Browne’s mid-seventeenth-century assertion that ‘few eyes have escaped the picture of the mermaid’ must have seemed more relevant than ever to Europeans.56 Reflecting upon the Renaissance brings one to a fuller appreciation of the sheer volume of mermaid belief, sightings, contemplation and cultural awareness among Western Europeans. If medieval Christians created the idea of the mermaid and triton, Renaissance Europeans made them real creatures that not only demanded serious deliberation, but exposed Westerners’ deeper understandings of empire, religion and wonder. Leaders and laypeople alike came to consider merpeople legitimate creatures of cultural and national importance. This was no idle pursuit, for by the eighteenth century – a period of ‘Enlightenment’ that contemporaries and historians alike uniformly term a time of science and 92

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reason – some of the smartest men in the Western world expended significant time, money and effort hunting, studying, dissecting, drawing and philosophizing upon these seemingly real monsters using the most modern methodologies. Interest in mermaids and tritons only gathered pace with the advent of supposed ‘modernity’.

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The enslaved youth, Sam, fears his master has lost his mind. Sam’s owner, Alexander Garden, gropes in the muddy banks of a swamp, sullying his linen shirt with fetid slime and sneezing away a dragonfly. A celebrated colonial physician, Garden often takes Sam on expeditions into the swamps of South Carolina to collect plants and animals. But on this stifling day in May 1765, Sam notices that his master seems more manic than usual. Garden keeps mumbling to himself about a ‘siren’ in these waters, and undertakes wearisome tasks that he would usually relegate to Sam. The sun is at its peak, only further reminding the sweaty pair that they have spent four hours in the swamps and have found nothing but a never-ending swarm of mosquitos and a few scary sightings of drifting alligators. Garden keeps dipping his net into the murky water, but does not seem happy with what he finds. For his part, Sam hunches under a full pack and drags his net in the sludge, casually flipping it up every few feet just to confirm the lack of a catch. Suddenly Sam feels a tug against his net, and carefully pulls it from the brown water. Inside is an odd, blackish-brown creature that looks like one of the eels his mother sometimes cooks. Sam is about to throw it back when Garden cries out and snatches his net away. As Garden spills the creature into a wicker basket, he begins to hold a conversation with himself about this magnificent ‘siren’. All Sam sees is a small, ugly thing about the length of a house cat, wriggling with its two short arms tangled in the basket’s net. The creature begins to squeak as it writhes its pointed bottom half like a fish. Garden begins to prod the poor little beast, exclaiming, ‘Linnaeus must investigate this extraordinary animal.’ Sam rummages in his pack for a jar, hoping that this ‘discovery’ means they can return to Garden’s dry, shaded Charleston home.

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ighteenth-century European thinkers built on the cultural and scientific imaginations of the Renaissance to encompass a new sort of merpeople – ugly, frightening creatures that were a far cry from the figures that had long decorated cathedrals and filled travellers’ stories.1 Despite detracting voices, well-respected philosophers transformed mermaids and tritons from wondrous creatures of lore and curiosity into specimens worthy of in-depth scientific investigation. The smartest men in the Western world, in short, spent much of the eighteenth century chasing merpeople around the globe.2 Philosophers’ debates over mermaids and tritons reveal their willingness to embrace wonder in their larger quest to understand the origins of humankind. Naturalists utilized a wide range of methodologies to critically study these odd hybrids and, in turn, assert the reality of merpeople as evidence of humanity’s aquatic roots. Besides publishing accounts in the prospering newspaper sector, scholars exchanged information and published their oftcontroversial (but scientifically driven) research in respected outlets. As with other creatures they encountered in their global travels, European philosophers utilized various theories – including those of racial, biological, taxonomical and geographic difference – to understand merpeople’s and, by proxy, humans’ place in the natural world. By the second half of the eighteenth century, certain 95

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philosophers integrated merpeople into their explanation of humanity’s origins, thus bringing this phenomenon full circle.3 Enlightenment scholars grew up surrounded by the culture of merpeople, and the flowering of Western empires in the Americas only fuelled their ‘enlightened’ investigations. The British especially led this charge. Though lagging behind their neighbours imperially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, England’s North American colonies truly thrived by the eighteenth century as their population, economy and communication networks increased exponentially with every passing decade. This growth created a buzz around these blossoming lands, and London’s gentlemen-philosophers hoped to extract strange plants and animals from the ‘wilds’ of their Atlantic colonies. Wealthy individuals and philosophical societies accordingly funded naturalists’, botanists’ and cartographers’ expeditions to the New World in the hope that they might broaden humanity’s understanding of the world and their place in it. The opportunity of social capital did not hurt either – imagine a British gentleman’s pride at showing off an exotic North American plant in his Kensington garden.4 Westerners’ combination of curiosity and imperial expansion is well reflected in the cultural relevance of merpeople. The popularity of mermaid specimens – especially hands, ribs and other portions of skeletons – grew during the eighteenth century. One collector in Middlesex held ‘the Rib of a Triton (or Merman)’ in his private collection in 1713, while in 1722 the English geographer Patrick Gordon claimed to have viewed mermaid hands in the ‘Repository of Natural Rarities at Leyden’ and in the ‘Musaeum regium at Copenhagen’. By 1741, central Londoners might gaze upon ‘a Surprizing young mermaid, taken on the Coast of Aquapulea’. The Charing Cross purveyor assured readers that ‘curious’ spectators had ‘express[ed] their utmost Satisfaction at so uncommon a Creature, it being half like a Woman, and half like a Fish; and is allowed to be the greatest curiosity ever expos’d to publick View’.5 96

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Representing only a portion of the flowering culture of merpeople specimens throughout European cabinets of curiosities and public exhibits, these anecdotes demonstrate the public’s willingness to believe in and observe these mysterious creatures. Merpeople’s cultural commonality extended beyond specimens into minute parts of everyday life. This was nothing new in Europe, as mermaids and tritons had graced everything from tombs to tableware since the early Renaissance. The British American colonies, however, remained in relative infancy compared to the Old World, and thus had only just begun to integrate merpeople into their own arts and crafts by the early eighteenth century. Stephen West – owner of London Town, Maryland’s Rumney Tavern – held a curious plate set in 1725 (illus. 50) emblazoned with a blue mermaid who seems to float on the waves. Interestingly, the mermaid’s face resembles that of a man, with masculine features and a hairstyle that would have been common for an eighteenth-century colonist. Because West was a former sailor, it makes sense that he held mermaid-decorated plates. But it is not clear why these plates depicted a mermaid body with a masculine face. Perhaps, in a nod to the 1567 Queen Mary image, the piece was intended to parody King George i’s portrait of 1714? Or maybe it was meant to resemble Stephen West himself ? All we know is that colonial American tavern-goers would have gradually revealed this striking image as they cleared their plates of meat pie and pudding.6 Similarly, an anonymous ‘master carver’ whittled a classic-style mermaid into his powder horn in 1761 (illus. 51). Where the London Town merperson maintained an ambiguous gender, this mermaid was undoubtedly female, with large breasts, flowing hair and a comb clutched in her right hand. She would have felt as at home on a medieval cathedral’s walls as she did on this eighteenth-century powder horn.7 Though providing a snapshot of Britons’ imaginations 97

50 Mermaid plate (c. 1725), recovered from the Rumney/ West Tavern, Historic London Town and Gardens, Edgewater, md.

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from the colonies to London, such representations remained little more than decorative flights of fancy. The myriad mermaid and triton sightings recorded in eighteenthcentury British and colonial American newspapers, however, began to bridge the gap between fantasy and fact. On 6 May 1736, the polymath Benjamin Franklin informed readers of his Pennsylvania Gazette of a ‘Sea Monster’ recently spotted in Bermuda, ‘the upper part of whose Body was in the Shape and about the Bigness of a Boy of 12 Years old, with long black Hair; the lower Part resembled

51 Mermaid powder horn (c. 1761) in the 2018 ‘From Maps to Mermaids: Carved Powder Horns in Early America’ exhibition at the Fort Pitt Museum in Pittsburgh, pa.

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a Fish’. Apparently, the creature’s ‘human Likeness’ inspired his captors to let it live. A 1769 issue of the Providence Gazette similarly reported that crew members of an English ship off the coast of Brest, France, watched as ‘a sea monster, like a man’ circled their ship, at one point viewing ‘for some time the figure that was in our prow, which represented a beautiful woman’. The captain, the pilot and ‘the whole crew, consisting of two and thirty men’ verified this tale. The Virginia Gazette, furthermore, reported in 1738 that a group of Englishmen had caught a strange fish, ‘supposed by many to be the Triton, or Merman of the Ancients, being four Feet and a half in Length, having a Body much resembling that of a Man’ just outside of Exmouth, and only one year later exclaimed that some Fishermen ‘took on that Coast [of Vigo, Spain] a Sort of Monster, or Merman, 5 Feet and a Half from its Foot to its Head, which is that of a Goat’.8 Though not accounting for every mermaid and triton sighting reported in eighteenth-century British and British-American newspapers (illus. 52), the above examples are quite representative of what an early modern Briton would have found in the newspapers. That these interactions were even reported in the newspaper tells us much. Intelligent men like Benjamin Franklin considered such encounters legitimate enough to spend the time and money to print in their widely read newspapers. By doing so, printers and authors helped sustain a narrative of curiosity surrounding these wondrous creatures. As a Londoner sat down with his newspaper (perhaps in the aptly named Mermaid Tavern) and read of yet another instance of a mermaid or triton sighting, his doubt might have transformed into curiosity.9 For many newspaper readers throughout the British Empire, this was exactly the case. Where seventeenth-century peoples generally recorded sightings in travel diaries or encyclopaedias, eighteenth-century amateur scholars took to their local newspapers en masse to debate the existence of merpeople. One New 99

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52 ‘Mapping Mermaids’: map of every available (source-verified) Western-reported merperson sighting prior to 1800. pre-17th century 17th century 18th century

Englander wrote to the Boston Evening-Post in 1762, ‘I find by your Paper . . . that you are willing . . . to entertain your Customers, with such natural curiosities as are the most remarkable.’ This author, who dubbed himself ‘W. X.’, tackled the question of whether mermaids and mermen were, in fact, real. W. X. began his piece by addressing ‘some of the greatest naturalists’ who contended that mermaids and tritons ‘took their rise from an imperfect view of a Sea-Cow’. Laughing this notion off, the Bostonian argued that a sea cow and a mermaid ‘are so far from having any likeliness’ that they could not be mistaken for each other. Merpeople, for this Boston gentleman, were far more likely to have deep connections with humankind. W. X. proceeded to record ‘a few’ of the ‘many proofs . . . that there are such animals as Mermaids’. He referenced various publications in his point-by-point analysis, ranging from scholarly books to magazines to travel narratives. Realizing that his argument would ‘not be sufficient to prevent many from ridiculing [his assertions] as spurious’, W. X. ended his article with an exact copy of Captain Whitbourne’s mermaid account of 1610. Because the authenticity of this ‘ancient narrative’ was ‘unimpeached’, W. X. hoped that it would silence doubters. Of course, it did not.10 100

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Across the Atlantic Ocean, this same debate had raged for centuries. A writer asked the editor of the British Apollo in 1710 whether he gave credence to the spate of merpeople sightings pouring into England during the last few centuries. After going into considerable detail on the famous Holland mermaid interaction of the early fifteenth century, the author pleaded, ‘Now, Gentlemen, I wou’d desire you to inform me, of the credit of [the Holland mermaid story], and whether the being Mermen and Mermaids is not a meer Fable, for I cannot persuade my self to believe there ever were such Creatures.’ The editor replied first by insisting that the story of the Holland mermaid ‘is Attested by Historians of so good Credit, that it wou’d be Injustice not to believe them’. He continued, ‘there can be no doubt made but that there are such Creatures as Mermaids, being frequently mentioned by Ancient Writers under the Name of Tritons and Syrens.’ Like W. X., the editor provided a thorough list of merpeople sightings. Having described a triton interaction off the coast of France in 1636 in extreme detail, the editor exclaimed, ‘We thought it wou’d not be unpleasant to give this Story at large to the Reader, since it is from an Author of undoubted Credit, and may serve not only to conform our Belief that there are such Creatures, but also to give us an Idea of them.’ For this editor, the case was closed.11 Despite the surplus of merpeople sightings in the eighteenth century, and the long tradition of belief and culture, many naturalists continued to deride those who even entertained the possibility that such creatures existed. Thomas Boreman began his 1740 discussion of mermaids by remarking that these creatures ‘seem rather to be Creature of [ancient writers’, statuaries’ and painters’] own Invention than any real Production of Nature’, while Benjamin Martin took a more levelled approach to discounting mermaids, contending that ‘The Stories of Mer-Maids . . . had undoubtedly their Original from such Animals as have in some Respect a Likeness to the human Shape and Features.’ He continued, ‘Among 101

merpeople 53 Woodcut in Pierre Boaistuau, Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature (1569).

these the Monkey Kind, the Orang Outang, and the Quoja Morron [chimpanzee], are the chief on Land, and the Fish call’d the Mermaid (tho’ it has nothing of the Human Form) [see illus. 53] and some other unusual Animals in the Sea.’ By the final decade of the eighteenth century, the author of The Naturalist’s Pocket Magazine believed that the seal was ‘the true and sole foundation of the Mermaid’, while the author of The Revolution of Reason asserted that a mermaid was none other than a ‘fabulous animal’ with a possibility of existence ‘so distant, that they merit the discriminatory term futile ideas’.12 No matter these holdouts, in an expanding number of investigations into mermaids and tritons, naturalists demonstrated a growing propensity for the wondrous. They also, importantly, revealed how 102

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the process of scientific research had drastically changed over the last two hundred years. Rather than relying strictly on ancient texts and hearsay, eighteenth-century naturalists mustered various ‘modern’ resources – global correspondence networks, erudite publication opportunities, transatlantic travel, specimen procedures and learned societies – to rationally examine what many considered wondrous. Thus, a growing body of gentlemen both carried on and eschewed the supposed narrative of enlightened logic by applying well-known, valid research methods to mysterious, wondrous merpeople. In doing so, eighteenth-century philosophers such as Cotton Mather, Peter Collinson, Samuel Fallours, Carl Linnaeus and Hans Sloane complicated our – and their contemporaries’ – conceptions of science, nature and humanity. The Royal Society of London proved key in this endeavour, acting as both a repository and producer of legitimate scientific investigation. Sir Robert Sibbald, a respected Scottish physician and geographer, well understood the Society’s desire for groundbreaking research. On 29 November 1703 he wrote to Sir Hans Sloane, the president of the Society, to inform the London gentleman that Sibbald and his colleagues had been recording an account of Scotland’s amphibious creatures, along with accompanying copper-plate images, which he hoped to dedicate to the Royal Society. Realizing the Society’s interest in the most up-todate studies, Sibbald told Sloane that he had ‘added several accounts and the figures of some Amphibious Aquatic Animals, and of some of mixed Kinds, as the Mermaids or Syrens seen sometimes in our Seas’.13 Here were two leading thinkers of the eighteenth century exchanging erudite missives on merpeople. And this was only the beginning. On 5 July 1716, Cotton Mather also penned a letter to the Royal Society of London. This was not odd, as the Boston naturalist often detailed his scientific findings. Yet this letter’s subject was somewhat curious – titled ‘a Triton’, the missive demonstrated Mather’s 103

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sincere belief in the existence of merpeople. The Royal Society of London fellow began by explaining that, until recently, he considered merpeople no more real than ‘centaurs or sphynxes’. Mather found myriad historical accounts of merpeople, ranging from the ancient Greek Demostratus, who witnessed a ‘Dried Triton . . . at ye Town of Tanagra’, to Pliny the Elder’s assertions of mermaids and tritons’ existence. Yet because ‘Plinyisums are of no great Reputation in our Dayes’, Mather noted, he passed off much of these ancient accounts as false. Mather’s ‘suspicions’ of the existence of such creatures ‘had got more Strength given’, however, when he read sundry ancient accounts via well-respected European thinkers like Boaistuau and Bellonius. Mather found that sightings of mermaids and tritons were no longer relegated to ancient history: according to various volumes, a group of Englishmen had caught a merman off the coast of ‘Orford of Suffolk . . . in ye Reign of K. John’; a mermaid had been dragged ashore and trained to knit near Edam, Holland, in 1404; and the Englishman Captain Richard Whitbourne witnessed a mermaid while exploring Newfoundland in 1610.14 Still, Mather was not totally convinced, at least until 22 February 1716 when ‘three honest and credible men, coming in a boat from Milford to Brainford (Connecticut)’, encountered a triton. Having heard this news at first hand, Mather could only exclaim, ‘now at last my credulity is entirely conquered, and I am compelled now to believe the existence of a triton; for such a one has just now been exhibited in my own country, and the attestations to it are such that it would be a fault in me at all to question it.’ As the creature fled the men, ‘they had a full view of him and saw his head, and face, and neck, and shoulders, and arms, and elbows, and breast, and back all of a human shape . . . [the] lower parts were those of a fish, and colored like a mackerel.’ Though this ‘triton’ escaped, it convinced Mather of merpeople’s existence. Maintaining that his story was not false, Mather promised the Royal Society that he would continue to relay ‘all New occurrences of Nature’.15 104

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In 1743 the English botanist Peter Collinson continued the flow of letters to the Royal Society of London with news that his friend Sylvanus Bevan (of London) had acquired ‘a great rarity . . . a Maremaid Hand and arm’. Collinson explained that Bevan had procured this arm while sailing off the coast of Brazil, when ‘Something like Human came and threw its arm . . . over the [ship’s] gunnel’ and a crew member hacked the creature’s arm off. The creature receded into the water, leaving ‘the Maremaids arme’ behind for their inspection. Yet Sloane had to wait until 1747 to see the arm, when ‘Mr Bevan shew’d the Bones of the arm of a Fish resembling the arm and hand of a man . . . found on the Coast of Brazil’ to the inquisitive Royal Society.16 The famous naturalist (and colleague of Collinson) Carl Linnaeus also threw himself into investigating mermaids and tritons. Having read newspaper articles detailing mermaid sightings in Nyköping, Sweden, Linnaeus sent a letter to the Swedish Academy of Science in 1749 urging a hunt in which to ‘catch this animal alive or preserved in spirits’. Linnaeus admitted, ‘science does not have a certain answer of the existence of mermaids is a fact or is a fable or imagination of some ocean fish.’ Yet in his mind, the reward outweighed the risk, as the discovery of such a rare phenomenon ‘could result in one of the biggest discoveries that the Academy could possibly achieve and for which the whole world should thank the Academy’. Perhaps these creatures could reveal humankind’s origins? For Linnaeus – world-renowned for his contributions to taxonomical classification – this ancient mystery must be solved.17 The Dutch artist Samuel Fallours also claimed to have discovered merpeople in a distant land, and in doing so set off a decades-long debate that spanned continents and media types. Fallours lived in Ambon, Indonesia, from 1706 to 1712 while serving as a clergy’s assistant for the Dutch East India Company. During Fallours’ tenure on a ‘Spice Island’, he drew various representations 105

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of native flora and fauna. One image (illus. 54) happened to depict a mermaid, or ‘sirenne’. Fallours’ ‘sirenne’ closely resembled the classic depiction of a mermaid, with long, sea-green hair, a pleasant face and a bare midsection that turned into a blue/green tail at the waist. This mermaid’s skin, however, was dark (with a slight greenish tinge), implying a similarity with the local indigenous population.18 In the notes that accompanied Fallours’ original drawing, the Dutch artist contended that he ‘had this Syrene alive for four days in my house at Ambon in a tub of water’. Fallours’ son had brought it to him from the nearby island of Buru ‘where he purchased it from the blacks for two ells of cloth’. Eventually, the whimpering creature died of hunger, ‘not wishing to take any nourishment, neither fishes nor shell fishes, nor mosses or grasses’. After the mermaid’s death, Fallours ‘had the curiosity to lift its fins in front and in back and [found] it was shaped like a woman’. Fallours claimed that the specimen was subsequently relayed to Holland and lost. The story of this Ambon siren, however, had only just begun.19 Years before Louis Renard, a French-born book dealer living in Amsterdam, ever published a version of Fallours’ ‘sirenne’ in his own Poissons, ecrevisses et crabes (1719), Fallours’ images had already enjoyed wide distribution. Yet, because of the unusually bright colours and fantastic creatures represented in Fallours’ drawings, many doubted their accuracy and veracity. Renard was especially worried about the validity of Fallours’ sirenne, exclaiming, ‘I am even afraid the monster represented under the name of mermaid . . . needs to be rectified.’ The bookseller utilized the republic of letters ‘for clarification’, sending ‘some copies to Batavia and Ambon to have them verified’. He promised prospective readers, ‘if it happens that it is necessary to change something, I feel I am obliged to notify the public.’ The stakes got even higher in 1716 (three years before Renard republished the images) when Czar Peter i of Russia 106

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and his wife, Catherine i, visited Renard’s bookshop and viewed Fallours’ mermaid picture. Catherine remained unconvinced that Fallours had harboured a mermaid, and demanded that Renard find proof of this monster. Renard immediately sent a letter to two of Fallours’ acquaintances: François Valentijn, a Dutch minister who was friends with Fallours’ supervising preacher, and Abrahamus Parent, the head minister of the Dutch Reformed Church at Ambon during Fallours’ tenure on the island.20 The men were little help. Valentijn declared that he was ‘not a witness to the event that [Renard] describe[d]’, and had not ‘heard of it until today’, while Parent informed Renard that, while he met Fallours at Ambon, he was unfamiliar with the captive mermaid. As a consolation prize of sorts, both men provided Renard with explanations of their own random encounters with merpeople. But Renard did not need other mermaid tales. He needed proof of one mermaid in particular, and he simply could not get it.21 Philosophers found both promise and disgust in Fallours’ painting and the subsequent dialogue that Renard initiated with his letters. In his preface to the 1754 version of Renard’s Poissons, ecrevisses et crabes, the Dutch collector and director of the menageries and ‘Natuur-en Kunstcabinetten des Stadhouders’ Aernout Vosmaer declared that ‘the mermaid deserves more attention than is generally given. Its existence is positively asserted.’ Vosmaer continued by calling objections to merpeople’s reality ‘weak’, and contending that ‘this monster, if we must call it by this name (although I do not see the reason for it)’ was simply able to avoid humans’ traps better than any other creature (because of its hybrid nature) and was thus rarely seen. Because of merpeople’s biological similarity to humans, furthermore, Vosmaer argued that they were ‘more subject to decay after death than the body of other fishes’. Such a lack of preservation not only diminished sightings, it also went towards explaining the lack of full specimens in cabinets 107

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54 ‘Sirenne’, in Louis Renard, Poissons, ecrevisses et crabes (1754).

of curiosities. Renard’s work, as historian Theodore W. Pietsch contended, demonstrated how ‘describers of nature, particularly scientific illustrators, were developing a greater concern with exact, precise representations of living things’. Renard based his detailed investigations upon ‘direct observation and reason’, which fell in line with Enlightenment philosophy. His choice to include a mermaid, however, rankled some of his erudite colleagues.22 The English naturalist Emanuel Mendez da Costa – a member of the Royal Society of London who professed a dedication to ‘the passionate pursuit of Nature’ – was far less impressed with Fallours’ (and, by proxy, Valentyn’s and Renard’s) work. In a 1776 review of the most recent scholarship on conchology, da Costa called Valentyn’s Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (1724–6) ‘a curious but not a scientifical work’. Especially damning in da Costa’s opinion was Valentyn’s decision to include ‘a fine figure of a Mermaid as vulgarly painted’ among ‘two large, or sheet plates, wherein he has figured some sea plants, and some fish’. He argued that this ‘ridiculous circumstance alone has degraded [Valentyn’s] work among the too lively collectors’.23 Peter Collinson did not share da Costa’s disgust for the combination of proven science and speculative merpeople research. In 1755 Collinson wrote to London’s erudite Gentleman’s Magazine, 108

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reciting, like ‘W. X.’ before him, Captain Richard Whitbourne’s 1610 mermaid sighting off the coast of Newfoundland. As a member of the Royal Society of London and a well-respected naturalist, Collinson’s opinion would have held more weight in the scientific community than an anonymous contributor to a colonial American newspaper. Thus, when Collinson prefaced the Whitbourne sighting with his own prose – contending that ‘There are still many people who doubt the existence of the Mermaid, and perhaps with good reason, yet all natural historians deliver it as a fact, and the many relations of navigators of credit should not be wholly disregarded’ – people would have listened. More than anything, Collinson’s 1755 submission to the Gentleman’s Magazine – a periodical read throughout the English-speaking world – provides a succinct snapshot of how mid-century European academics grappled with the science of merpeople. Though many ‘doubt[ed] the existence of the Mermaid . . . with good reason’, they also had to come to terms with the myriad sightings by trusted ‘navigators of credit’, as well as the fact that ‘all natural historians deliver [merpeople] as fact’. Although Collinson wrote this piece 21 years before da Costa damned Valentyn’s work, this article was closely correlated with da Costa’s 1776 review, for it ignited a flurry of subsequent scientific studies of merpeople in the pages of the Gentleman’s Magazine (and other erudite publications) over the next half century. By publicly announcing his belief in merpeople, in short, Collinson inadvertently marked the beginning of a wave of mermaid and triton studies in the Atlantic world. When taken this way, da Costa’s quick rejection of Valentyn’s work seems much less representative of the opinion of the wider scientific community.24 By the mid-eighteenth century, a growing number of physicians not only believed in the existence of merpeople, but also began to wonder what sort of ramifications such creatures might have for understanding humanity’s origins and future. As G. Robinson noted in The Beauties of Nature and Art Displayed in a Tour Through 109

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the World (1764), ‘though the generality of natural historians regard mermen and mermaids as fabulous animals . . . as far as the testimony of many writers for the reality of such creatures may be depended upon, so much reason there appears for believing their existence.’ The Reverend Thomas Smith took Robinson’s contention to an even more definitive note four years later, asserting that while ‘there are many persons indeed who doubt the reality of mermen and mermaids . . . yet there seems to be sufficient testimony to establish it beyond dispute’. Smith, like Robinson, ‘W. X.’ and the gentleman editor of the British Apollo before him, subsequently listed a long (and well-versed) history of merpeople sightings by notable figures. But the problem remained: men like Robinson and Smith could rely only upon ancient, often ridiculed sightings or tenuous hypotheses for their ‘proof ’. They needed scientific research to back up their claims, and they got it.25 Two especially important articles – each approaching merpeople through unique scientific methodology – appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine between 1759 and 1775. The first piece, published in December 1759, accompanied a plate image of a ‘Syren, or Mermaid . . . said to have been shewn in the fair of St Germains [Paris]’ in 1758 (illus. 55). The author noted that this siren was ‘drawn from life . . . by the celebrated Sieur Gautier’. Jacques-Fabien Gautier, a French printer and member of the Dijon Academy, was widely recognized for his skill in printing accurate images of scientific subjects.26 Attaching Gautier’s name to the print garnered immediate credibility, even for such a strange image; but even without Gautier’s name attached to it, the print and its accompanying text were distinguished by their modern scientific methodology. Gautier had apparently interacted with the living creature, finding that it was ‘about two feet long, alive, and very active, sporting about in the vessel of water in which it was kept with great seeming delight and agility’. And though Gautier noted that the creature was friendly as its onlookers fed 110

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it bread and small fish, he also remarked that such actions were only ‘the attention of mere instinct’. For Gautier, this creature was an exotic beast that necessitated close scientific investigation.27 Gautier consequently recorded that ‘its positions, when it was at rest, was always erect. It was a female, and the features were hideously ugly.’ As displayed in detail by the accompanying print, Gautier found its skin ‘harsh, the ears very large, and the backparts and tail were covered with scales’. According to the image, this was not the mermaid that had long graced cathedrals throughout Europe. Nor did it match the description relayed by so many other naturalists and discoverers throughout history. Where most had seen a striking female form, distinguished by flowing bluegreen hair, Gautier’s mermaid was completely bald with ‘very large’ ears and ‘hideously ugly’ features. Gautier’s siren was also much smaller than traditional mermaids at only 60 centimetres (2 ft) tall. More than anything, Gautier’s mermaid reflected the mid-eighteenth-century approach to studying the wondrous aspects of nature: the Frenchman employed well-respected scientific techniques – in this case a close inspection of the creature’s anatomy and an accurate accompanying drawing (much resembling those of other illustrated creatures at the time) – to display as reality what many still considered fantasy.28 Gautier’s assertions made waves in the British scientific community. In 1761 the London-based Universal Magazine republished a 1671 account of a group of Frenchmen and enslaved Africans who claimed to have seen a merman off Martinique (West Indies). The author went into great detail in describing this ‘Triton, or sea-man’, explaining that witnesses ‘had time enough to observe distinctly all his parts’ and noting that its ‘figure perfectly resembled the human, from the head down to the waist . . . as of a youth of 15 or 16 years of age’. However, the triton also boasted a long, grey beard and a chest covered with grey hair ‘as old men are in that part’. In the accompanying image (illus. 56), the author depicted this triton in 111

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55 A. Gautier D’Agoty, ‘A Mermaid, with a Measuring Scale’, 1757, colour aquatint.

a more humanoid form than did Gautier, affording him a pleasant face, identifiable torso and fish-tail. Yet, even more importantly, the author was sure to provide verification for such an extraordinary account. Apparently, the captain and Jesuit missionary who first heard this account ‘judged it to be fabulous, and, in order that the people might not be imposed upon by a vain report, they made a 112

Enlightened Experiments 56 ‘Martinique Triton’, in The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, vol. xxix (London, 1761).

very strict inquiry . . . interrogated separately the witnesses, and with great precaution’ deemed the sighting as legitimate. Thus, like the Gautier image and description, the Universal Magazine piece included trusted sources (a captain and a Jesuit priest), in-depth description and an accurate accompanying image. Other scholars used the Gautier publication to reflect upon the legitimacy of merpeople. An anonymous contributor to the June 1762 issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine exclaimed that Gautier’s image ‘seems to establish the fact incontrovertibly, that such monsters do exist in nature’. But this author had further evidence. An April 1762 edition of the Mercure de France reported that in June the previous year two girls playing on a beach on the island of Noirmoutier (just off the southwest coast of France) ‘discovered, in a kind of natural grotto, an animal of a human form, leaning on its hands’. In a rather morbid turn of events, one of the girls stabbed the 113

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creature with a knife and watched as it ‘groaned like a human person’. The two girls then proceeded to cut off the poor creature’s hands ‘which had fingers and nails quite formed, with webs between the fingers’, and sought the aid of the island’s surgeon, who, upon seeing the creature, recorded: it was as big as the largest man . . . its skin was white, resembling that of a drowned person . . . it had the breasts of a full-chested woman; a flat nose; a large mouth; the chin adorned with a kind of beard, formed of fine shells; and over the whole body, tufts of similar white shells. It had the tail of a fish, and at the extremity of it a kind of feet. Such a story – when verified by a trained and trusted surgeon – only further proved Gautier’s research. For a growing number of eighteenth-century Britons, merpeople existed, bore a striking resemblance to humans and needed to be studied at length.29 In May 1775 the Gentleman’s Magazine published an investigation of a mermaid ‘taken in the Gulph of Stanchio, in the Archipelago or Aegean Sea, by a merchantman trading to Natolia’ in August 1774. Like Gautier’s 1759 ‘syren’, this specimen was drawn and described in detail (illus. 57). Yet the author also distanced himself from Gautier, noting that his mermaid ‘differs materially from that shewn at the fair of St Germaine, some years ago’. In an especially interesting turn of events, the author utilized a comparison of the two mermaid prints to speculate on issues of race and biology, contending that ‘there is reason to believe, that there are two distinct genera, or, more properly, two species of the same genus, the one resembling the African blacks, the other the European whites.’ While Gautier’s siren ‘had, in every respect, the countenance of a Negro’, the author found that his mermaid displayed ‘the features and complexion of an European. Its face is like that of a young 114

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female; its eyes a fine light blue; its nose small and handsome; its mouth small; its lips thin.’30 Where the previous authors had used the science of precise description, verification and illustration to prove the validity of their specimens, the 1775 writer took comparisons with humans one step further by inserting modern ideas of race and biological difference. The author contended that Gautier’s mermaid – with her ‘very large’ ears, broad nose and ‘hideously ugly’ features – resembled ‘the countenance of a Negro’. His own specimen, meanwhile, boasted ‘fine light blue’ eyes, a ‘small and handsome’ nose, and a small mouth with ‘thin’ lips, and thus supposedly embodied ‘the features and complexion of an European’.31 Though only one among many images of African women existing at the time, François Le Vaillant’s ‘Female Caffree’ (illus. 58) well demonstrates an eighteenth-century European’s interpretation of African femininity. As the historian Jennifer L. Morgan has shown, early modern English writers leaned on two stereotypes to commodify and denigrate African female bodies. First, they ‘conventionally set the black female figure against one that was white – and thus beautiful’. Here this 1775 author follows perfectly in line, comparing Gautier’s ‘Negro’ and ‘hideously ugly’ mermaid to his own beautiful mermaid with the ‘features and complexion of an European’. Second, early modern Europeans concentrated on African women’s supposed ‘sexually and reproductively bound savagery’ – especially notions of their abilities to constantly suckle their various children – in order to ultimately turn to ‘black women as evidence of a cultural inferiority that ultimately became encoded as racial difference’. Note the large breasts of both Gautier and Le Vaillant’s women. While Gautier’s mermaid is not associated with a child, her large breasts refer to Europeans’ repeated assertions of African women suckling children over their shoulders (Le Valliant unsurprisingly depicts his subject with a suckling child). The 1775 mermaid, however, is shown as having small breasts, 115

merpeople 57 ‘The Impression of the Character’, in Sylvanus Urban, Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, vol. xlv (1775).

which might have symbolized what English naturalists considered an important racial difference between white and black women: white women, with their supposedly smaller breasts and lesser pain barrier, were allegedly more civilized than African women who, with their purported larger breasts and higher pain barrier, could birth and raise children without any pain (like ‘savage’ animals). Not only were naturalists using the science of merpeople to gain a deeper understanding of the natural order of sea creatures, they were also utilizing their interpretations of these mysterious beings to reflect upon humans’ – especially white humans’ – place in an ever-changing racial, biological framework.32 But scientific research of merpeople was hardly limited to erudite journals. The French naturalist Benoît de Maillet penned Telliamed (1748), in which he attempted to ‘relate man to geology and to the universe’. Maillet deemed the ocean wholly responsible for the geographic and geologic structure of the Earth’s surface. His contention that such processes occurred over billions of years, furthermore, broke new scientific ground, as no one had published any sort of model encompassing such a vast period. Yet Maillet’s assertion of ‘the marine origin of the human races’ received the most critical attention. In Maillet’s telling, plants, animals and humankind originated in the waters of the ocean. As the ocean 116

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steadily receded (part of an endless process of flooding and drying), the continents revealed themselves. Plants, animals and humans consequently moved on to this new land, becoming ‘terrestrial’ through ‘a generalized and continuous process of transformism’. According to Maillet’s model, mermaids and tritons were not only real, they were humanity’s ancestors. Like so many others, Maillet provided readers a vast history of mermaid sightings throughout space and time, promising, ‘I shall reject anything which may be considered as a product of the imagination of poets and only relate well-documented facts.’ Reflecting Mather’s earlier assertion that naturalists did not trust Pliny’s tales of merpeople, Maillet mentioned that he had chosen to omit ‘Pliny, who is perhaps unjustly called a liar’. Maillet himself believed Pliny’s oft-ridiculed tale of a triton playing the flute, though he added his own scientific contention that the triton’s ‘music, to be sure, could not have been very delicate and harmonious since he was probably blowing with his mouth into a perforated reed’. Having combed through these ‘strange . . . but so authenticated’ accounts with a critical eye, the philosopher concluded that they ‘are such proofs as the marine origin of the human races that, in my opinion, they are sufficient to demonstrate such a truth to persons less prejudiced in favor of another imaginary origin than most of the terrestrial people’. In Maillet’s contention, religion had blinded too many to the aquatic origins of humankind. 117

58 ‘Female Caffree’, in François Le Vaillant, Travels from the Cape of Good-Hope, into the Interior Parts of Africa (1790).

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Adam might have existed, but his ancestors had been mermaids and tritons.33 Such a model proved both controversial and exciting. Certain orthodox naturalists lashed out at Maillet’s anti-religious theory. In 1757, for instance, the French philosopher Dezallier d’Argenville exclaimed, ‘What a folly in this author to substitute Telliamed for Moses, to bring man out of the depths of the sea, and, for fear that we should ascend from Adam, to give us marine monsters for ancestors! Only a kind of godlessness could invent such dreams.’ Yet others lauded Maillet’s work: Voltaire recognized the Telliamed as an important model for his own conceptions of the Earth’s history, while 72 of France’s five hundred private/public libraries stocked the book (making the Telliamed the sixth most popular volume in French libraries in the mid-eighteenth century). By borrowing and expanding upon general theories from ancient authors such as Lucretius, Epicurus and Herodotus, Maillet not only reconfigured Europeans’ understanding of the geologic origins of the world, he provided context and corroboration for myriad mermaid and triton sightings. Merpeople, in his telling, fit perfectly with the geological, natural and scientific history of humankind and the Earth.34 Erik Pontoppidan – Bishop of Bergen and member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Copenhagen – built upon Maillet’s work in his Natural History of Norway (1752–3). Realizing that certain readers might ‘suspect [Pontoppidan] of too much credulity’ when they arrived at his section on mermaids and other sea creatures, the naturalist remarked, ‘I am content patiently to submit to their censure, till they have read the chapter through, and then I flatter myself that I shall have no need of an apology.’ Pontoppidan began his investigation by admitting, ‘most of the accounts we have had of [merpeople] are mixed with meer fables, and may be looked upon as idle tales.’ When storytellers represented the merman ‘as a prophet and an orator’ or depicted the mermaid as ‘a fine 118

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singer’, Pontoppidan continued, ‘one need not wonder that so few people of sense will give credit to such absurdities; or that they even doubt the existence of such a creature.’ Yet, in Pontoppidan’s theory, when one cut through the ‘idle’ stories and ‘fictions’ with scientific analysis, the truth of merpeople revealed itself.35 Especially important for Pontoppidan’s investigation was the belief that each creature on land had its equivalent in the sea.36 Pontoppidan argued that it was ‘well known’ that seahorses, seacows, sea-wolves, sea-hogs and sea-dogs ‘which bear a near resemblance to the land animals’ inhabited the depths of the sea. ‘Though this should be allowed as reasonable,’ he continued, ‘some may make objections, founded upon self-love, and respect to our own species.’ Pontoppidan realized that, as was the case for Maillet’s unorthodox thesis, many would find fault in thinking that any other creature could resemble man, ‘the lord of all creatures [created in] the image of God’. Yet the bishop found proof of his assertions with an African ‘Wood-man’ who seemed to have been ‘produced from the intercourse between a man and an ape, or an ape and a woman’. Here Pontopiddan contributed to an emerging theory of human evolution that posited that man and ape were inherently connected (nineteenth-century scientists, of course, would acknowledge this). That same year (1753) the Russian naturalist Stepan Krasheninnikov detailed a supposed ‘sea ape’ or ‘sea monkey’ seen off the coast of America. Krasheninnikov linked this strange creature to the sixteenth-century naturalist Conrad Gessner’s imagery of sea monkeys, which Krasheninnikov asserted only further proved the existence of such strange hybrids. Men like Maillet, Pontopiddan and Krasheninnikov asserted that their scientific findings were viable, if not yet proven, despite their controversial, unorthodox nature.37 Eighteen years later, Carl Linnaeus and his student Abraham Osterdam further complicated the narrative of classification and legitimacy. Though the Swedish Academy found nothing in their 119

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search for Linnaeus’ mermaid in 1749, Linnaeus and Osterdam took matters into their own hands by publishing a dissertation on the Siren lacertina (The Lizard Siren) in 1766. Having detailed a long list of mermaid sightings throughout history in the initial pages of this dissertation, they next relayed myriad instances of ‘marvelous animals and amphibians’ that closely resembled creatures of lore and, consequently, made classification tricky. Such explanations led Linnaeus and Osterdam to their investigation of Mr Alexander Garden of South Carolina, who held a creature very much resembling a mermaid. The purpose of the dissertation was to understand this mysterious creature, which they called ‘Siren Lacertina’. Living in the swampy climate of Carolina, the creature apparently made a noise like a duck, but with a cry more ‘sharp and clear’. Dissection revealed that the being harboured ‘lungs and gills’ within its chest (bridging the gap between mammal and fish), a fish-like tail where its legs should have been and small arms jutting from its torso (illus. 59). Though not as humanoid as the seventeenth-century Danish physician Thomas Bartholin’s description of a mermaid, this ‘Siren’ nevertheless exhibited clear characteristics of what many eighteenth-century citizens would have considered a merperson. Linnaeus and Osterdam accordingly went into extreme detail in their investigation of the animal, employing modern dissection methods to categorize and understand everything from the creature’s small teeth to its ‘flat’ and ‘depressed’ head to its anus (which stopped at the base of its tail). Ultimately, they judged this mermaid-like creature ‘worthy of an animal, which should be shown to those who are curious, because it is a new form’. The ‘father of classification’ had apparently discovered a ‘worthy’ piece of the natural puzzle, and it linked humans (even if distantly) to amphibious creatures.38 Linnaeus had originally set out in 1749 looking for a merperson that would have more closely resembled Bartholin’s representation, exhibiting the upper body of a human and the lower body of 120

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a fish. The mere possibility of the existence of such a creature had led Linnaeus and many other European philosophers on a global journey that demanded the most up-to-date scientific methodologies. While many of Linnaeus’ peers attested to having discovered beings that closely resembled mermaids and tritons of lore, the Swedish physician found a specimen that only faintly resembled the popular image of a mermaid or triton. His Siren Lacertina did not have the head and torso of a human being, nor was its tail as clearly fish-like as those merpeople who adorned the pages of the Gentleman’s Magazine. Nevertheless, Linnaeus and Osterdam had come across a new creature in the back country of South Carolina, and it did indeed exhibit certain characteristics – namely humanlike arms, complicated internal organs like lungs and an anus, and the ability to live both on land and in the water – that led them to determine that this ‘siren’ was the closest thing to merpeople that they had come across. The Siren Lacertina also, importantly, further blurred the lines of classification that Linnaeus had so proudly developed, suggesting that perhaps human beings might find some distant relation to amphibious creatures. Eighteenth-century philosophers’ investigations of merpeople represented both the endurance of wonder and the emergence of rational science during the Enlightenment period. Once resting at the core of myth and on the very fringes of scientific research, now mermaids and tritons were steadily catching philosophers’ attention. Initially such research was relegated to newspaper articles, brief mentions in travellers’ narratives or hearsay, but by the second half of the eighteenth century, naturalists began to approach merpeople

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59 ‘Siren Lacertina’, in Carl Linnaeus and Abrahamus Osterdam, Amoenitates academicae, vol. vii (1789).

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60 ‘A “curious and surprising Nymph . . . taken in the Year 1784, in the Gulph of Stanchio”, and exhibited at the Great Room, Spring Gardens, London, in 1795.’

with modern scientific methodology, dissecting, preserving and drawing these mysterious creatures with the utmost rigour. By the close of the eighteenth century, mermaids and tritons emerged as some of the most useful specimens for understanding humanity’s marine origins. The possibility (or, for some, reality) of merpeople’s existence forced many philosophers to reconsider previous classification measures, racial parameters and even evolutionary models. As more European thinkers believed – or at least entertained the possibility – that ‘such monsters do exist in nature’, Enlightenment philosophers merged the wondrous and rational to understand the natural world and humanity’s place in it. Yet well-meaning philosophers also created an environment ripe for exploitation. Hence a broadside circulating London in 1795 which announced, ‘Whereas many have imagined that the History of Mermaids, mentioned by the Authors of Voyages, is fabulous, and only introduced as the Tale of a Traveller,’ there now existed ‘an ocular Demonstration of [merpeople’s] Reality’ on exhibition at London’s Spring Gardens. Captured in the Mediterranean Sea in 1784 and now displayed ‘by the king’s royal authority’, this preserved mermaid specimen was ‘exactly three feet in Length, and in Form like a Woman from the Head down to the lower Part of the Waist, and half a Fish from thence downwards’. Yet, as demonstrated by the broadside’s shocking illustration (illus. 60), this mermaid did not exhibit the beautiful female form of myth. A horned, bald head replaced flowing hair, while the specimen’s face was defined by masculine rather than feminine features. Its torso was also misshapen, as were its stunted arms.39 While such 122

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‘realistic’ sideshow exhibitions of merpeople specimens had taken root in the second half of the eighteenth century, their nineteenthcentury successors would take these endeavours to new heights. In doing so, Western hucksters simultaneously amplified and destroyed popular belief in merpeople, while also forcing scientists to ponder how such creatures might complicate their efforts at classifying the world and its creatures.

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The woman hurries down Broadway, New York City. She is almost at the Concert Hall when a broadside flutters over her boots before the breeze pins it against a sooty brick building like a half-glued sheet of wallpaper. Besides a fleeting glance at the date ( July 17, 1842), she can only make out a single image on the paper’s weathered page: three mermaids who flaunt bare torsos, long hair and serpentine tails. Such imagery is nothing new to her – mermaids are popular sights on the theatrical stage that she so adores, and various local newspapers often republish sightings. But this is different, for an American named P. T. Barnum has recently arrived in New York City with his ‘Feejee Mermaid’, which he swears is a real, preserved mermaid specimen. The woman does not necessarily believe in merpeople. But she does not necessarily disbelieve in them either. All she knows is that her friends are raving about this ‘wonder’, and she has to confirm its authenticity for herself. She arrives at the Concert Hall and is ushered into a dimly lit back room where a showman lectures on merpeople. A little boy in front of her claws at his father’s leg and asks, ‘where’s t’ m’rmaid?’ But the woman blocks everything else out when she finally catches a glance of Barnum’s celebrated specimen. She cannot believe her eyes. This is not a mermaid; it is a beast: a shrivelled-up, miserable little creature who looks as if it is forever trapped in the agonies of death. As onlookers crowd around the desiccated being’s glass enclosure, the woman exits the room. Disgusted, she re-enters the coal smog of New York City’s streets and heads for the nearest tea shop. ‘A wonder?’ she scoffs to herself, ‘More like a waste.’

four

Freakshows and Fantasies

T

he nineteenth century was a period of unprecedented urban, economic, scientific, technological and demographic expansion. It was also a time of extreme contrasts: riches and squalor, erudition and ignorance, globalization and myopia, war and peace, science and myth. Together these made the century an odd amalgam of modernist confusion and ideological contradiction. Scientists managed to create microscopes that could probe minuscule facets of Earth’s biology, but only began to use rubber gloves during surgery in 1890; coal power allowed Westerners to swallow time, space and industry in gulps, but also created black cities and even blacker lungs; America gained its independence from the most powerful empire in the world in 1783 only to tear itself asunder in 1861. Fittingly, merpeople – those strange hybrids that conjure images of heterogeneity as much as homogeneity and mythical wonder as much as biological discomfort – prove ideal vessels through which to track the hammering, often unpredictable, pulse of the nineteenth-century Western world, particularly in Britain and America. While opinions towards merpeople ebbed and flowed with the shocking revelations that seemed to accompany every decade (sometimes every year), three distinct but overlapping phases defined nineteenth-century Westerners’ understandings of merpeople. In the first phase (1800–1822), commoners and philosophers 125

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alike remained firmly wedded to Enlightenment notions of science and wonder, as a constant spate of newspaper articles reported a growing number of merpeople sightings, specimens and scientific investigations. Interestingly, almost every mermaid or triton sighting recorded by a Westerner in the nineteenth century occurred in the British Isles or America rather than abroad, as was so common in the Renaissance and early modern periods. However, the ‘Oriental’ allure of Asia still held considerable sway over the Western masses, as myriad Japanese-crafted mermaid ‘specimens’ began to appear on British and American shores in the 1820s. By the second phase (1822–45), Western audiences were primed to believe in mermaids and tritons. The press was key in this cultural craftsmanship. Between 1810 and 1845, a Westerner would have read about merpeople in her local newspaper on an average of four times per year.1 The two mermaid specimens that appeared in 1822 (London) and 1845 (New York) created unprecedented public and scientific interest in the existence of merpeople. Yet this popularity proved a double-edged sword. In the keenest examples, the mermaid specimen of American sea captain Samuel Barrett Eades and the American showman P. T. Barnum’s ‘Feejee Mermaid’ both created cultural frenzies that attracted droves of paying onlookers. Unfortunately for these Yankee hucksters, when scientists descended upon their mermaids they revealed them to be no more than Japanese-crafted forgeries: crude combinations of a monkey and a fish. A series of subsequent papers and newspaper articles over the next fifty years turned merpeople into symbols of hoaxes, forgeries and gullibility. Thus, just as Eades’s and Barnum’s mermaids brought the Western merpeople craze to fever pitch (in London and America, respectively), so too did they implode it.2 This is not to say that such sideshow spectacles suddenly disappeared from America and Britain. On the contrary, public exhibits and ‘freak shows’ continued to entertain clamouring audiences across both countries.3 However, the public took a more ‘scientific’ 126

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or ‘rational’ approach to these supposed oddities in the third phase (1845–1900), hoping for a brief escape from the hard realities of their daily life more than a peek into mystical wonder. In another example of the contradiction and confusion that often symbolized the modernizing efforts of the nineteenth century, scientists’ attempts to banish merpeople from the rationalized study of the Earth and its creatures ultimately only continued to pique interest in merpeople, simply through different avenues. Where in the first half of the nineteenth century Europeans and Americans crowded around glass cases to view desiccated little fakes, by the end of the century they peered through glass tanks in aquariums to see ‘mermaid’ manatees lolling about. Histories of humanity’s merinvestigations also began to dot Western newspapers, as did stories of hoaxes, scientific tracts on merpeople’s mythical origins, and plays, fictions, poems and songs that featured mermaids and tritons front and centre. As they had since medieval times, merpeople continued to stoke varying measures of scepticism and credulity, fear and wonder, among Westerners. This chapter’s analytical arc is largely reliant on the boom in popular press in the nineteenth-century West. By the early nineteenth century, newspapers and periodicals became the most efficient means through which to transmit information to the broadest portion of the populace. These publications seemed to multiply by the decade. Every village or hamlet had its own newspaper, while major Western cities like London or New York City often boasted dozens, if not tens of dozens, of newspapers and periodicals in myriad languages. In 1800 the United States supported two hundred newspapers; by 1860 Americans had access to over 3,000 separate newspapers.4 Western readers could find everything from foreign news to shoe advertisements to political tracts to poems to lost-and-found listings in these ink-pressed pages. Periodicals were, as one nineteenth-century writer exclaimed, ‘the flowers and stars’ of heaven and Earth.5 Therefore, everyone from greedy 127

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hucksters to erudite academics carved out space in this popular medium, for nowhere else could they spread their message so broadly and proficiently. This makes them ideal vehicles through which to delve into Westerners’ investigations of merpeople between 1800 and 1900. Nineteenth-century Western newspapers reported 31 verified merpeople sightings. Of these, 24 came before 1850, and of the nine thereafter most were reported by editors with disdain and mistrust – the same men who, before mid-century, had penned such articles with little to no hint of incredulity.6 Other patterns also emerge: before P. T. Barnum finally imploded belief in merpeople in 1845, newspapers favoured stories that reported verified merpeople sightings and specimens, while also looking to publish sympathetic histories of humanity’s interactions with mermaids and tritons, as well as cultural homages such as poems and songs. Newspapers, in short, both fuelled and favoured the public’s interest in mermaids and tritons. Yet, after 1845, such journalism fell off the proverbial cliff. With the humbuggery of Eades and Barnum so publicized over the past thirty years, newspapers primarily printed pieces that concentrated on the hoaxes and frauds surrounding mermaids and tritons. These articles usually employed a mocking – if not deriding – tone, and sometimes even targeted certain political groups or people. Scientific tracts which demonstrated the non-existence of classical merpeople also multiplied, and generally argued that mermaids were no more than manatees, seals or dugongs mistaken for some mystical creature. Histories of humanity’s long-held fascination with mythical merpeople went hand-in-hand with these other post-Barnum publications, together constituting an effort to close the door on any sort of plausibility. Yet it was not this simple, for belief in merpeople still held stock in certain areas, as did the lingering hope that these mysterious creatures might exist. The nineteenth century may have tarnished belief in mermaids 128

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and tritons, but these mystical creatures maintained as much cultural relevance as ever. Westerners’ approaches to merpeople between 1800 and 1830 remained tethered to Enlightenment notions of science and wonder. Many of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers, after all, were still alive in the early nineteenth century, and they continued their efforts at ordering the natural world and its creatures according to prevailing scientific methodologies such as Linnaeus’ classification system. In the first years of the nineteenth century, as European scientists began to grapple with such odd Australian hybrids as the kangaroo and platypus, the existence of merpeople – who also seemed a meeting of two existing creatures – seemed quite plausible. Wondering in 1818 whether the Megalonyx (a ground sloth which we now know went extinct 11,000 years ago) might still thrive in North America, the American Enlightenment thinker Thomas Jefferson exclaimed, ‘is the animal known to ever [have] existed? . . . for example, the . . . mermaid, dragon, Phoenix? Cuvier indeed has proved to us by anatomising their remains, that several animals have existed, now unknown to us . . . have all parts of the earth been sufficiently explored to authorize a confident assertion [in their extinction]?’ Westerners seemed to conquer more horizons of science and geography by the day. Who was to say that mermaids and tritons were not to be the next verified discovery?7 One-third of the nineteenth century’s verified mer-sightings occurred in its first twenty years and these were widely reported on throughout Great Britain and the United States of America. One of the most popular – and, in time, most debated – sightings occurred early in the century when William Munro, a schoolmaster in Caithness, Scotland, swore that he saw a mermaid. London’s Morning Chronicle broke the story on 13 June 1809. Munro apparently witnessed this strange creature while ‘walking on the shore of Sandside Bay . . . about twelve years ago’. She resembled a beautified mermaid, with long-flowing hair which she was in 129

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the act of combing, a woman’s face and torso, and a fish-like tail. Because she bathed on a rock in the bright sun, Munro asserted that he had ‘a distinct view of its features’. Hoping to further prove his point, Munro explained that he had heard other locals speak of this same creature, but had not believed them: ‘only by seeing the phenomenon, I was perfectly convinced of its existence.’ Here, then, was a trustworthy witness who exhibited incredulity but was won over in the face of irrefutable evidence. Like Mather before him, moreover, Munro hoped to establish ‘the existence of a phenomenon hitherto almost incredible to naturalists, or remove the scepticism of others, who are ready to dispute everything that they cannot fully comprehend’. It worked. With newspapers and periodicals throughout Britain and America ‘excit[ing] considerable attention’ around Munro’s sighting, the Glasgow Philosophical Society, a hub of the vanguard Scottish Enlightenment, entered the fray in October 1809. They reached out to a local gentleman, David Mackay, who assured the philosophers that ‘the schoolmaster of Thurso’s letter [was] . . . genuine, and he is a gentleman whose veracity is not called in question’. He also assured them that others had seen the creature.8 With trusted witnesses and the Philosophical Society’s vetting and approval, this mer-case seemed closed. Unsurprisingly, the Munro case’s popularity and supposed authenticity encouraged newspaper editors to publish others like it. In March 1810, London’s Morning Post reported that a citizen of the Isle of Wight (some 3–5 kilometres off the south coast of England) had recently shot and injured ‘a supposed mermaid . . . having a ruddy complexion, long hair growing very thick, of a greenish cast, and flowing considerably below her shoulders’.9 Two verified sightings followed in 1811. In June an English ship captain witnessed a mermaid ‘close to the vessel’s side’ while anchored off Nassau. When he tried to shoot the creature, ‘the negroes of the crew [were] very much alarmed, and insisted that 130

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certain destruction would be consequence.’ This was a short account more akin to eighteenth-century reports, exhibiting equal parts discovery and superstition. Yet later that same year, a more verified interaction emerged when John M’Isaac of Scotland swore before judges that he encountered a mermaid in October 1811. After interviewing M’Isaac and another witness at length and in considerable detail, the sheriff, judge and leading gentlemen of Campbeltown declared that they knew ‘of no reason why his veracity should be called in question’. These men also listed their names, which brought only more punch to their conclusion ‘that the appearance of the animal he has described was such as he has represented it to be’.10 A full investigation of every published nineteenth-century mermaid and triton sighting is beyond the scope of this chapter. Yet the spate of sightings, specimens and hoaxes that filled newspapers and periodicals from 1812 to 1817 are especially illuminating of how, just as early nineteenth-century philosophers and scientists sought to extend Enlightenment ideals into the public sphere, so too did these efforts begin to overlap with scientific credulity and capitalistic profit. In these five years alone, British and American publishers advertised five sightings, two prints of ‘authentic’ merpeople and one hoax. In August 1812, for instance, London’s Observer reported that ‘Mr J. Toupin’ and ‘a party of ladies and gentlemen’ discovered, while on a pleasure cruise off Exmouth (southwest England, 19 kilometres (12 mi.) from Exeter Cathedral), ‘an animal resembling the description given of the Mermaid’. This story sent shockwaves through the English-speaking world. One ‘medical gentleman’ was so interested in this hybrid that he offered 18 guineas (more than four months’ wages for 80 per cent of the population) for its capture, while the Exmouth incident induced another Englishman to write to the Liverpool Mercury with his confession that, although ‘I have been myself one of those who held the Mermaid as the mere offspring of the imagination . . . I am now convinced of my error.’ Besides attaching a more detailed 131

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account of the Exmouth encounter, the gentleman also provided a history of merpeople sightings in the hope that ‘some able naturalist . . . may favour the public, through the same channel, with his opinion as to the probable economy of this wonderful being’. America’s Pennsylvania Gazette, finally, not only reprinted a portion of The Observer’s Exmouth piece on 4 November 1812, but noted that ‘A French paper mentions a Triton or Merman, having been seen by five fishermen, in the creek of Melin (Morbihan) on the 31st of July.’11 All it took was a single sighting to bring men together throughout the Western world in a search for the wondrous. The Exmouth sighting ignited broad interest. Between August and October 1814 a series of sightings, specimens and hoaxes verily demonstrated Westerners’ growing belief in mermaids and tritons, not to mention merpeople’s potential for monetary profits. It all began on 20 August 1814, when the Aberdeen Chronicle published Scottish schoolmaster George McKenzie’s account of two fishermen’s recent mermaid and triton sighting off Portgordon, northeast Scotland. Like Mackay, M’Isaac and Toupin before him, McKenzie took a scientific approach to such strange matters, beginning his ‘letter to the editor’ with the hope that, ‘as the existence of mermaids is a point that has long been disputed’, his letter might ‘contribute in some degree to settle a point of so great importance to the naturalist’. Like any good adjudicator, McKenzie provided the names of the fishermen (Thomas Johnson and William Gordon), an in-depth description of both creatures (‘she had breasts, and her hair was not curled . . . the skin of this last one too was fairer than the others’) and defended the rigour of his interrogations (‘they called on me, and gave the above account, without the smallest variation between them’). As a trusted educator with verified methods of cross-examination, McKenzie’s piece resonated with philosophers and ordinary Westerners alike – the major newspapers in Britain reprinted his letter, and by 6 December it appeared in American newspapers.12 Even more 132

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importantly, McKenzie’s revelations sparked a two-month flurry of mer-interest that exemplified the lengths British and American people would go to during the first half of the nineteenth century to probe – and profit from – mermaids and tritons. Not coincidentally, one legitimate sighting, one joke sighting, one print ‘copied from nature’ and one hoax specimen appeared in British newspapers over the next month and a half. From true believers to hucksters to satirists, it seemed as if everyone wanted their piece of the mer-pie. The day after London’s Observer immortalized McKenzie’s sighting, in fact, the very same paper printed a satirical piece about a sighting in which ‘the wife of a respectable citizen[’s]’ proclivity for bathing in a green dress at Margate ‘occasioned many to believe that she was a mermaid !’ This, of course, was little more than farce. However, four days later, London’s Morning Post found its own sighting to rival McKenzie’s, explaining that a recent letter from Argyllshire, Scotland, ‘gives an account of a mermaid which had been seen off that coast . . . at various times by numbers of persons’. They represented the mermaid in the beautified form, with a woman’s features above and a ‘tail like that of an immense large cuddy fish’. The next day a contributor to the Liverpool Mercury exclaimed, ‘I dare say you will give an incredulous smile, but really we have had such distinct accounts of [the mermaid] from different people, that we can have no doubt of the fact.’13 This was not satire. It was modern interest in the possibility of merpeople’s existence. Of course, newspaper men were more than happy to publish such pieces regardless of their veracity, as they guaranteed more sales. They were not alone. Reflecting the confluence of science, capitalism, entertainment and deception that so defined the nineteenth-century cityscape, two exhibitions opened in London and Belfast from September to October 1814, which were intended to cash in on the public mercraze.14 The first was a physical specimen that would have seemed as at home in 1714 as it did in 1814. In this case, Londoners with 133

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an extra shilling in their pockets could head to Leicester Square where they would be greeted by ‘a most curious Collection of Models from Natural History, amongst which will be found that rare animal, the Mermaid, copied from nature’. To drive home the authenticity of the specimen, the collection’s curator nestled his mermaid among well-known creatures such as the mammoth ‘and various other Animals not to be found in any other collection’. This was nothing out of the ordinary, and probably made the businessman a few pounds.15 However, by October 1814 a trickster used the last two months’ newspaper mermaid frenzy to play quite the prank on the citizens of Belfast. On 8 October a letter appeared in the Belfast Chronicle’s letterbox which announced ‘that a mermaid had been caught at Portmuck, Islandmagee [Northern Ireland] where it was kept in a boat filled with salt water, for the inspection of the curious’. Even more cleverly, the fraudster signed the letter with the name of William McClelland, ‘a very respectable man’ who did indeed live in Island Magee. He also provided the names of people who had allegedly seen the mermaid, and who were also ‘not unknown in Belfast’. Here, in short, a practical joker turned the long-held, welltrusted process of legitimization into the ultimate hoax: he had trusted sources, verified descriptions and a physical specimen. As one newspaper later asserted, ‘the Mermaid was, even in these gloomy times, the whole subject of conversation through the day. The most fastidious sceptics gave in, and no one accused his neighbor of credulity, for the facts were so distinctly stated, that the veracity of William McClelland could not be doubted.’ The moment McClelland’s story hit newsstands, ‘Gigs, coaches, cars, equestrians and pedestrians, thronged the roads to see the mermaid.’ But they were in for a surprise, as were the citizens of Portmuck. One can imagine the expression on a Portmuck pub owner’s face as scores of people rushed into the tiny village’s confines, demanding to see the mermaid and growing angry as they realized it was all farce. As the 134

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disappointed (not to mention embarrassed) ‘customers’ returned to Belfast, citizens of Carrickfergus (a village they passed through) apparently ‘cheered them with loud huzzas, preceding their march with a large cod fish and a horse’s tail hung to its back’. McClelland’s folly made its rounds through British and American papers over the next week, until it reached its climax with a dedicated poem in the 21 October 1814 edition of London’s Morning Post:

THE MERMAID HOAX

Some wicked wight, near Carrickfergus, Some muddy, maudlin, dipping Mergus, Saw in a dream, or drunken notion, A vision rare – the Maid of Ocean; And, that mankind might be deluded, His tale for truth on them obtruded, Masking it too, to crown his labour, With the known name of a good neighbor. Tho’ many doubt, yet more believe him, Caught in the net spread to deceive ’em. The curious soon of each condition, Put vehicles in requisition – Jaunting cars, jingles, carts, and coaches Gigs, curricles, landaus, barouches, Led by this will-o’th’-wisp unlucky, All hurry down to Port-a-mucky, To view, in old Magee’s fair Island, The lovely Nymph marine, on dry land! But oh! How great was their vexation To find ’twas all a fabrication Of some vile, impudent contriver, In darkness and deceit a Diver, Who justly merits, for this hoax-trick, To be well cudgell’d with an oak-stick.16

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61 John Paas, ‘Mermaids Exhibited Successively in the Years 1758, 1775, & 1795’ (London, 1817).

Despite the embarrassment and deceit, British scientists and laypeople remained intent on investigating and legitimizing the existence of mermaids and tritons. Accordingly, in 1817 the popular and trusted London engraver John Pass (also called Paas) published a beautiful print, ‘Mermaids Exhibited Successively in the Years 1758, 1775, & 1794’ (illus. 61). These will be familiar to readers of the present volume, as the 1758 and 1775 specimens were colorized versions of the Gentleman’s Magazine specimens, while the 1794 image was based on the mermaid exhibited at London’s Spring Gardens. Unlike the Belfast hoax, Pass’s engraving was not intended to trick or defraud onlookers. On the contrary, it was a scientificminded approach to merpeople by a man previously trusted to create the plates for such venerable works as John Milner’s The History, Civil and Ecclesiastical, and Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester (1798–1801), not to mention accurate depictions of modern canals and machinery. But Pass surely understood the public’s rising interest in all things merpeople. Thus he probably knew that this print was an easy way to make a profit, and quickly. Like so many others over the next thirty years, Pass cashed in on merpeople’s popularity.17 Yet, as demonstrated by Captain Samuel Barrett Eades’s and P. T. Barnum’s mer-escapades over the next 25 years, the public’s credulity – not to mention their pockets – could only stretch so far. Historians have well detailed how Captain Eades’s mermaid captivated London audiences in 1822.18 As the story goes, while held up in Batavia (Dutch East Indies) during a trade deal, the American sea captain became so obsessed with a dried mermaid that he decided to sell his ship and its contents (even though he owned only one-eighth of it) for $6,000 (around $130,000 in 2020), which he then used to purchase this mysterious little creature. Eades did not realize that his mermaid was little more than a forgery. He believed the Dutch traders who assured him that a group of Japanese fishermen had caught this miraculous creature, and 136

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that when he arrived in London crowds would sing his praises (and throw money at him). Initially, Eades’s gamble seemed to pay off. When he had to stop in Cape Town, South Africa, spectators could not believe their eyes – one missionary was so taken aback that he exclaimed in a letter (published in the London Philanthropic Gazette), ‘I have today seen a Mermaid, now exhibiting in this town. I have always treated the existence of this creature as fabulous; but my scepticism is now removed.’ By the time that Eades’s mermaid arrived in London in the autumn of 1822, it was already a celebrity in its own right, with an exhibition area waiting for it in the Turf Coffeehouse and stories multiplying in England’s newspapers.19 Eades’s specimen was undoubtedly a high point in Western belief and investigation of merpeople, but it hardly existed in a vacuum. London audiences, after all, had been primed for decades for Eades’s mermaid. Over the past twenty years alone, verified sightings seemed to occur by the day, with trusted authors exclaiming in widely read, well-trusted newspapers and periodicals, ‘Naturalists have hitherto doubted the existence of Mermaids and Mermen; we have it now in our power to set at rest the doubts of skeptics upon this duplex order of animals.’ Scientists, meanwhile, published tracts on strange creatures like the kangaroo and platypus, which only further demonstrated nature’s contradictions, while mermaids and mermen became regular characters in poems, stories, plays and other cultural outlets. And Eades’s specimen was not unique. Just one year earlier, ‘a real mermaid’ arrived in London via Sumatra. Newspapers from London to Philadelphia printed updates regarding this oddity, but London scientists ultimately deemed it a seal, exclaiming that her prominent breasts ‘must cause that extraordinary phenomenon which has led to the popular belief ’. No matter. She was still exhibited in the Museum of Surgeons’ main hall as a ‘mermaid’.20 We also need to reflect upon Eades’s mermaid itself – a strange little dried up, hideous being about 90 centimetres (3 ft) 138

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in length. Recently, scientists have X-rayed various surviving mermaid specimens to reveal their true makeup: ‘elements of metal (wire and a nail), wood (the internal structure of the body, shoulders and tail), cord (the inner part of the head), a homogenous material that may be clay and less dense layers that appear cloth’ (illus. 62).21 Expert Japanese craftsmen used various materials to convincingly combine the upper half of a monkey with the bottom half of a fish. We still do not know why they did this. As will be explored further in Chapter Six, the Japanese had their own history of interactions with merpeople, or ningyo (人形). Yet prior to Japan’s interactions with Europe, ningyo were rarely understood as humanoid creatures. This said, however, Buddhist and Shinto shrines in Japan still hold these little fakes, and some are allegedly very old. So we come back to the ‘chicken and egg’ conundrum: did Japanese craftsmen start creating these creatures to sell to credulous Europeans as they arrived in the ‘Far East’ expecting to find merpeople during the Edo Period (1603–1868); or had the Japanese long been fashioning these creatures according to their own cultural and religious customs, with Europeans just so happening to get their hands on a few? As is so often the case with merpeople, there is no clear answer to this lingering question.22 What we do know is that, as the nineteenth century progressed, and especially after 1854 when Japan opened its ports to the West, Japanese mermaids became almost ubiquitous in the Western world. They generally appeared in what scholars have called two types: the ‘scream’ (a grotesque, twisted figure which stood vertical and is what Eades possessed), and the ‘crawl’ (a horizontal figure which laid on its stomach). Japanese mermaids were not pretty and bore little to no resemblance to the beautified mermaids and mermen that decorated early Christian churches and bestiaries. These were ugly creatures for ugly times. If the public was going to accept a merperson as real, the creature needed to expertly combine foreign wonder with physical science. These Japanese-crafted 139

merpeople 63 George Cruikshank, ‘The Mermaid!’, 1822 advertisement.

62 A 19th-century feejee-style mermaid displayed alongside an X-ray of its innards at the Buxton Museum, England.

creatures seemed to do just that, which is why Captain Eades was so intent upon bringing his mermaid to London; even if it cost him his fortune, business connections and reputation, it was a risk worth taking. Initially, customs officials in London seized Eades’s mermaid as contraband. But this hiccup worked out rather well, for it gave Eades time to set up his room in London’s Turf Coffeehouse and flood British newspapers with advertisements. He even employed the famous English artist George Cruikshank to draw his mermaid

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(illus. 63), which Eades deemed ‘the wonder of the World, the admiration of all ages, the theme of the Philosopher, the Historian, and the Poet’. But not everyone was convinced. One man who described himself as ‘a person of taste as well as science’ wrote to the Royal Cornwall Gazette in early August 1822 to warn the public against credulity: ‘the proverb warns us to believe only half of what the world says: I shall follow the advice of the proverb, and of this story, till I have ocular proof, shall believe only the under half.’ He closed his piece with an especially stinging line, noting that those who might call him incredulous or ‘think me to be an odd fish . . . I assure you that I am, what I subscribe myself. a mere man (but not caught by an American Captain)’. One ‘Sawney’ also penned an article in London’s Morning Chronicle in which he promised that he ‘handled and minutely inspected the creature on its arrival at Batavia’, and found it to be a fake. Sawney demanded that Eades ‘submit it to be dissected by a person or persons appointed by the Royal College of Surgeons; and if it be then found to be a real production of nature, I will then come forward, and reimburse the loss, if any’. The Guardian could only remark, ‘We strongly suspect some imposture in it; but a little time will show.’23 It did indeed. Because Eades held a firm belief in the authenticity of his creature, he was happy to comply with Sawney’s demands. And why not? Eades believed that he had a true marvel. When the exhibit finally opened in late October, hundreds of people a day happily paid a shilling a piece to view the gruesome little beast mounted under a glass dome in a back room at London’s Turf Coffeehouse. One man chronicled his first visit in the Morning Post: As I entered the room, I confess, I had prepared my mind to behold a being approaching somewhat to the size of that which her name imports. Judge of my surprise, then, when I saw before me a withered form, more hideous than those 142

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who paid Macbeth a visit, screwed up in a glass, about two feet and a half high! Withered with apparent age, the skin was well browned and variegated! Dying, as she did in great agony I suppose, the visage, which is most uncommonly ugly, retained the grinning position which the excruciating pain she must have endured had caused. With uplifted hands, resembling those of a child, she seems to implore your pity for her fate!24 This was no maid of lore. She was a ‘hideous’ creature ‘screwed up in a glass’ who seemed to have died in ‘great agony’, much like other withered, preserved creatures of more mundane kinds which Londoners might view in local exhibits and museums. She was, in short, a credible scientific specimen. Unfortunately, it was all downhill from here for Eades and his ugly maid. The captain’s confidence proved his undoing. With money pouring in and newspapers publishing updates every week, Eades decided to let a scientist investigate his mermaid, which he believed would only confirm the specimen’s legitimacy and thereby further bolster its popularity. Regrettably, the examination by William Clift – a scientist well respected in anatomy and zoology – only confirmed the mermaid’s illegitimacy, bringing to light its stuffing, wooden structure and artificial eyes (illus. 64). Eades had pre-emptively sworn Clift to silence (maybe Eades was not as confident as he let on?) and managed thereafter to have some lesser naturalists authenticate the mermaid. But London’s circle of scientists was a rather close-knit bunch, and soon after the authentication the December 1822 issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine – the publication, recall, that had so much to do with early modern mer-science in the first place – published a scathing piece by J. Murray that lambasted any scientist who had ever been fooled by this ruse. The Gentlemen’s Magazine and the London Magazine continued to publish pieces on merpeople in the ensuing months, 143

merpeople 64 William Clift’s analysis and illustration of Eades’s mermaid hoax (29 November 1822), Royal College of Surgeons (Cabinet 11.7).

which newspapers often reprinted. The public was on to Eades, and he knew it. In desperation he funded a pseudo-scientific exhibition pamphlet titled A Historical Memoir on the Existence of the Marine Animals Called Syrens, or Mermaids, and even publicly declared that Sir Edward Home, another scientist who had been sworn to secrecy in his knowledge of the forgery, believed the mermaid to be authentic.25 Creditors were also nipping at Eades’s heels, and the major share owner of the ship he had sold in Batavia, Stephen Ellery, was suing Eades for his unsanctioned business deal. By early 1823 Eades’s mermaid went on the road as second fiddle to ‘Toby, the 144

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Learned Pig’ (illus. 65). Crowds were growing restless; at one point, a man threatened to lop the mermaid in two and barbecue poor Toby alive. The captain toured with the mermaid throughout England for the next few years, but found little success. By 1825 he advertised her as a beautified mermaid at London’s Bartholomew Fair, but this was a last-ditch effort. Eades finally had to reimburse Stephen Ellery for the ship, and then had to return to his previous job as a ship’s captain. But while the disappointed captain lived out his days at sea, his mermaid’s world tour had only just begun.26 It would be easy – logical, even – to assume that Eades’s deception soured Britons on merpeople. But this was not the case. Indeed, a swarm of imitators emerged in England and America, all looking to make a quick buck. Between the peak of Eades’s popularity in 1823 and the arrival of P. T. Barnum’s mermaid in America in 1842, eight ‘real’ specimens, eleven sightings, seven hoaxes, numerous official histories of merpeople and several scientific tracts (albeit more like teardowns) appeared in Western newspapers and periodicals. Businessmen and editors touted so many specimens, hoaxes and sightings that, as early as 1824, one author exclaimed, ‘now newspapers teem with twice-ten-times-told-tales of . . . mermaids.’ Newspaper editors presented some specimens as real (including one recently arrived mermaid in England and ‘submitted to the inspection of the most eminent Naturalists in London, who have declared it as their opinion, that it is genuine’), others as clear frauds (‘a real mermaid alive, made in Wapping, out of a pilot’s old wig and the tail of a stale salmon’) and yet others as simply absurd (‘this practice of manufacturing monsters, is getting to be rather rancid’).27 In an especially horrifying example, London’s Morning Post recounted the tale of an Englishman named Hudson who presented a mermaid in Rome in February 1841. Onlookers were aghast when they realized that she was actually a woman whom 145

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65 Poster advertising the exhibition of Toby the Pig and Eades’s mermaid.

Hudson forced to perform as a mermaid. Hudson had fashioned a collar around the poor woman’s neck, and every time she tried to cry out for help, he yanked the collar, thereby plunging her beneath the water in her tank. Thankfully, Roman officials rescued the woman and imprisoned Hudson for life.28 Scientists and historians, meanwhile, tackled the merpeople question headon in the post-Eades era. At the height of the Eades controversy in 1823, the Linnaean Society recommended that Edward Donovan include in his monthly periodical, the Naturalist’s Repository, a short entry on the ‘ambiguous object which lately attracted much of the public notice under the title of the “Mermaid”’. With new information from celebrated European academics, allegedly gleaned from ‘books extant in Japan and China’, the Society and Donovan expected the article ‘to prove of more than usual interest’.29 Historians also joined the fray, publishing a spate of articles and short volumes that sought (much like the present volume) to understand the Western world’s ancient interest in mermaids and tritons. The celebrated English critic and essayist Leigh Hunt published two in-depth articles for leading British periodicals, ‘The Sirens and Mermaids of the Poets’ (1836) and ‘Tritons and Men of the Sea’ (1837), in which he detailed the history of mermaids and tritons, respectively, in ancient Western philosophy, art and religion.30 Hunt’s publications were not 146

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intended to prove the existence of merpeople – quite the opposite, they were aimed at revealing mermaids and tritons as cultural rather than scientific phenomena. Scientists’ efforts went hand-in-hand with Hunt’s historical analysis between 1823 and 1842, with the appearance of no fewer than ten separate tracts seeking to challenge, if not totally disprove, the legitimacy of merpeople.31 The argument that ‘merpeople were simply dugongs, seals, or manatees mistaken for some mythical creature’ grew especially popular. As one naturalist opined in 1840, ‘sailors and others have let loose their fancy, and have imagined that a seal . . . or some other sea animal, was like a beautiful woman, and that the ripple on the sea, or the tinge of the summer wave, was waving locks of cerulean hair.’ The Englishman continued by reminding readers of the human tendency for pareidolia: ‘how very prone we are to fancy we see portraits and pictures among the embers of a fire, and to people the clouds with castles and airy nothings.’ Mermaids, whether viewed as physical beings crashing through the waves or desiccated little specimens under glass, remained tricks of the mind at best, and at worst ‘a species of fraud practised by knaves, upon collectors of curiosities’.32 Yet, in many ways, sightings, hoaxes, histories and scientific tracts fuelled as much as doused the public’s lingering superstition, interest and cultural relevance regarding merpeople. Such publications, after all, kept mermaids and tritons in the news, thereby feeding the ‘conversation’. Mermaids were featured on the London stage, in popular poems on both sides of the Atlantic, various short fictions and cultural jokes.33 They also maintained serious significance in the far northeast reaches of Britain, along the coast of Aberdeenshire – the 18 March 1842 issue of the Hull Packet contended that ‘water-kelpies, mermaids, ghosts . . . [are] still, however, a practical faith among the inhabitants of Cairnbulg, Collieston, Finnan, and Footdee. They tremble before an imaginary invisible.’34 Science and credulity often synchronized. The very same year that 147

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the above naturalist deemed merpeople ‘a species of fraud’, for instance, a Pennsylvania newspaper published a fictional interaction between a sailor and a mermaid in which the sailor exclaimed, ‘nothing’s impossible in nature . . . seals and alligators link the nature of beasts and fishes. Baboons and apes link beasts with humans; and why should not mermaids be the links between humans and the fishes of the sea?’35 With mermaid sightings and specimens multiplying by the decade, explorers discovering new hybrids and strange lands, and technological development expanding at breakneck speed, many Westerners did indeed believe that ‘nothing’s impossible in nature’. This is exactly what the 32-year-old American showman P. T. Barnum counted on when he purchased Eades’s mermaid in Boston in 1842.36 Unlike Eades, Barnum never believed that his ‘Feejee Mermaid’ (as Barnum called it) was a legitimate specimen, but he did ‘believe in the mermaid’ so much as it might make him a considerable fortune. Recognizing the ‘general incredulity in the existence of mermaids’ among much of the American populace, Barnum hoped, in his words, to ‘“start the ball rolling” at some distance from the center of attraction’. The shrewd businessman accordingly utilized the very network of newspapers that had maintained a debate over the legitimacy of merpeople over the preceding decades to announce his Feejee Mermaid to the world. And he was smart about it, sending supposed scientific accounts from the American South (written by himself ) which declared that ‘intelligent medical men’ had witnessed a recently arrived mermaid ‘from the Feejee Islands, via the Pacific Ocean and the West Indies’. He then sent an agent to Philadelphia who pretended to be a member of New York City’s Lyceum of Natural History, and just so happened to show Philadelphia newspaper editors his mermaid specimen. Soon thereafter, Philadelphia’s and New York’s newspapers were abuzz with stories of this desiccated little creature, ‘one of the greatest curiosities of the day’. For his part, Barnum could only 148

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exclaim, ‘the Philadelphia press aided the press of New-York in awaking a wide-reaching and increasing curiosity to see the mermaid.’37 Over the next three years Barnum employed a cunning combination of trickery, ‘science’, entertainment and capitalistic advertising to profit more greatly from the public’s lingering credulity than anyone before him. In doing so, Barnum simultaneously piqued and shattered the Western world’s belief in the reality of mermaids and tritons. Barnum released 10,000 pamphlets to the public during the summer of 1842 (in addition to newspaper advertisements) featuring images of his mermaid (illus. 66) and scientific testimony as to ‘the authenticity of mermaids’. This shrewd advance-advertising ploy worked, for as Barnum noted, ‘the mermaid fever was now getting pretty well up.’ When the Feejee Mermaid opened to the public during the autumn of 1842, it was

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66 Reproduction of the mermaid trio from Barnum’s 1842 pamphlet, in P. T. Barnum, The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself (1855).

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67 Papier-mâché copy of Barnum’s ‘Feejee Mermaid’ in the exhibit from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge, ma, 2017.

all the rage in New York City. Eager onlookers were generally even willing to accept the fact that the Feejee Mermaid bore no resemblance to the beautiful maiden that graced his pamphlets (illus. 67). This ‘greatest wonder of the world’ had audiences at fever pitch. Indeed Barnum would have argued that his audiences liked to be fooled, and he often quoted the poem Hudibras, which asserts that ‘Doubtless the pleasure is as great / Of being cheated as to cheat.’38 In many ways, Barnum was right. Just as a real mermaid in New York City provided entertainment for the public, so too would it prove profitable for newspaper owners. The general public and the press alike wanted to be ‘honestly persuaded that it was what it was purported to be – a veritable mermaid’. The editor of the New-York Tribune exclaimed, ‘though our incredulity still lingers’, they had ‘tried hard to detect where or how some cute Yankee had joined a monkey’s head to a fish’s body, but had to give it up’. The editor’s scepticism remained, but had sustained heavy damage, leaving him wondering ‘how to account otherwise for what our 150

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eyes have seen staggers us. We should like to hear the opinion of better judges, after a rigid scrutiny.’ Word of mouth and publicity made Barnum $4,613.93 (nearly £110,000 in 2020) in the first two months.39 However, this profit also invited heightened interest and ‘rigid scrutiny’ among just such ‘better judges’, namely, local scientists. As would soon become so apparent, Barnum’s interconnected lies and forgeries would not hold up under a microscope. The approval of the general public and newspaper men remained relatively strong in the first few months, but the scientific community – weary of such hoaxes and growing increasingly embattled in arguments over evolution and classification – had little patience for humbuggery. Although Barnum made considerable sums of money through exhibiting the Feejee Mermaid at his own American Museum, he also sensed trouble around the corner in New York by the summer of 1843, with crowds dwindling and scientists declaring the specimen a fraud. Ever the trickster, Barnum decided that a change in geography might assuage his woes, and sent the Feejee Mermaid south. Unfortunately, his new hype man lacked the public graces of his New York associate, and soon became embroiled in controversy in Charleston, South Carolina, when a panel of respected scientists and professors declared Barnum’s mermaid a definitive fraud: ‘an unnatural union of the head and shoulders of an ape with the tail of a cod-fish . . . the termination of the fish skin can be traced without much difficulty round the body, resting on the skin of the monkey, which passes underneath.’ As mockery of Barnum and his mermaid, along with the credulous public, resounded throughout American newspapers in the following months (even years), Vermont’s Middlebury People’s Press mockingly noted, ‘If there was no mermaid, we do not doubt there has been money made.’40 Money made indeed – the Peales of Philadelphia capitalized on Barnum’s woes in 1842 by presenting the ‘Fudge Mermaid’ in their rival museum. A popular, scientifically minded attraction, 151

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the Fudge Mermaid deliberately mocked Barnum’s Feejee Mermaid by leaving the tail of their specimen ‘broken off, showing a stick which supports the frame’. The Peales, in short, brought Barnum’s (and, by proxy, Eades’s) hoax full circle by explicitly demonstrating the sneaky craft of such specimens and urging onlookers to reflect upon public credulity, scientific advancements, humbuggery and the varied purposes of museums.41 Barnum and his mermaid – at least as legitimate, trusted figures – were finished in the eyes of the American public. The ‘Age of Barnum’ signalled the end of the age of legitimate belief in mermaids and tritons in both scientific and popular circles. As the 10 August 1860 issue of New York’s Brooklyn Daily Eagle so deftly opined, ‘Barnum’s last of the mermaids obliterated all the romance that used to surround [these creatures]’.42 In popular print, merpeople reeked of absurdity, and were now generally utilized as symbols of humans’ attempts at hoaxes, humbuggery or insincerity, especially in regard to politics and personal attacks. But they stayed in the news, as more historians and scientists also took to newspapers and periodicals to debunk the superstitions surrounding mermaids and tritons that still lingered in certain parts of the West. But generally speaking the Western public’s belief in merpeople as real physical creatures declined. And this was just the way most scientists wanted it. In the second half of the nineteenth century Western scientists’ investigations of merpeople grew more complicated and contradictory than ever before. Many scientists utilized ‘modern’ notions of ‘fact’ to ‘eliminate the subjective, literary, and mythical elements from science’. In doing so they hoped to prove the sheer absurdity of the notion of merpeople and other such hybrids. Others, however, sought to prove the illegitimacy of belief in merpeople, not simply to tout reason, but also to combat Charles Darwin’s controversial theory of evolution. Another (admittedly small) group of Western thinkers, meanwhile, aimed to employ their modern 152

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scientific methods to prove rather than disprove the existence of mythical creatures such as mermaids and tritons. And an even smaller portion of Westerners held fast to the medieval belief that humanity could never truly understand God’s works, and that merpeople might exist alongside a litany of strange monstrosities. Reflecting the contradictory, confusing and muddled century in which they lived, scientists’ investigations of merpeople regressed as much as progressed public understanding of these strange creatures.43 Darwin’s evolutionary theory sparked fierce debates among Western scientists. Oddly enough, merpeople often proved critical in these otherwise logical arguments. Ranging from the pages of the popular periodical Punch to closed off lecture halls, merpeople served ‘as a figure through which naturalists and lay commentators debated the value and implications of Darwinian theory’. Published in 1859, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species enraged many Western scientists with its hypothesis of an evolutionary ‘missing link’ between different species, its theory of natural selection to explain wide-ranging evolutionary variation, and the implicit suggestion that an understanding of nature need not involve a deity as the world’s great organizer. These scientists crusaded against Darwin’s controversial ideas, often employing merpeople as evidence of the gullibility, confusion and absurdity which such a radical theory might foster. In 1868 the popular British periodical Punch used merpeople to assert that Darwin’s theory was responsible for naturalists’ naivety regarding the world (illus. 68), while another publication pointed to the sheer absurdity that Darwin’s theory made possible, arguing, ‘with such a range and plasticity as Mr Darwin pleads for, we know not where to stop . . . if we follow Darwin, I can see no difficulty in believing that mermaids once filled our seas.’ Here Sir William Jardine, a leading British scientist, was not actually suggesting that he believed in merpeople, but rather that the incongruity of Darwin’s theory made everything and nothing possible. It threw 15 3

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68 Linley Sambourne’s mocking mermaid cartoon, in Punch; or, The London Charivari, 11 July 1868.

previous ideas of classification, evolution and anthropology to the wind so much so that, in Darwin’s world, mermaids and tritons – those creatures which ‘we enjoyed so much as schoolboys to read about, but were taught to look upon as mere poetic fancy’ – could, even should, exist.44 But no matter Darwin’s detractors, merpeople still mattered in ‘modern’ scientific parlance as symbols of myth, wonder and debate over humanity’s place in the cosmos. Most scientific tracts that appeared in Western newspapers between 1845 and 1900 did not descend into the minutiae of Darwin’s theories. Rather, they concentrated upon showing how much ‘The Wonders of Science’, with its ‘unlimited’ potential, had eclipsed the credulity and inferiority of the 45 past. Articles that took a scientific approach to merpeople spiked after 1845, with at least seventy articles appearing in 55 years. As mentioned above, those writing in the decades following Barnum’s hoax generally argued that sightings of mermaids were little more than manatees, seals or dugongs mistaken for mythical creatures. Museums even went so far as to advertise manatees as ‘mermaids’, since common knowledge recognized the former as real and the latter as little more than myth.46 Yet, with the fraud of Barnum lingering in the minds of commoners, and scientific advancements multiplying by the year, leading thinkers also took the opportunity to reveal their supposed modernity to the general public. In 1854 one writer reflected that 154

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merpeople ‘have all passed away . . . what now remains to be done? The world has been explored, and nearly railroaded’; while in 1878 London’s Illustrated Police News ran an advertisement for a newly arrived ‘manatee’ mermaid that distinctly contrasted such creatures with ‘ideal mermaids’ and the ‘Japanese idea of a mermaid’, thereby demonstrating the paper’s scientific approach (illus. 69). The next year an editor who discussed past belief in merpeople could only conclude, ‘it will not be long before science will banish from the world everything its inhabitants once held most dear.’ By 1892 an author who surveyed ancient merpeople superstitions similarly exclaimed, ‘now is the time to commence talking about ancient myths’, while a few years later an Englishman followed, ‘now that the cold light of science has thrown its ray upon the most remote parts of our globe, there is no longer room for legendary creatures . . . the mermaid is nothing more than a dugong.’47 Yet, as was so often the case with mermaids and tritons, things were not this simple, not least because other scientists and philosophers employed these mysterious creatures in their reflections upon the unknown facets of the Earth and the cosmos. Certain late nineteenth-century scientists maintained belief in the possibility of merpeople’s existence. Simon Wilkin, a fellow of the Linnaean Society and a respected voice throughout Western Europe, wrote in 1852, ‘I cannot admit the probability of a belief in [merpeople] having existed from such remote antiquity, and spread so widely, without some foundation in truth.’48 But Westerners’ lingering belief extended well beyond some ethereal attachment to past philosophers. Rather, Western thinkers often linked their studies to how merpeople revealed future developments in science, philosophy and wonder. In 1874, for instance, Reverend Charles Kingsley, university professor and confidant of Charles Darwin, exclaimed, ‘wonderful ocean world! Three-fifths of our planet! Can it be true that no rational beings are denizens there?’ After recounting 155

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69 Advertisement for ‘The Mermaid and the Westminster Aquarium’, Illustrated Police News, 6 July 1878.

various recent sightings of mermaids and tritons, Kingsley concluded, ‘Science is severely silent – having yet seen no mermaids . . . there is no smoke without fire, and few universal legends without their nucleus of fact.’49 A British philosopher closed out the nineteenth century with a newspaper article in which he asserted that merpeople had once existed, but were now probably extinct: ‘unfortunately we have no living specimen of the mermaid, and no dried ones, for that matter, other than those that have come to us from Japan; but what more have we of the dodo than the drawing in the British Museum?’ Like those before him, this Briton appreciated those many sceptics who held ‘that the creature, half fish, half human, sprang from the brain of some wiseacre’, but he also could not entirely detach himself from the scientific wonders of the present age, with hybrid animals and microbial examinations shattering previous understandings of man’s place in the natural world. For him and others, Barnum’s mermaid was undoubtedly a hoax, but such fakeries did not entirely destroy the possibility that merpeople existed.50 Even with these more nuanced reflections from certain erudite philosophers, the majority of the Western public came to associate 156

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merpeople with fraudulence in the post-Barnum era. In fact, more than eighty articles appeared in Western newspapers after 1845 that associated merpeople with deception and absurdity. In one article of 1853 a Londoner compared a newly opened opera house with the figure of the mermaid – ‘the head and the body are artistically beautiful, but the tail tapers off into a scaly condition of commercial fishiness’ – while the previous year another author had reason to find the wisdom of the British Parliament ‘about as chimerical as the existence of mermaids’.51 Most of these articles sought to ridicule those who maintained belief in merpeople, while also shaming Barnum for his part in such widespread credulity. Public derision especially peaked after the publication of Barnum’s tell-all Autobiography in 1855. The New York Times lambasted Barnum for proclaiming ‘the Feejee mermaid was the remains of an actual animal, when he knew that it was a base fabrication’, and New York’s Buffalo Commercial condemned Barnum for ‘lecturing upon humbug as a science’.52 Barnum’s name became a punchline; a symbol of deception and stupidity. Yet, even in supposed defeat, Barnum’s legacy and cultural capital seemed to multiply with each decade. As a shrewd businessman, Barnum surely welcomed this publicity. Any press, as they say, is good press. Always looking to sell papers, American editors utilized the widespread mockery of (and familiarity with) Barnum and his mermaid for political satire in the years leading up to the American Civil War (1861–5). The Buffalo Morning Express ran across multiple issues an imaginary dialogue between P. T. Barnum and the celebrated Democrat Thomas Ritchie to critique the Compromise of 1850. In these fictional conversations Ritchie repeatedly begged Barnum to stop his offensive humbuggery in a bid to save the American Union, which ‘is in such danger of dissolution’. Various pieces also equated crooked politicians with Barnum. Maryland’s Baltimore Sun argued that ‘A True Reformer’ would be shown ‘for exhibition as a greater wonder than Barnum’s “real mermaids”’, 157

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while another editor believed that ‘it would be a curiosity, which would throw . . . [Barnum’s mermaid] completely in the shade, to find a person in office who got there solely because of his ability’.53 Such political mistrust extended beyond individual politicians, for by the 1850s the American North and South were much like Barnum’s mermaid: two incompatible halves artificially attached and withering by the day. As a writer to North Carolina’s Raleigh Register so brutally opined in October 1851, ‘the fabled Mermaid, the imputed union of whose incongruous parts and different natures, would not be a bad or inapt representation for the present Free Soil, Secession party, would not be half so rare and wonderful a curiosity as a “National Democracy”!’ Another North Carolinian similarly described the 1854 Whig Convention as ‘a monstrosity – a sort of political mermaid . . . its upper half carved into the beautiful semblance of a Convention, while its lower extremity gradually, but by no means gracefully, assumes the scaly shape of legislative restrictions, provisos, and limitations’. The jig was up for America. What better way to represent the nation’s insecurity and fissures than Barnum and his fabricated mermaid?54 Barnum’s legacy endured in other ways, particularly in hucksters’ efforts to display fake mermaids. The London Times lamented in 1851 that ‘the blight which we noticed some time ago on the native British race of mermaids . . . still continues with painful severity’. It was ‘painful severity’ indeed – at least 21 fake mermaid specimens appeared in newspapers between 1845 and 1900.55 However, where in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries newspapers generally discussed such specimens with an air of credulity, in the post-Barnum era editors presented these creatures as ‘sucker traps’ that should be ridiculed rather than seriously researched. One editor derided a New Yorker in 1851 for exhibiting ‘a kind of living mermaid, stimulated and directed, we suppose, by the hints in Barnum’s Autobiography’, and by 1875 another editor mockingly described a travelling ‘mermaid’ specimen as a ‘“critter” 158

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about six inches long, and dryer and more shrivelled up than the mummies who have slumbered in the pyramids for two thousand years past . . . in appearance it is something like a stuffed bat perfumed with a strong odor of codfish.’56 But we come back to the idea of the press in general, for in deriding such monstrosities, newspapers kept them alive in the public consciousness. Never mind that Barnum continued to display his Feejee Mermaid well into the late 1850s; others also hoped to benefit from a public who, according to one disgusted editor, ‘often stake their last quarter on the faith of a puff, boldly decorated with the most dazzling array of dashes, commas and exclamation points; and who invariably return home, convinced that they have . . . seen a genuine wonder “of the world”’.57 In 1870 a clever huckster published an advertisement disguised as an article in India’s Delhi Gazette. He explained that ‘a real mermaid’ on exhibit in the Indian city ‘filled my mind with great curiosity’. Upon paying his ‘single pice [Indian currency]’ for entrance into the exhibit, the man felt the little creature ‘with my own hands . . . I couldn’t make out anything fictitious in it.’ He also managed to speak with the specimen’s owner, who explained that ‘it was a real mermaid, found in the sea near Japan’ that he had purchased for 500 rupees at a Calcutta auction. Here, the owner of the desiccated little hoax posed as a curious witness to drum up interest in his exhibit. By the end of the enlightening article, the ‘witness’ could only exclaim, ‘I ask those who can to inquire into the subject minutely, in order that the truth may be elicited.’58 This conman was hardly alone – newspapers outed myriad hucksters attempting to pass their Japanese mermaids as real in the post-Barnum era.59 But this did not mean that money could not be made from mermaids. Rather, one needed different tactics. By February 1886 the Englishman Harry Phillips promised visitors to the Brighton Aquarium the chance to view a ‘Living Mythological Mermaid’ (illus. 70). Now, unlike other aquariums 159

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that had long displayed manatees or seals under the banner of ‘mermaids’, Phillips used optical illusions to display ‘a lady in a recumbent attitude and apparently at ease in all the surroundings of an ordinary Aquarium. Fish are seen swimming, and all sides of the tank are open to the inspection of visitors.’ Phillips openly admitted that this was all an illusion (four years later newspapers even printed images explaining how such ‘mermaid tricks’ worked). The novelty of Phillips’s exhibition did not rely upon tricking the public, or convincing them that he had an actual specimen, but rather on displaying their idea of what a mermaid should look like in the most realistic way possible. Unlike Barnum’s hideous creature, the mermaid in Phillips’s broadside exhibits all of the classic traits of a mermaid, from long, flowing hair to a beautiful fish-tail. Phillips also staged the mermaid in her ‘natural’ surroundings, with various fish flitting about her. As London’s Era exclaimed, ‘she looks quite bewitching, and she smiles so graciously, that the spectator at once conjures up reminiscence of the sirens, and lingers long and admiringly upon the scene.’60 Phillips was smart to openly publicize his mermaid as an optical illusion, for in doing so he curried favour (and publicity) among editors who had spent the last forty years exposing mermaids and tritons as fraudulent hoaxes. Newspaper men grew especially enamoured with ‘behind the scenes’ exposés of how craftsmen created fake mermaids. In one article of 1874 covering a German man who crafted artificial merpeople, an English editor had to admit, ‘the mermaid, as it leaves the maker’s hands, is not a palpably artificial swindle which could only deceive the ignorant country men and women to whom it will in all probability be shown.’61 These were clever hoaxes that required considerable effort to create and, in turn, reveal as frauds. In one especially animated article Philadelphia’s Times interviewed a mermaid craftsman to reveal ‘how to make mermaids’. The author of the exposé was taken aback with an advertisement on the streets of Philadelphia that boldly proclaimed, 160

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‘mermaids made and repaired’. Upon entering the jumbled shop, he met an old man who proceeded to explain his craft: ‘I produced one that fooled even the doctors. You see, mermaids have been made as long as anything. The Chinese manufactured them centuries ago, and so well that a large number of people believed in them.’ Now, this man made the creatures for showmen, and apparently did well for himself. The full-page exposé did not pull any punches. It depicted the ‘Parents of the Siren’ (a baboon and a fish) in clear detail as well as an illustration of the elderly craftsman with his ‘siren complete’ (illus. 71). It also specified every step in the process 161

70 Advertisement for Harry Phillips’s ‘Living Mythological Mermaid’ at London’s Royal Aquarium, 30 October 1886.

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of making a mermaid, from how the creator sourced and combined its ‘parents’ to how he created a story of its origins. Especially in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Western newspaper editors went on a crusade to pull back the curtain on these ‘freak-factories’.62 At the same time, newspapers, periodicals and book publishers printed pieces that investigated humanity’s long-held obsession with merpeople. In 1883 the British naturalist Henry Lee wrote a pamphlet titled Sea Fables Explained in which he argued that ‘men [were] trained and prepared to believe in mermen and mermaids, to expect to meet them at sea, and to recognize as one of them any animal the appearance and movements which could possibly be brought into conformity with their pre-conceived ideas.’ He traced humanity’s interactions with merpeople to his present and demonstrated how the ‘mermaid of fiction’ had intertwined the mermaid of fact: the manatee. Ever the pragmatist, Lee concluded his

71 ‘The Siren Complete’, Philadelphia Times, 6 April 1890.

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detailed analysis by agreeing with the Englishman Sir Humphry Davy’s remark: ‘It doubtless might please God to make a mermaid, but I don’t believe God ever did make one.’63 Two years later, the American naval officer Fletcher S. Bassett published his Legends and Superstitions of the Sea and of Sailors in All Lands and at All Times. In his rather encyclopaedic approach Bassett provided an exhaustive timeline of superstitions and legends surrounding mermaids and tritons. And, like Lee, Bassett concluded his comprehensive analysis with a note of incredulity, citing the Swedish poet Stagneli: ‘The Neck no more upon the river sings, / And no mermaid to bleach her linen plays / Upon the waves in the wild solar rays.’64 For these men and so many other nineteenth-century scholars, mermaids and tritons were keen reflections of humanity’s evolving sense of wonder, religion, superstition and even science. But they were not, and never had been, real creatures.65 Any investigation of merpeople in the nineteenth century cannot exclude that famed Danish fiction, Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid (1837). Andersen’s tragic story of a young mermaid who strives for immortality through interactions with humans demonstrated Westerners’ ongoing fascination with mermaids and tritons. It was probably no coincidence that Andersen published his book in the ‘inter-specimen years’ (1822–45), when the allure of merpeople reached fever pitch among Western audiences. As demonstrated by the accompanying illustrations (illus. 72, illus. 73), Andersen’s mermaid became a star in her own right over the next fifty years, surfeit with all the trappings that Westerners had long expected from mermaids: long, flowing hair, a beautiful face, a toned midsection, pearls and, of course, a scaly fish-tail. She was feminine innocence embodied. The Little Mermaid also signalled the Romanticism that came to surround these mythical creatures, as Westerners began to look to the supposed simplicity of the past as a nostalgic salve for the extreme changes wrought by modernization, capitalism and 163

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72 Charles Robinson, ‘The Mermaid’, in Fairy Tales from Hans Christian Andersen (1899).

industrialization.66 While it became popular to ridicule the Scottish and other northern Britons for their supposed superstition regarding merpeople and other fantastical legends, Londoners – spurred on by Queen Victoria’s recent interest in Scottish history and customs – liked to take ‘pleasure trips’ to the ‘wilds’ of the Scottish countryside. On one such occasion in 1854, a group of urban ‘pleasure seekers’ were delighted with ‘Fingask Castle, a fine stately pile of the Elizabethan order of architecture’, and noted a ‘lovely mermaid from the chisel of an operative mason’ that lingered among the structure’s ‘numerous relics of a former period’.67 Mermaids also became common features in theatres, galleries and printed volumes as Romanticism infiltrated Western art, with sirens being depicted as mysterious, sensuous and dangerous denizens of the sea. William Burton’s grand, Romantic operatic spectacle in three acts, The Naiad Queen (a ‘naiad’ is a mythological Greek water spirit, often linked with mermaids), was very well received, with Philadelphia’s Public Ledger celebrating the lavish depiction of singing merpeople as ‘the most beautiful spectacle we have ever seen’. It ran uninterrupted in Philadelphia from 1841 until 1848. In 1852 Reynolds’s Newspaper, London, reprinted The Little Mermaid in full, while that same year a review of Andersen’s famous book appeared in London’s Daily News, praising the Dane’s ability to bring such ‘fairy tales’ to life.68 Jokes and silly tales concerning mermaids often graced newspapers’ pages as well, teasing readers with such yarns as a pretended interview with a manatee about the verity of mermaids, or a fun little story about mermaids in the ‘Family Circle’ section.69 Mermaids also infiltrated higher-brow artistic circles, with the famed Danish painter Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann displaying her beautiful piece The Mermaid in London in 1862–3 (illus. 74). The Examiner extolled Jerichau’s ability to depict such a ‘beautiful face, dark with the grief of womanhood made monstrous and cast adrift from all the sympathies by which a woman lives . . . [as] something 164

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far beyond the conventional mermaid of the picture books’. London’s Morning Post joked, ‘if the great Mr Barnum could gain possession of such a sea-nymph as this his fortune would be made once more.’70 Other famous artists followed suit, and illustrated mermaids in stunning, often sensuous, detail. In the 1880s alone three paintings of merpeople hit the Western art scene. The English powerhouse painter Edward Coley Burne-Jones demonstrated his proclivity for Symbolist panache with A Sea-nymph (1881, illus. 76), while the Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin depicted a group of mermaids thrusting themselves upon a triton with In the Sea (1883, illus. 75). Only three years later, the English artist Evelyn De Morgan crafted a delicate yet introspective image of five fair-haired mermaids 167

74 Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann, En Havfrue (A Mermaid), 1863, oil on canvas.

73 Ivan Bilibin, illustration in The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen, 1937.

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75 Arnold Böcklin, In the Sea, 1883, oil on panel.

titled The Sea Maidens (1886, illus. 77). In ‘lesser’ artistic circles, Western sailors began to tattoo their bodies with images of mermaids, while Western women embraced the ‘mermaid skirt style’, a smooth, tight skirt which cascaded around the ankles.71 But all was not art, fashion and culture. Hinting at merpeople’s plight for the coming century, in 1899 the Montana cosmetics company ‘Great Gallogly’s Seaweed Cream’ invoked the mythical mermaid, with her ‘exquisite complexion’, for advertising purposes.72 All said, it is impossible to wrap up the nineteenth century in a tidy package. Like Eades and Barnum’s mermaid, the nineteenth century often proved a hideous hybrid, an artificial combination of incongruous parts. In one sense, this ‘age of confidence’ seemed to rage forward unabated, with hitherto-unmatched industrial, capitalistic, scientific and urban progress. Yet, at the same time,

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76 Edward Coley Burne-Jones, A Sea-nymph, 1881, oil on canvas.

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77 Evelyn De Morgan, The Sea Maidens, 1886, oil on canvas.

disparities in wealth and health, evolution and devolution came into chillingly sharp focus.73 Nevertheless, three general ‘phases’ emerge from the narrow, but necessary, lens of merpeople in newspapers and periodicals from 1800 to 1900. In the first phase (1800–1822), commoners and philosophers remained wedded to Enlightenment notions of science and wonder, with sightings, specimens and scientific tracts priming people to believe in such monstrosities. The second phase (1822–45) might be called the ‘inter-specimen years’, as Eades and Barnum’s mermaid concurrently intensified and imploded general belief in the reality of merpeople. In the ‘post-Barnum’ phase (1845–1900), newspaper editors, scientists and historians strove to demonstrate that merpeople were, at best, the product of human error (for example, misidentified manatees) and, at worst, the product of human deception. Yet these myriad publications also kept mermaids and tritons alive in the public psyche. Just because most Westerners no longer believed in merpeople as real beings did not mean that these mythical creatures had lost their cultural capital. Quite the opposite, in fact. Global capitalism steadily consumed mermaids and mermen 170

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during the twentieth century, as shrewd capitalists harnessed merpeople’s deep and complicated cultural relevance for profit. In doing so, they made mermaids and tritons more popular than ever.

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‘Cut!’ the Hollywood director Irving Pichel bellows across the crowded film set. The actress Ann Blyth emerges from the water, sputtering and struggling to reach the edge of the tank after yet another swimming scene at Universal Studios, California. ‘Help her out’, Pichel yells at some stage hands, ‘she’s not a real mermaid after all!’ Blyth manages to pull herself out of the tank, but her fish-tail remains in the water, glistening in a kaleidoscope of blues and greens. ‘I need to eat something, Irving,’ exclaims an exasperated Ann. ‘Fine,’ replies the director, yelling to the cast and crew, ‘One-hour lunch break, and not a minute more! We’re on a tight budget and an even tighter schedule – I want this picture to wrap before the end of 1948!’ Ann drags herself to her feet, awkwardly waddling in her fish-tail to a nearby golf cart before a stage-hand whisks her off to the cafeteria. A few minutes later two tourists strolling through the Universal Studios backlot catch an odd sight – a mermaid and Frankenstein’s monster sharing a meal. ‘Why, that’s Glenn Strange as Frankenstein’s monster and Ann Blyth as a mermaid!’ one of the women exclaims. ‘Hollywood,’ the other replies. ‘Anything is possible here, even two monsters fighting over a tray of French fries.’1

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I

f nineteenth-century Westerners seemed interested in mermaids and tritons, their twentieth-century successors fell into outright obsession. The twentieth century began with high-brow artistic depictions of mermaids, and it only blossomed from there. From 1908 to 1924 the Australian actress Annette Kellerman’s portrayals of swimming, diving and talking mermaids enchanted Western film-goers. Touted as the ‘perfect woman’ by the Western media, Kellerman used the hybridity of the mermaid to play into traditional notions of gender while also challenging Western ideas of sex and capitalism. In the United States, the postSecond World War boom years (1945–73) brought mermaids into greater prominence than ever, as advertisers utilized the medievalist sexuality of the siren to lure customers in rather than scare them off. Audiences ate it up. From films to tourist attractions to advertisements to mascots, overtly sexualized mermaids became ubiquitous in Western society after 1945. Yet the mermaid remained an illjoined hybrid defined by contradiction as much as cohesion; fear as much as desire. Therefore, although the Western media managed to exploit the centuries-long development of merpeople’s sexual nature for their own capitalistic purposes, mermaids also became an icon of postmodern feminism in the 1980s. If, as Life magazine publisher Henry Luce opined in 1941, the twentieth century was the ‘American century’, it was also the ‘mermaid century’.2 173

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78 John William Waterhouse, A Mermaid, 1900, oil on canvas.

In the early twentieth century white Americans (generally speaking) enjoyed a remarkable quality of life, which helped to fuel the rise of mass media, automobiles and other capitalist products and pursuits. And although the Great Depression of 1929 shocked the Western world, the Second World War eventually helped to pull America out of the mire (while only dragging Europe further into it). With its industrial mechanisms running full tilt and a world of consumers growing by the day, America’s annual gdp vaulted from $213 billion in 1945 to more than $1 trillion by the end of the 1960s. Individual citizens in this affluent society reaped considerable benefits, as ordinary Americans experienced a 25 per cent increase in real income between 1946 and 1959. The ‘American Dream’ seemed more attainable than ever: advertisers stressed that it could be purchased at department stores, experienced in cinemas or constructed among suburban neighbourhoods.3 And ‘modern mermaids’ – seductive sirens, physical prodigies, media megastars and multinational mascots – rested at the centre of it all. Mermaids emerged as prime symbols of the hopes and dangers of women, especially in Romantic art, which lingered into the early twentieth century.4 Between 1900 and 1910 four major Western artists chose to depict mermaids in full, colourful detail. In 1901 the English painter John William Waterhouse displayed his Mermaid at London’s Royal Academy of Arts (illus. 78). Waterhouse’s mermaid is steeped in medieval symbolism – she combs her long locks and gazes into the distance as her fish-tail coils around her bare midsection. She is also a lonely figure, protecting her pearls (often believed to be formed from the tears of sailors she had lured to their deaths) amid a muted background of dark blues, browns and greens. By setting the mermaid’s gaze into the distance upon an unknown object, Waterhouse allowed the viewer to perhaps imagine a doomed man just coming across this bathing siren, not fully understanding the horrible fate that awaited him. The British sculptor Robert Anning Bell had depicted a similar figure – albeit in plaster – at the 174

merpeople 79 Robert Anning Bell, The Mermaid, c. 1904–7, painted gesso relief.

turn of the century (illus. 79). By 1907 multiple copies of Bell’s polychromed plaster Mermaid circulated throughout Europe: brushing her flowing hair and touting a beautiful visage, slim torso and fishtail, Bell’s siren fit right in with the imagination of mermaids that Andersen had so stoked over the past half-century.5 Where Waterhouse and Bell depicted mermaids of their own imagining (perhaps inspired by Tennyson’s 1830 poem), in 1909 the English classicist Herbert James Draper looked to Ulysses’ famous encounter with the sirens to craft his aptly titled Ulysses 176

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and the Sirens. An earlier painting by Draper from 1894, Sea Maiden, represented lecherous men netting and pursuing a helpless sea woman; but by 1909 the artist took the opposite tack, depicting mermaids as dangerous, overtly sexual sirens who rose from the depths of the sea to attack Ulysses and his men (illus. 80). As they exit their watery homes, they transform into full-figured, barebreasted women who sing their siren song to the terrified but determined sailors. Although their pale skin played into the femininity expected of Edwardian women, their forceful, aggressive approach evoked quite the opposite. Given their hybrid nature, such symbolism makes sense. In fact, Draper filled this piece with opposition: dark and light, good and evil, masculine and feminine create an unsettling scene of contradiction and hybridity determined by the dangers of the feminine flesh. In 1910 the American artist Howard Pyle painted The Mermaid for future generations to ponder (illus. 81). In this piece the

80 Herbert James Draper, Ulysses and the Sirens, c. 1909, oil on canvas.

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relationship between the mermaid and the sailor is left almost totally ambiguous. The two figures’ arms are clutched around each other, but it is unclear whether the siren is dragging the sailor into the icy depths or placing him upon a rock for safety. Nor is it certain whether the sailor is even conscious – is he dead, passed out or simply closing his eyes in an embrace of ecstasy? What is clear are the deep connotations implied by Pyle’s mermaid. She is every bit the beautified siren, with just a hint of bare breast, long, flowing hair, a bare torso, undulating fish-tail and an attractive face with rose-red lips. Like Draper (and, to an extent, Waterhouse), Pyle depicted his mermaid’s skin as pale, which symbolized feminine beauty for contemporary audiences. Pyle was also intent in his other colour choices. Defining blues and greens only helped to punctuate the pops of red in the mermaid’s seaweed hair, nipple and pursed lips, as well as the sailor’s hat. He also used gold in interesting ways: is the sun setting or rising, insinuating hope or doom? Do the mermaid’s gold bracelet and necklace imply that she is underwater royalty or are they baubles taken from prior victims? Each of these paintings reveals more about early twentiethcentury attitudes towards women and gender roles than they do about mermaids. By the beginning of the century, belief in these mysterious creatures had almost totally disappeared in the Western world. Some lingering folklore held out in remote parts of Great Britain and America, but Westerners generally understood merpeople as little more than fantastical creatures fit for children’s stories and ancient myth. It is only fitting that in 1913 Edvard Eriksen erected his famed sculpture ‘The Little Mermaid’, based on Andersen’s fairy tale, in Copenhagen (illus. 82).6 Similarly, Waterhouse, Bell, Draper and Pyle’s paintings were not intended to convince onlookers of mermaids’ reality, or even to invite reflection upon such possibilities. Rather, the artists hoped to invoke deeper, critical themes of human nature and contemporary issues 178

Modern Mermaids 81 Howard Pyle, The Mermaid, 1910, oil on canvas.

surrounding masculine and feminine, power and weakness, sex and danger, dark and light. Well demonstrating this point, in 1911 the popular American humour magazine Puck featured mermaids on the cover of its January issue (illus. 83). A farce at its core, the illustration depicted two mermaids lounging in the foreground 179

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82 Edvard Eriksen, Den Lille Havfrue (The Little Mermaid), c. 1913, bronze statue.

83 Gordon Ross, ‘An Old Acquaintance’, cover of Puck, 25 January 1911. The illustration depicts two mermaids discussing the actions of a third mermaid, who appears to be flirting with a man on an ocean liner.

(one knits a doily, driving home her feminine/domestic nature) while they watch a third mermaid as she flirts with a sailor on a passing ocean liner. Even at sea, Puck’s publishers joked, mermaids could not help but fall into supposed human gender norms. Such matters were not taken lightly in the early twentieth century – with women pushing into new realms of power and publicity, gender roles became more complicated by the day. Mermaids, unsurprisingly, continued as critical symbols of various anxieties surrounding gender, sex and capitalism. Annette Kellerman, an Australian swimmer who became an established fixture on the American movie scene between 1908 and 1924 through a variety of mermaid roles, well exemplified the hybrid nature of gender and media in the first half of the twentieth century. In fact, the contemporary media labelled Kellerman as the ‘perfect woman’ and the ‘leading feminine exponent of physical 180

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84 Portrait of Annette Kellerman in her famous custom swimsuit, Bain News Service, c. 1900.

culture in America’.7 Ultimately, Kellerman was a shrewd businesswoman who harnessed her swimming and diving abilities, in tandem with her beauty, health and fashion sense, to become a ‘modern mermaid’ in the eyes of a fawning public (illus. 84). Kellerman’s unsurpassed swimming skills proved key in her initial success with Western audiences. Suffering through leg problems in her early childhood, Kellerman took up swimming when she was six, as a therapeutic practice, and by the early 1900s held every women’s swimming record in the world. She soon thereafter began swimming among fishes in a tank in Melbourne, Australia, for money, but by 1905 Kellerman and her father determined that Australia ‘was not big enough in population to satisfy our ambition’, and moved to England where she swam 27 kilometres (17 mi.) down the River Thames and attempted (but failed) to swim the English Channel. Kellerman made a decent profit (£30, or around £3,600 in 2020) from her Channel stunt, which allowed her and her father to move to America in 1906. Yet, while Kellerman’s swimming prowess no doubt proved key in her eventual reputation as a ‘modern mermaid’, her beauty and fashion might have been even more important. At the same time that Kellerman wowed audiences by gliding through water, she also donned a body suit sans-skirt in 1907, which shocked onlookers so much that officials on Revere Beach, just north of Boston, arrested the twenty-year-old woman for indecency. The judge eventually deemed Kellerman’s suit acceptable since it was designed for exercise. Importantly, the case made national news. Combined with her growing fame as a world-class swimmer and performer, Kellerman’s newfound sex appeal positioned her to become perhaps the most popular mermaid of the twentieth century.8 Kellerman came into her own after 1907, performing in various Vaudeville pieces as mermaids and sea creatures, and melting hearts with her unrivalled blend of beauty, grace and health. As one 182

85 Kellerman diving with a mermaid, Tacoma Times, wa, 26 August 1911.

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newspaper article of 1908 exclaimed, ‘there are mermaids now, perfect ones, beautiful women, whose proportions rival those of beautiful Venus arising from the sea.’ As ‘the most celebrated of all modern mermaids’, the author deemed Kellerman ‘a life saver’ rather than ‘a lure’ like mermaids of old, since she taught ‘the invaluable lesson of healthy exercise’.9 Kellerman’s combination of beauty and health made her an ideal role model for women, young and old. An article from 1911 began by describing Kellerman as ‘ruddy, bronzed by wind and salt water, compact of figure, yet strong and lithe, perfect physical poise’ before quoting her advice to novice swimmers: ‘don’t be lazy, but take plenty of good, easy exercise, without tiring yourself . . . above all things, be cheerful, and you will be happy and healthy.’ Another article was accompanied by an illustration of Kellerman in the middle of a graceful swan dive with a mythical mermaid swimming around her (illus. 85). The piece thereafter quoted tips from ‘the famous mermaid’ on a variety of subjects from health and swimming to happiness. Other American articles, meanwhile, began to advertise form-fitting, knee-length, one-piece swimsuits as the ‘Annette Kellerman suit’, while in 1910 the director of the Harvard University Gymnasium deemed Kellerman ‘nearest to a perfectly proportioned woman’. Kellerman used this publicity to vault herself to the forefront of the public’s consciousness, publishing a number of books and articles on health, beauty and swimming.10 She became the modern mermaid – lithe, beautiful and strong, with the supposed ability to save men rather than destroy them. At the same time as Kellerman was fashioning herself in the media as a figurative ‘modern mermaid’, she also took to the silver screen to play an actual mermaid. In an unusual move for the time, Kellerman directed two short water-themed films in 1911, Siren of the Sea and The Mermaid. She then starred in the full-length feature Neptune’s Daughter (1914).11 Filmed in Bermuda, the hit movie featured Kellerman as a mermaid who transformed into 185

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a human and fell in love with a prince. The film’s plot, however, only mattered in as much as it allowed for displays of Kellerman’s diving and swimming abilities. As one newspaper exclaimed, ‘Miss Kellerman’s skill . . . [as a mermaid, ‘the greatest woman swimmer in the world’] affords some remarkable scenes such as high dives from perilous cliffs . . . and battling with real sharks, hundreds of feet under water.’ Another article displayed a large photo of Kellerman ‘as an “immortal” in mermaid form’ and lauded her ‘swimming and diving’ as ‘the especial excitements of the acted story’. For this reviewer, ‘the Kellerman beauty and perfection of form’ combined with ‘several scenes of the Kellerman anatomy’ entranced the viewer, but were still ‘so generously screened from the danger of immodesty by the mermaid wealth of hair, that no one need carry their blushes with them to the theater’.12 So far, Kellerman had played into the Western public’s expectations of femininity and womanhood almost perfectly. She managed to turn her supposed ‘scandal’ surrounding the bathing suit into an opportunity to teach young girls about swimming, health and

86 Annette Kellerman nude in A Daughter of the Gods (dir. Herbert Brenon, 1916).

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beauty, while also fulfilling domestic ideals of marriage when she was ‘caught in the net and “landed”’ by her manager, James R. Sullivan, in 1912.13 Kellerman’s films also played into notions of feminine domesticity, as they often featured her efforts to fall in love with a man. But Kellerman was still a mermaid, even if of the ‘modern’ variety, which inherently entailed a hybrid combination of domesticity and danger, sex and allure. Accordingly, in her next feature film, A Daughter of the Gods (1916), Kellerman pushed herself, and the film’s one-million-dollar budget, to new heights. Not only did the modern mermaid perform a 22-metre (72 ft) dive in the film, she also became the first star actress to perform nude on the silver screen (illus. 86). Considering that many of the Western public considered Kellerman ‘nearest to a perfectly proportioned woman’, her filmed nudity was no minor development. Kellerman’s combination of ‘womanly power and eternal beauty’ only multiplied her fame after 1917.14 After starring in another film, Queen of the Sea (1919), Kellerman opened her own film studio, at that time an unprecedented move by a woman. Yet, even with Kellerman’s evident financial and professional power, media pieces still portrayed the modern mermaid through the language of feminine sexuality and physicality. Having interviewed Kellerman about her new business venture, the Los Angeles Times remarked that she ‘has put on a becoming amount of flesh and is all nice and rosy and in fine form for her picture-making venture’. Kellerman spent the next five years making educational films ‘having to do with the athletic care and training of the feminine body’, but she was not done pushing the boundaries of sex and gender. In fact, as early as 1921, Kellerman was performing Vaudeville pieces in drag. One newspaper deemed her male persona, named ‘the English Johnny’, as a ‘fetching character’, while Winnipeg audiences also gushed over the monocled chap. But Kellerman’s portrayal of ‘Johnny’ hardly tarnished her female sexuality. Ever the self-aware mermaid, when asked about 187

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writing a novel in 1933, Kellerman joked, ‘nowadays a novel has to have sex appeal, and I don’t know a thing about that.’15 This modern mermaid had it all. Kellerman represented the ‘perfect woman’ according to early twentieth-century notions of femininity, health and beauty; but she also leveraged her popularity to push the boundaries of sex, gender and profit. She was just as comfortable teaching young women how to be healthy as she was posing nude on film or dressing in drag on stage. And the public loved it. This general acceptance of hybridity was critical for the future of the twentieth-century mermaid. As belief in these mysterious sirens reached a historical low in the Western world, Kellerman-style mermaids – sexy, healthy and beautiful, with a tinge of scandal – became ubiquitous in Western media. Following the Second World War, Western media increasingly exploited Kellerman’s depiction of a ‘modern mermaid’ for their own commercial purposes. Optimistic Americans were riding the wave of success after 1945 – they had money to spend and saw consumption as their patriotic duty.16 Hollywood was not about to let this chance go to waste. With Kellerman having primed the stage for the modern mermaid, Western studios produced four films between 1948 and 1954 that featured mermaids as lead characters.17 In particular, 1948 was an especially good year for mermaids on screen, with Mr Peabody and the Mermaid and Miranda both released to widespread fanfare. Mr Peabody and the Mermaid (1948, illus. 87) starred William Powell as Mr Peabody, a middle-aged married man who unexpectedly falls in love with a mermaid named Lenore (Ann Blyth) while on vacation in the Caribbean.18 The film is mostly about sex and power. In the beginning Mr Peabody feels insecure about turning fifty (‘the old age of youth, the youth of old age’, as he dejectedly reflects), and watches on as a younger man flirts with his wife at a beach party. The siren’s song then draws the dejected Peabody to a nearby island, where he eventually catches the beautiful, but 188

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unconscious, mermaid Lenore. Instead of returning Lenore to her native habitat, Peabody brings her back to his resort, and plops her into the bathtub. Peabody’s wife thinks he has caught a fish and tells him to get rid of it. But once again, instead of returning the mute Lenore to the ocean, Peabody decides that she should live in the resort’s fishpond. He looks into Lenore’s doe eyes and tells her, ‘You don’t want to go back in that ocean, do you! It’s so big, and you’re so pretty.’ He then teaches Lenore to kiss him, thereby turning her into his own captive mermaid – an innocent nymph of the sea whom he can groom to satisfy his sexual desires. A variety of hijinks ensue, and Peabody falls in love with his hostage, visiting her for kisses, hugs and one-sided conversations whenever he sees fit. Life magazine noted Peabody’s proclivity for affection, exclaiming in a negative review, ‘frequent damp kisses 189

87 Mr Peabody and the Mermaid (dir. Irving Pichel, 1948), official film poster. 88 Miranda (dir. Ken Annakin, 1948), official film poster.

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represent the movie’s deepest exploration into the vast possibilities of fantasy offered by a plot devoted to the dry-land love life of a young mermaid and a graying Boston Brahmin.’19 Mr Peabody seems to have it all, at least until his wife thinks he is having an affair with a vacationing singer on the island and goes back to New York City without him. When local police begin to suspect Peabody of murdering his wife, he has to sneak Lenore out of the resort and return her to the ocean (he almost drowns when she tries to bring him with her). Peabody finally decides that he loves his wife more than Lenore and gives her Lenore’s comb as an apologetic gift. Of course, he never tells his wife that the comb was once owned by his sexually exploited captive.20 Miranda (1948, illus. 88) is an equally sexualized romp in which Dr Paul Martin, played by Griffith Jones, goes on a fishing holiday on the Cornwall coast without his wife, only to be captured and imprisoned by a seductive mermaid, Miranda (Glynis Johns).21 Dr Martin manages to escape by promising to show Miranda the city of London. Martin’s wife asks whether he caught ‘any big ones’ when he finally returns home, and he passes off Miranda as a disabled child who wants to see London from her wheelchair. A series of funny mishaps ensue. At one point, Miranda eats a fish and squawks at a seal at the zoo, which draws odd looks from onlookers before Dr Martin wheels her off. Eventually – perhaps inevitably – Miranda uses a combination of physical beauty, sexual innuendos and exoticism to seduce three unavailable men – Dr Martin, his chauffeur and a friend’s fiancé – which creates an awful triangle of mistrust and jealousy. Ultimately, Dr Martin’s wife finds out that Miranda is a home-wrecking mermaid and insists that Paul tell the public of her true nature. Miranda then wheels herself down to the River Thames and escapes. In an odd twist, the final scene shows Miranda lounging on a rock with a merbaby in her lap, implying that perhaps she consummated her flirtings with one of the men. No matter, Miranda was popular enough to prompt a 190

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(less-popular) sequel, Mad About Men (1954), in which Miranda impersonates a Cornish schoolteacher and once again seduces every man she meets. Mr Peabody and the Mermaid and Miranda depicted different facets of Kellerman’s ‘modern mermaid’, which spoke to the siren’s long-standing duality. In Mr Peabody, Lenore conforms to mid-twentieth-century expectations of sex and femininity. She is as demure as a mermaid can be, sporting a full bikini top and shortcropped bangs with curls. Lenore is also an object rather than the driver of sexual desire, as Mr Peabody captures her, teaches her to kiss and visits her for sexual contact whenever he sees fit. Because she is mute, their relationship is wholly physical. Lenore is a pliant prisoner in this patriarchal relationship, never once trying to escape or resist Peabody’s advances – on the contrary, once Peabody teaches Lenore to kiss, she throws herself into his arms. Miranda flips the narrative, playing into the seductive rather than submissive nature of Kellerman-style mermaids. Where Lenore wears a bikini top, Miranda relies upon her flowing hair to cover her other wise naked breasts. Moreover, she plays into ideas of the dangerous medieval siren, capturing Dr Martin, forcing him to cart her through London, and eventually seducing three men before escaping unscathed. She also holds ownership over these men, even going so far as to bear one of their children and, as the film suggests, raise the merbaby by herself. And Miranda unrepentantly continues her old ways in the sequel. In this case she manages to seduce an entire town of human men. Yet without Kellerman’s creation and cultivation of the ‘modern mermaid’, these films probably never would have seen the light of day. The biopic The Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) starred Esther Williams – herself a former swimming star who had taken to show business after the Second World War derailed her chance to swim in the Olympics – in the role of Annette Kellerman. Like Kellerman, Williams had worked her way up through the live 191

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performance swimming and diving circuit before starring in a variety of Hollywood roles that highlighted her beautiful form and graceful swimming ability. She had even starred in a remake of Neptune’s Daughter (1949), the film which had proved to be Kellerman’s breakout hit in 1914. But The Million Dollar Mermaid was Williams’s biggest picture to date. It was her chance to literally and figuratively take over the role of Kellerman. And it proved a success. Williams went on to star in numerous other ‘aqua musical’ films which flaunted her ‘youth, beauty, and athleticism’. She also, importantly, managed to assert her power in many of these roles. As film critics David Fantle and Tom Johnson later noted, these movies often boasted Williams’s character ‘schlepping her leading men through the water’. However, Williams was never able to fully break the bonds of femininity and gender, for while she became popular for her aquatic roles, film studios never allowed her to extend her talents beyond the portrayal of water nymphs. From Skirts Ahoy! (1952) to her final film, Magic Fountain (1963), filmmakers always expected Williams to swim and look beautiful for the camera. As studio mogul Louis B. Mayer once quipped, ‘Wet, she’s a star. Dry, she ain’t.’22 If Williams used the Kellerman model to assert herself as a powerful (if still limited) figure in many of her films, Diane Webber flipped the script by exploiting the sexuality of the ‘modern mermaid’ in Mermaids of Tiburon (1962, illus. 89). Because director John Lamb relied upon ‘explicit representations of the female form’ as his driving force, the film’s narrative of a man who finds an island of beautiful mermaids is less important than its overt imagery of half-naked women swimming for the camera. And at the centre of these sensuous sirens was Webber, a former Playboy ‘Playmate’ who, like Kellerman before her, was unafraid to expose her body. The film initially featured Webber in a fish-tail with flowers covering her breasts and was shown only on u.s. military bases. However, realizing an opportunity to cash in on the confluence 193

89 Mermaids of Tiburon (dir. John Lamb, 1962), official film poster.

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of sex and capitalism that mermaids had come to symbolize, in 1964 Lamb re-released The Mermaids of Tiburon as Aqua Sex. This raunchy romp boasted a poster that promised ‘primitive and exciting . . . untamed females! Dazzling savage nymphs [who] love and frolic in an undersea Shangri-la.’ Lamb simply added scenes of fully naked women swimming to the existing footage and he had Aqua Sex. Overt nudity in films was becoming more common in the 1960s, with the pornographic Deep Throat (1972) eventually enjoying significant commercial success, and two mermaid porn parodies following in 1976. Films like Mr Peabody and the Mermaid, Miranda and Aqua Sex reflected as much as drove such developments. It seemed that with every passing year, mermaids became more eroticized versions of Kellerman’s ‘modern mermaid’.23 Kellerman’s ability to combine sexuality and physicality extended well beyond the cinema screen. In fact, Kellerman – and the films which the success of this modern mermaid encouraged – helped to spawn a tourist attraction in western Florida that still thrives to this day. Opened in 1947 by former Hollywood stunt actor Newt Perry, the Weeki Wachee theatre was a giant water tank in which live ‘mermaids’ performed underwater routines for audiences of up to forty people (illus. 90). Such spectacle was not without precedent – recall the Englishman Harry Phillips’s ‘Living Mythological Mermaid’ at the Brighton Aquarium in 1886, or even the ghastly example of the Englishman who imprisoned a poor ‘mermaid’ in a tank in Rome in 1841.24 Yet Weeki Wachee’s scope and popularity, combined with its ability to pick up ‘the threads of novelty, female beauty, athleticism, and domestication’ that the modern mermaids Kellerman and Williams had so perfected, made this public aquarium something different.25 Weeki Wachee’s fame only heightened in 1948, when the producers of Mr Peabody and the Mermaid decided to film their lauded underwater scenes at the aquarium. Perry and the local media leapt at the opportunity to hype Weeki Wachee’s role in 194

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this blockbuster. The aquarium used the film’s premiere to launch an annual ‘Florida’s Mermaid Queen’ pageant in which ‘bathing beauties, a dozen of Florida’s prettiest outdoor queens . . . [pitted] their shapely attractions against one another’, while newspapers published a number of articles over the next ten years which investigated ‘A Day in the Life of a Mermaid’ or how ‘after a 6-week “mermaid course”’ a young girl learned ‘how to be a mermaid’.26 Weeki Wachee’s popularity as a prime tourist attraction led the American Broadcasting Company (abc) to purchase the aquarium in 1959 and construct a new underwater theatre that could seat five hundred patrons. By the end of the 1960s, Weeki Wachee put on a variety of full-length mermaid plays and even boasted a giant robotic dragon that the mermaids eluded through their ‘curves’.27 Like the mermaid art and films up to this point, Weeki Wachee was really all about sex and gender norms. Onlookers could view beautiful mermaids (there were no mermen) flitting about half-nude in a controlled environment. Weeki Wachee’s owners managed to present their mermaids as sexual objects, while still maintaining a ‘family’ atmosphere to a wide audience.28 And they were hardly alone, for Western advertising agencies also adopted sexy mermaids for their own purposes. Take, for example, an advertisement for Schweppes sparkling water, which appeared in the 1937 guidebook for England’s Eagle and Queen Line Steamer pleasure boats (illus. 91). As is still the case, pleasure boats were a common sight on the River Thames in the first half of the twentieth century, serving thousands of passengers every year, and their guidebooks 195

90 Mermaid at Weeki Wachee Springs viewing herself in a mirror, 22 May 1969, blackand-white photo print.

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91 Schweppes mermaid advertisement, in the Eagle & Queen Line Steamers Guide of 1937.

became popular spaces for advertisers hoping to ply their wares. The Schweppes piece is overtly sexual, with a beautiful, bare-breasted mermaid clutching a bubbling bottle of Schweppes in her left hand as she looks out of the image. Besides mermaids’ clear connection with water, the artist obviously utilized the siren for her sex appeal. But this does not entirely explain the decision, since topless women were not common facets of early twentieth-century advertisements, especially in guidebooks that thousands of people (young and old) would easily access. Nevertheless, there she is, seducing viewers with her hyper-realistic female form. Perhaps Schweppes hoped men might think that table waters weren’t the only ‘obtainable’ pleasure that awaited them on the ship?29 Mermaids appeared in advertisements for everything from bread to hair gel to swimming trunks in the post-war boom years, or the ‘golden era’ of Western advertising, but three advertisements especially – for dress shirts, magazines and fishing line – demonstrate how the media used mermaids to capitalize on the American Dream. 30 With sexy mermaids also appearing on film and as prime tourist attractions, these seductive sirens were obvious choices for admen hoping to sell products to male customers. In 1948 the American shirt-maker Van Heusen did just that. In one suggestive print advertisement (illus. 93), a handsome man sporting a crisp white dress shirt and a tie seems to emerge from an oyster shell like a pearl, which confirms the ad’s statement, ‘every one [shirt] a pearl’. The man is not alone; a naked mermaid (a wisp of hair barely covers her nipple) clutches the side of the 196

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oyster shell and gazes fondly into the man’s eyes. He looks down at the darkhaired beauty, eyebrows raised, and seems to reach for her. It is no coincidence that this ad ran at the same time that Mr Peabody and the Mermaid enchanted audiences. They were both doing the same thing: piquing men’s sexual fantasies of power and opportunity. As the advertisement’s text exclaimed, ‘All kinds of pretty maidens hang around when you wear Van Heusen white shirts.’ With such overt imagery, the accompanying text was barely necessary. The next year, Sports Afield magzine printed a hyper-sexualized mermaid in their April 1949 issue (illus. 92). Although Joyce Ballantyne is now best known as the creator of the ‘Coppertone Girl’ – a child whose swimming suit is being tugged by a dog – in 1949 she was also famous for drawing scantily clad pin-up girls. When Ballantyne wasn’t drawing her pin-up girls, she created tamer hunting- and fishing-related images for Sports Afield, a magazine directed at outdoorsmen. In many ways, it only makes sense that Ballantyne’s penchant for pin-ups would make its way into her Sports Afield illustrations – here, after all, was a large audience of customers who already probably had some of Ballantyne’s more scandalous illustrations hanging in their garages and workshops. Hence her 1949 ‘April Fool’ illustration of a pin-up style, buxom mermaid: topless, flowing hair, fish-tail and a mischievous look in her eye as she cuts one fishing line while attaching another to a deflated tube. One has to imagine that at the same time adult men were 197

92 Joyce Ballantyne, ‘A Pin-up Mermaid Plays a Trick’, Sports Afield, April 1949.

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happily surprised by this illustration, parents also rushed to snatch the once family-friendly magazine from their sons’ and daughters’ grasp. ‘April Fool’ indeed! From Van Heusen magazine ads to Sports Afield, nude, over-sexed mermaids seemed to be everywhere by the end of the 1940s.31 The siren song echoed through the 1950s.32 In 1959 the Western Fishing Line Company (California) published a 15 × 10 centimetre (6 × 4 in.) brochure for its ‘w-40’ fishing line, titled How to Catch a Mermaid (illus. 94). In a clear connection with Ballantyne’s Sports Afield illustration, the cover featured a busty pin-up-style mermaid passionately hugging and kissing a flannel-clad fisherman. Unlike the entrapped souls of classical epics and medieval lore, this man is a willing participant. He leans over the side of the boat and ignores the flopping fish he has just caught. Like mermaid films, Weeki Wachee and the Van Heusen advertisement, this pamphlet sold sex and power as much as fishing line. The ten pages of accompanying text only confirmed such strategies. Promising to help readers catch a mermaid, the famous American writer and conservationist Ed Zern exclaimed, ‘when word gets around that you have caught a mermaid, boy, you’ll be famous. People will ask you for your autograph. Newspaper photographers will take your picture. Pretty girls will flirt with you.’33 At another point, Zern related a story about a fisherman who did indeed catch a mermaid. Two illustrations accompanied the tale, and in both the mermaid fulfilled her gender expectations swimmingly by sitting contentedly at the man’s side. In the 199

94 Cover image for Ed Zern, How to Catch a Mermaid (1959).

93 Van Heusen mermaid advertisement, 1948.

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first, a fisherman somehow sits underwater with the mermaid and lectures her on something. She seems absolutely entranced, with a straight posture and breasts pushed forward suggestively. In the second, the mermaid is above water with the fisherman, looking over his shoulder contentedly as he reads his own copy of How to Catch a Mermaid. The Western Fishing Line Company, Van Heusen and Sports Afield mermaids look almost identical. In the Western Fishing and Van Heusen cases, mermaids serve as feminine subordinates to white men – their ultimate purpose sex and deference – while in Sports Afield the pin-up style mermaid serves no other purpose than titillation and comedy. In a clear demonstration of the same sexual overtones, the writer of How to Catch a Mermaid rounded out his story with a rather racy passage. Having hooked the ‘dizzyfish-tail dame’, the fisherman told the mermaid to free herself. The ensnared siren replied that she could not because ‘“I’m hooked right in the – well, see for yourself.” “Gosh,” said Gus, blushing, “you sure are! Here, take my pliers.”’34 Since the medieval period, mermaids had been about sex, their human torsos at odds with their fish-tails. And, while some medieval mermaids had sheelana-gig style, prominently displayed vaginas, their genital areas were often left up to the imagination. But not in this case. Zern implied everything by saying nothing, a decision which hearkened back to a line from the play version of Miranda (1948), when the mermaid refers to her tail: ‘It’s quite pretty when it’s wet. Isn’t it Paul?’ Paul can only reply (rather embarrassed), ‘Charming . . . perfectly charming.’35 In a final twist, the back cover of Zern’s How to Catch a Mermaid boasted two different mermaids. One would have looked at home in a 1950s children’s cartoon. She maintains the general form of the brochure’s mermaids, but with a child-friendly demeanour, and is accordingly presented as a sort of mascot for the Western Fishing Line Company. The other mermaid, however, is quite the 200

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opposite. Sitting atop a display rack, this siren is perhaps the most sexualized and seductive of any in the brochure. She is totally topless, her large breasts covered only by the word ‘Western’ (surely a strategy to draw eyes to the display). She also has her hands behind her head that implies men’s desire to see her physical assets. Ultimately, whether a consumer first encountered this interesting little pamphlet face-up or face-down, its signals of sex would have left little to the imagination. One has to believe that such advertisements primed audiences for films like Aqua Sex (1964). While the Western Fishing Line Company adopted a cartoonstyle mermaid as its unofficial mascot, two other companies officially embraced the mermaid as their mascot between 1950 and 1971. In 1951 the California-based seafood company ‘Chicken of the Sea’ began to use a beautiful blonde mermaid as the mascot for its canned tuna fish. The Hollywood actress Grace Lee Whitney served as the prototype model for the Chicken of the Sea mermaid in 1950, dressing in a similar outfit and singing the jingle ‘Miss Chicken of the Sea is on the la-a-a-a-a-a-bel!’ to radio and stage audiences. In a 1951 print, the cartoon version of Whitney rests next to three different cans of tuna, sporting a wand along with a beehive hairstyle and a playful smirk. Yet this mermaid is more demure than the Van Heusen, Sports Afield or Western Fishing Line Company sirens: her fish-tail rises into a one-piece bathing suit that reveals only a glimpse of cleavage, while the heart choker around her neck provides a coy hint at lust in contrast to other much more blatant depictions. By 1954 the ad script proclaimed, ‘Look for the Mermaid on the label for the choice tuna Center Cuts!’36 To this day, Chicken of the Sea tuna still sports this 1950s-style mermaid (illus. 95), only slightly updated with flowing hair instead of the dated beehive style. But the Chicken of the Sea mascot was a C-list celebrity compared to her 1970s counterpart, the Starbucks mermaid. When the purveyor of coffee, tea and spices opened in 1971, its 201

merpeople 95 Chicken of the Sea tuna advertisement, 1954.

founders wanted the company to represent the high seas, and the great distances which their products travelled before arriving at their Seattle shop. Hence the name Starbucks (after a character from Moby Dick), and the choice of a mermaid as their mascot. Interestingly, this mermaid is perhaps the most sexualized of any 202

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siren used for capitalistic purposes in the twentieth century, for she is a direct copy of those alluring mermaids – spread tails, flowing hair and bare breasts – that originally decorated medieval churches (illus. 96). In fact, the graphic designer Terry Heckler simply altered a popular depiction of a fifteenthcentury ‘twin-tailed siren’, which the author J. E. Cirlot reproduced that same year in A Dictionary of Symbols (illus. 97). Heckler smoothed out the fifteenthcentury mermaid’s stomach and erased her navel. Over time, the Starbucks mermaid has become more conservative: artists hid her bare breasts under flowing hair, and subsequent redesigns have steadily narrowed their focus on the face and crown. One can now hardly tell she is a mermaid. No matter – the Starbucks mermaid is now one of the most recognizable mascots in the world, making the seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Browne’s exclamation, ‘Few eyes have escaped the Picture of Mermaids,’ perhaps truer than ever before.37 As mermaids gained such commercial, cultural and artistic relevance in the second half of the twentieth century, Western historians began to study these popular creatures in earnest. Although scholars had reflected upon the importance of merpeople in human history since the medieval period, the spate of twenty-firstcentury investigations proved more in-depth, while also demonstrating the evolution of history as a social science, or ‘historicism’ as academics refer to modern efforts to ‘value the past for its own sake and, as far as possible, to rise above political expediency’.38 Short histories of merpeople and myth began to resurface in Western newspapers in the early 1950s, which should come as no surprise since mermaids seemed to invade popular culture at this same time. But these newspaper articles were generally geared at children, often appearing in the 203

96 Starbucks Coffee original logo, 1971. 97 Twin-tailed Siren’, in J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols (1962).

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Sunday comics section under headings like ‘Mermaids Intrigue But Do Not Exist’.39 But all was not fun and trivia, for more serious histories of merpeople also began to appear on bookstores’ shelves in the latter half of the century. In 1957 the Englishman Richard Carrington – fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Royal Geographical Society and a member of the Institute of Archaeology – published Mastodons and Mermaids: A Book of Natural and Unnatural History. Although Carrington hedged his ‘popular work’ as an effort to ‘collect together some of the more unusual and romantic facts concerning the several branches of natural science’, the work is an in-depth analysis of humanity’s long-held notions of myth, wonder and science. In this way, it is much like the present work. In Carrington’s first chapter, ‘The Natural History of Mermaids’, Carrington investigates humankind’s obsession with merpeople from ancient to (his) present time to demonstrate that ‘there is not an age, and hardly a country in the world, whose folklore does not contain some reference to mermaids or to mermaid-like creatures.’ After providing various examples of humanity’s interactions with merpeople (especially in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries), Carrington concludes that, while ‘the natural history of mermaids . . . seems in many of its aspects to be safely comprised within the natural history of sea-cows . . . the natural history of mermaids cannot be understood by the methods of natural science alone.’ In Carrington’s shrewd contention, ‘these hauntingly beautiful goddesses of the sea, full of mystery and danger, were surely conjured from the chaos of the waters in answer to some primal human need.’40 Only eight years later, historians Gwen Benwell and Sir Arthur Waugh (president of the Folklore Society, 1959–61) published Sea Enchantress: The Tale of the Mermaid and her Kin. An exhaustive 288-page analysis of how ‘the story of the mermaid has its roots in the days when civilized man was yet young upon the Earth, 204

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and its background is world-wide’, Benwell and Waugh’s volume remains to this day one of the most in-depth studies of merpeople. Their analysis ranges from the classical age to the second half of the twentieth century: folklore to heraldry, myth to science. And, in an especially interesting twist, Benwell and Waugh did not end their volume with a clear denunciation of the legitimacy of merpeople. Rather, they wondered whether ‘even our wildest speculations [are] so utterly wide of the mark? Perhaps when the sea-creatures left their element for the emerging land, and evolved arms and legs, they left mysterious relatives behind them in the sea?’ They continued to remark that, ‘even today man retains evidence of his marine ancestry. The human race still has faint traces of gills, and in a few cases these traces may be so marked as to warrant surgical removal.’41 This odd twist of prose hinted at the enduring sense of wonder among even the most erudite of twentieth-century scholars. It seems that, at least for Benwell and Waugh, years of research left as many questions as answers. And they were not alone – in 1975 the famed British natural historian Sir David Attenborough co-wrote a book on Fabulous Animals with Molly Cox in which they opined, ‘the stories of mermaids persist and have some ring of truth about them.’ They even questioned the idea of manatees as mermaids, wondering how such marvels supposedly reached the frigid waters of northern Britain, since ‘manatees live in warm waters and were never likely to have been seen off the north of Scotland.’42 What should we make of this lingering sense of wonder, even among otherwise rational academics who devoted their lives to historicism and truth? They seem to have convinced themselves of everything and nothing. But they hardly lived in a vacuum. At the same time that Carrington, Benwell, Waugh, Cox and Attenborough researched and wrote their histories, popular culture was absolutely obsessed with merpeople.43 Science and exploration, meanwhile, progressed to previously unimaginable frontiers, challenging prior 205

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98 Daryl Hannah as a mermaid in the poster for Splash (dir. Ron Howard, 1984).

assumptions of possibility and limitation. If humans could land on the moon, why couldn’t they find merpeople? Many accordingly still held out belief in these creatures, some even going so far as to claim to have interacted with them. In 1954 Joaquin Brito, the 69-year-old dean of u.s. Lighthouse Keepers, swore to New York’s Daily News that he had seen a mermaid ‘off the Cape Verde Islands when I was a youth, fishing with my father’. The newspaper reported that ‘he readily gave anthropologically fascinating details of his enriching experience to Coast Guard listeners at the headquarters’, testifying that she seemed to be about fifteen years old and that ‘others of us Portuguese fishermen had seen the same mermaid in the vicinity.’44 By 1961 the Isle of Man (off the coast of northwest England) held an official ‘mermaid hunt’ after reports that ‘several islanders insist they have seen mermaids sunning themselves off the rocky shores – and they say the creatures are gorgeous.’ One member of the Houses of Parliament offered a £20,000 (£440,000 in 2020) reward ‘to the first person who can land such an elusive catch’, while a local policeman, the mayoress of Peel and a secretary swore to have seen multiple mermaids off their coast. Whether a tourist trap or not, these well-publicized efforts surely piqued many people’s curiosity. Benwell and Waugh, in fact, concluded their volume with this news story.45 Historians were hardly the only scholars to tackle merpeople in the second half of the twentieth century. The 1980s marked a resurgence of mermaids in film, with Splash (1984) (illus. 98) and The Little Mermaid (1989) greeted with huge commercial success.46 In essence, both films featured a mermaid who needs to be rescued by a human male. If in the post-war years scholars and citizens alike shrugged off similar gendered tropes as common, by the 1980s post-feminist criticism had emerged as a key analytical method. Hoping to deconstruct popular, culturally formulated Western notions of sex, gender and language, in the 1980s and 206

99 Cosplayer as Ariel from Disney’s The Little Mermaid during the New York Comic Con, 2015.

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’90s feminist scholars confronted mermaids – and recent mermaid films – head on.47 In 1991 Roberta Trites fired the first shots over Disney’s bow by arguing that ‘Disney’s interpretation of Andersen’s story perpetuates sexist values by teaching those values to a new generation.’ In Trites’s assessment, this film depicted ‘women as either selfeffacing or evil, incapable of creating their own responsible power without either depending on men or stealing power from them’. She definitely had a point. In the Disney version, Ariel (the ‘Little Mermaid’) gives up her voice in order to live among humans, Prince Eric in particular. The grotesque sea-witch Ursula, meanwhile, steals Ariel’s voice only to later use it in an attempt to destroy Eric and, in turn, Ariel’s hopes and dreams. Thus, while the original Andersen story at least had an undercurrent which acknowledged femininity as a legitimate and self-sufficient way of being in the world, with the character of the Little Mermaid representing a vague notion of female upward mobility, the 1989 Disney version, in Trites’s words, ‘eliminates the values that affirm femininity . . . [resulting in] characters, images, and conflicts that rob women of integrity, making the movie even more sexist than the original story’. For Trites, Ariel the mermaid was little more than a pawn of traditional – and outdated – gender tropes.48 Trites’s argument created ripples of agreement. Three years later, Susan White used Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis to demonstrate how films like The Little Mermaid helped feminist critics to ‘see most cultural products as a complex weave of oppression, rebellion, play with existing structures, recuperation, and transformation’. For White, the recent spate of mermaid movies belayed a festering Western anxiety over women’s changing social and political status. The Little Mermaid accordingly represented ‘an image of women as both physically and socially constrained’. Laura Sells further unpacked gendered binaries in a 1995 book chapter, ‘“Where do the Mermaids Stand?”: Voice and Body in 209

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The Little Mermaid ’, arguing that The Little Mermaid ‘reflects some of the tensions in American feminism between reformist demands for access . . . and radical refigurings of gender that assert symbolic change as preliminary to social change’. Ariel, a beautiful mermaid who is at once sexualized and childish, stood at the crux of this gendered contradiction. She represented the boundaries between sea and land (which Sells describes as the ‘white male system’), and the lengths to which women must go to gain acceptance into this system (in this case, Ariel mutilating herself through losing her tail and giving up her voice). Critically, Sells’s analysis of The Little Mermaid helped her to reflect upon her own hybrid position in the post-feminist moment. Sells openly admitted, ‘I am as much a product of the contradictions and tensions of contemporary feminism as I am a dupe of dominant culture.’ In turn, Efrat Tseëlon contributed to Sells’s argument with her own psychoanalytical investigation of how Disney oversimplified Andersen’s story in an effort to represent ‘the human condition, or rather the female condition in patriarchy structured around a very particular castration of tongue and voice’.49 Taken together, these pieces reveal the ongoing hybridity – even contradictions – of mermaids in Western society. On the one hand, The Little Mermaid was a massive hit, ‘breaking box office and video store records for “first release animations”’ and proving the most profitable feature-length animated film ever (a benchmark bettered by Disney two years later with Beauty and the Beast). Yet the movie also helped to stoke conflict. Many Westerners defended Disney’s efforts to ‘rewrite the fairytale to reflect American values’, finding messages of hope, love and friendship in Ariel’s whimsical tale. In 1960 this consensus would have reigned supreme. But times had changed. Western women were breaking the glass ceiling, and pushing themselves into new avenues of business, commerce and the public sphere. Feminists accordingly argued that The Little Mermaid revealed prevailing cultural norms where 210

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‘access to the white male system is achieved at the cost of the feminine and defined in terms in which women are mothers or citizens, but never both.’ These sirens remained caught between the past and the present, dominance and vulnerability.50 The absence of mermen as tangible cultural and capitalistic symbols during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was also important for feminist criticisms, not to mention the mass media’s understanding of merpeople. Because the Western media so relied upon the sexual and gendered nature of mermaids, they did not really need mermen. Instead, they pushed mermaids as the ultimate symbols of sex, domesticity and desire, often all at the same time. The historian Philip Hayward has argued that mermen’s cultural weakness stemmed from ‘the inherent demasculinisation that results from his possession of a tail that lacks anything resembling human genitalia’. The mermaid, meanwhile, has human breasts and a phallic-style tail, thus representing the ‘phallic female par excellence’.51 As during the medieval period, mermen receded to the fringes of the twentieth-century psyche. In many ways, everything and nothing had changed since the medieval period: powerful members of Western society (first churchmen, then the media) used the mermaid’s sexuality to transmit their message to the maximum possible number of people. Sex, gender and cultural precedence remained central facets of the siren song. Yet this very hybridity – this shocking sexuality – also forced onlookers into reflections on the human condition, which explains the resurgence of interest among scholars in these strange creatures, and the Western world’s unprecedented fascination with all things merpeople. In 1995 Tseëlon could only argue that ‘the mermaid story generated various interpretive readings.’52 Such assertions of merpeople’s cultural malleability further demonstrated ongoing struggles over femininity, sex, gender, power, capitalism and globalization in the Western world. 211

The Southern African San bushman gazes across the desert landscape with only the full moon’s glow for light. It is 2000 bce, and it has not rained for over a month. He hears human cries behind him. The shaman has begun his rain trance. The bushman runs back towards a nearby cave, hopping between grass patches to protect his feet from ragged rocks. As he pads into the cave’s crowded confines, he sees the shaman singing as he leaps around a small fire, his shadow dancing along with him on the cave’s walls, which are decorated with an array of painted creatures. One group of figures – humanoids with fish-like tails – especially hold the bushman’s eye. He has always called upon these hybrid gods in the past, and it has always worked. It has to again, or he and his family will die of thirst. Five thousand miles away and two thousand years later, an Indian stonemason admires his finished product. Rays of sunlight stream into the mason’s dusty studio, glittering off the pink sandstone ‘naramakara’, which will soon grace the archway of a temple in the city of Mathura. When officials asked the sculptor to carve this strange half-human, half-fish hybrid, he did not know what to think. A lifelong resident of Mathura, he had carved various designs into the city’s ever-growing structures, but nothing quite like this. He decided to represent the figure with a round belly, which reminded him of his brother. The serpentine ‘legs’, however, bear no resemblance to his family, or to reality for that matter. The hybrid brings him an odd satisfaction, and he is excited to present it to the officials. Surely this odd sculpture will help to solidify his place among the best artisans in Mathura.

six

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very culture and religion has its own history of water deities and aquatic humanoid entities. Yet, while merpeople have existed in some shape or form throughout time and space, mermaids and tritons as modern humans have come to know them are largely European creations, themselves the products of ongoing processes of cultural sharing, recycling and reinterpretation. Early Christian Europeans adopted ancient Near Eastern and Greek water gods to create their own merpeople: humanoid from the waist up, fish from the waist down. In the medieval period, Christians modified existing representations of merpeople to fit emerging ideas of femininity and faith, thereby infusing mermaids with an air of sex and danger. By the early sixteenth century, Europeans carried their well-honed notions of merpeople around the globe and encountered a wide variety of pre-existing cultural beliefs. Centre and periphery muddled as Europeans interacted with foreign peoples, simultaneously affecting – and being affected by – new cultures. This process reached full swing by the end of the nineteenth century, as European capitalism became a global phenomenon and Hans Christian Andersen’s novel The Little Mermaid (1837) was translated into dozens of languages. People from Asia to Latin America to the Middle East to Africa to the Arctic steadily integrated Western merpeople into existing religious and cultural constructs, thereby creating 213

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localized versions of Western merpeople and bringing the process full circle.1 Humans instinctively recycle, interpret and modify new ideas according to culturally constructed perceptions, biases and worldviews.2 Merpeople are keen reflections of these shared global impulses. These creatures’ hybrid nature invites personal introspection: they are at once familiar and foreign, human and monster. This very liminality seems to encourage homogeneity more than disparity, as various cultures continuously absorb and assimilate these strange creatures. Although this book has concentrated on Western interpretations of merpeople, a survey of these hybrids’ global transmission drives home just how much merpeople provide a unifying lens through which to better understand the human condition. Long before Western Europeans ‘introduced’ (one might even say ‘imposed’) their imagery of merpeople throughout the globe, myriad societies had already established deep relationships with water gods and hybrid creatures. The ancient Babylonians (fl. eighteenth to sixth centuries bce, hailing from the present-day Middle East) worshipped the male sea god Oannes and his female counterpart Atargatis. An arbiter of civilization and order, Oannes would be a critical influence in the eventual development of Greek sea gods. A sculpture from the ruins of the palace of King Sargon ii of Assyria (eighth century ce, present-day Iraq) depicted Oannes as half-man, half-fish, swimming in the ocean among humans. Illustrators also envisioned Atargatis as a hybrid deity but took her dual identity even further. The Babylonians understood Atargatis as a fertility goddess, but also feared her personification of the dangers of love. The Greeks and Romans would eventually adopt these same features in Aphrodite and Venus, respectively, and medieval carvers would recombine the two aspects in their sculptures.3 Citizens of ancient Greece (fifth to fourth centuries bce) adopted Babylonian representations of aquatic deities wholeheartedly, as 214

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sea gods and goddesses like Venus, Triton, Amphitrite, Nereus and Proteus emerged as key figures in Greek poetry, storytelling and art. Yet the Greeks also adjusted these figures to fit their own needs. Some sea gods and goddesses gained human form, while others remained human-fish hybrids. Generally speaking, the Greek water deities helped rather than harmed humans. ‘Nereids’ (the daughters of the sea god Nereus and his wife Doris) had beautiful singing voices which they used to please their father instead of luring humans to their deaths. In fact, nereids spent much of their time protecting sailors from the dangers of the sea. As a maritime empire, the Greeks needed gods and goddesses who would aid their seafaring exploits, hence the various benevolent water deities.4 The flood origin myth proved critical to the global transmission of hybrid water deities. Oannes went by many names in ancient Babylon, but the most enduring was Dagon, which combined the word ‘Dag’ (a male fish) with ‘Aun’ and ‘Oan’ (Noah) to create ‘the fish Noah’. Often depicted as half-man, half-fish, Noah/Oannes was worshipped in Chaldea at Erech, or ‘the place of the ark’. The Syrian and Mesopotamian flood and ark narrative is depicted in the famous Epic of Gilgamesh (1800 bce). Similarly, ancient Egyptian worshippers gathered in Thebes (‘Theba’, or ‘the ark’). As the historian Henry Lee noted, ‘the history of the coffin of Osiris is another version of Noah’s ark, and the period during which that Egyptian divinity is said to have been shut up in it . . . was precisely the same as that during which Noah remained in the ark.’5 These flood stories may have emerged from more than myth. Indeed, recent archaeological studies suggest that a major deluge struck the Black Sea region around 7000 bce. Of course, this flood does not account for half-fish, half-human deities, nor does it explain a giant ark which saved only certain people from an otherwise total extinction of humanity. And, while an actual deluge might have influenced how cultures in the Black Sea region understood their 215

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origin myths and deities, it does not explain why cultures thousands of miles away had such similar myths and creatures.6 The breadth, frequency and similarities of the flood origin myth and accompanying water deities are astounding. As Lee explained, Aztecs worshipped Coxcox, ‘who was entitled Huehuetonacateo-cateo-cipatli, or “Fish-god of our Flesh”’. According to Aztec cosmology, Coxcox and his wife survived the great flood by crafting a boat from a cypress tree and then repeopled the world. Another Aztec legend tells of Nata and Nena surviving the flood on the day ‘Nahui-atl’, which Lee linked to the word ‘Noah’.7 Native Americans thousands of miles to the north also recounted origin stories that linked their people to water deities. Tribes around the Great Lakes region (present-day northern usa and Canada) believed in a ‘manfish’ who carried their people to North America. He often visited and enchanted them with his siren song: ‘there he would sit for hours, his fish-legs coiled up under him, singing to the wondering ears of the Indians upon the shore the pleasures he experienced, and the beautiful and strange things he saw, in the depths of the ocean, always closing his strange stories with . . . “Follow me, and see what I will show you!”’8 In 1853 the American ethnologist Henry Schoolcraft reproduced ancient First Nations cliff carvings from Lake Superior (present-day Canada) that depicted ‘a chief of the name of Myeengun, or the Wolf of the Mermaid, (or rather, as the language has it, Merman totem)’. A nineteenth-century chief related that Myeengun had carved these pictographs to memorialize his ‘skill and secret power’ (illus. 100).9 Similar imagery appears as ancient cave art in Africa’s Karoo Desert (present-day Cape Province, South Africa) (illus. 101) and Gilf Kebir (present-day southwest Egypt, near the Libyan border). Like Myeengun, the Karoo Desert and Gilf Kebir paintings are abstracted half-human, half-fish (or, has also been argued, -swallow) figures. Although the true form and purpose of these abstracted paintings remain shrouded in mystery, 216

Into Global Waters 100 Capt. Seth Eastman, ‘Myeengun, or the Wolf of the Mermaid’, lithograph in Henry R. Schoolcraft, The Indian Tribes of the United States, vol. i (1884).

it is not a stretch to imagine that water-based spirits would have been useful for peoples who lived in a world constantly at odds with the environment. Scholars have argued that such figures allowed shamans to recreate the ‘under water experience’ in their hallucinatory trance ceremonies.10 From Syria to Egypt to the Americas, ancient civilizations gravitated towards aquatic origin stories and accompanying hybrid deities. By the first century ce, certain civilizations began to depict their water deities in ways which so closely resembled future Western imagery that scholars still cannot pin down the sequence of cross-cultural exchanges, or if there even were any, for that matter. Did humans somehow develop such similar imagery separately, or were merpeople – human-fish hybrids with flowing, often twopronged tails – the product of complicated processes of cultural interchange well before Europeans spanned the globe? India proves an interesting case study. Indians have long worshipped the god Vishnu in the avatar of a man issuing from a fish’s mouth (illus. 102). Not only was ‘Vishnu’ translated from the Sanskirt ‘Ish-nuh’, or ‘the man Noah’, but the image of a human emerging from a fish was certainly found beyond Hindu lands. 217

merpeople 101 Major C. C. Michell, ‘Drawings of the Aborigines of Southern Africa’, copy of the mermaidlike creatures at Ezeljagdspoort (Karoo Desert, present-day southern part of the Cape Province, South Africa), in James Edward Alexander, Narrative of a Voyage of Observation among the Colonies of Western Africa, vol. ii (1837).

102 Vishnu in his incarnation of Matsya fighting with a demon, n.d., gouache drawing.

As we’ve already seen, as early as the third century ce Romans depicted Jonah as emerging from a fish’s mouth (see illus. 15), while by the fifteenth century the Italian Voynich manuscript shows a human rising from a fish’s mouth (see illus. 34). Even the Maya peoples (present-day Mesoamerica) depicted an oddly similar humanoid hybrid in a thirteenth-century text (known as the Dresden Codex), which pre-dated the arrival of European invaders by at least one hundred years (illus. 103). Although more abstract than Indian and Italian representations of fish-human creatures, the Maya figure seems to rise from a scaled, fish-like creature’s mouth. While scholars believe that portions of the Dresden Codex recorded celestial knowledge, much of the text remains shrouded in mystery. Thus we cannot be sure of what – or who – this figure on page 69 of the Codex is supposed to represent. Nevertheless, the similarities to distant peoples’ cultural motifs are undoubtable. India, it seems, was part of something much larger.11 And global similarities to India’s mer-imagery did not end there. As early as the first century ce, stone sculptures in Mathura (presentday northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh) carved twin-tailed 218

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103 Human-fish(?) hybrid in the Mayan Dresden Codex, c. 1200–1250.

naramakara figures into grand archways (illus. 104). These triton-like figures bear a striking resemblance to medieval European carvings of twin-tailed mermaids, with foliate double tails and human torsos.12 Even more, the naramakara images were almost identical to Benin and Yorubaland (present-day Nigeria) depictions of split-tailed merpeople which began to appear in African art and pottery around the tenth century ce (illus. 105). Well pre-dating European contact (which occurred in the fifteenth century ce), such imagery displays a surprising ‘Africanness of the form and style’. There are no mirrors, but rather foliate tails and kings wearing headdresses. The historian Douglas Fraser believed that Benin and Yorubaland peoples’ understandings of merpeople ‘were influenced by concepts stemming ultimately from the Eastern [Roman] Empire, probably in the first millennium c.e.’ Yet Fraser’s argument was admittedly hypothetical, relying on tangential ideas and ‘parallels’ of ‘visual evidence’.13 We still do not know whether such imagery was a product of cross-cultural transfer, isolated interpretations of water deities, or something in between. However, the evidence definitely points to the ‘something in between’, as humankind maintained a global amalgamation of cultural impetuses in the first century ce. The Middle East, China, Japan and India were central to this early ‘World System’, especially in their ability to provide valuable spices, textiles and other riches to peoples wealthy and poor, near and far. They also, unsurprisingly, maintained clear depictions of 220

104 Naramakara figure carved into Mathura archway, 1st century ce. 105 Bronze plaque of the Oba of Benin, the ruler of Benin, in his divine aspect. His legs are mud-puppy fish, a symbol of the sea-god Olokun.

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flood myths and hybrid water deities.14 As already mentioned, Middle Eastern cultures ascribed to a flood origin story and depicted merpeople in texts – by the seventh century ce, in fact, the seminal text of Islam, the Quran, featured the story of Noah and his ark in Surah 71. But the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Quran were not the only critical Middle Eastern texts to position water myths front-and-centre, for sea-dwelling people appeared in three separate stories in the famous collection of Muslim folktales One Thousand and One Nights (eighth to thirteenth centuries ce). The first two tales, ‘Julnar the Sea-born’ and ‘The Adventures of Buluqiya’, feature an aquatic human and the ‘fleeting appearance’ of merpeople, respectively. The third story, ‘Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman’, delves into the relationship between humans and merpeople to investigate Muslim piety and the limitations of the human condition. In the tale, Abdullah the human meets Abdullah the merman, and the two initially unite in their shared religious faith, even visiting each other’s vastly different worlds. Ultimately, however, the human and the merman cannot overcome their differences, and consequently, in the words of the historian Manal Shalaby, ‘fall short of assimilating each other’s otherness’.15 Medieval Muslims, in short, utilized merpeople as a lens through which to reflect upon complicated notions of self, religion and the ‘other’. Merpeople flourished in East Asia as well. The ancient Chinese depicted their origin narrative with a major flood event in which a man named ‘Nin-va’ led their people to safety. Not only is ‘Ninva’ linguistically correlated with ‘Noah’, but the Chinese also continued to integrate half-fish, half-human deities and creatures into their folklore. A triton named ‘He Bo’ appeared in various early folktales, while a text from the fourth century ce, ‘Sou Shén Jì’, featured various mermaids who lived in the South Seas. Like Western depictions of mermaids, these ‘jiaorén’ were often portents of miracles and wept tears of pearls.16 222

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The Japanese also have a long and complicated relationship with water deities and hybrid creatures. We are not sure of the origin of the ningyo (人形, human fish). However, we do know that they belong to an ancient group of Japanese creatures called yokai, which inspire never-ending investigations: ‘the moment a mystery is solved, yokai assume different shapes, evolving right alongside humans and inspiring us to keep asking questions.’ This exact same definition applies to Western merpeople and, like Westerners, early Japanese people claimed to physically interact with ningyo. The earliest documented instance comes from 619 ce near present-day Osaka, when a fisherman ensnared a creature ‘shaped like a child. It was neither a fish nor a person, and its name was unknown.’17 As an 1803 print of a ningyo supposedly captured in Toyama Bay (well after European interaction with the Japanese had begun) reveals, ningyo were not necessarily gendered creatures like Western merpeople, but could be more monstrous representations, replete with ‘gold-coloured horns, a red belly, a body like a carp and three eyes on the side of its torso’ (illus. 106).18

106 ‘Ningyo no zu’: a flier of a mermaid, 1803.

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107 Utagawa Kunisada i and Utagawa Hiroshige ii, Kannon-ji in Ômi Province, no. 32 of the Saikoku Pilgrimage Route (Saikoku junrei sanjûniban Kanonji Ômi), from the series Miracles of Kannon (‘Kannon reigenki’), 1859, woodblock print.

However, as with other cultures around the globe, European contact led the Japanese to integrate certain aspects of Western merpeople into pre-existing imagery. The ningyo specimens that Japanese craftsmen sold to Europeans were intended to satisfy Western expectations as much as Eastern and, as revealed in an 1859 print, the Japanese also began to depict merpeople as the upper half or a beautiful woman with the lower half of a fish (illus. 107). Although the flowing robes and covered midsection of this Japanese mermaid made her demurer than her Western counterpart, she nevertheless conformed to nineteenth-century Western ideas of mermaids. The Japanese had simply adopted Western motifs into their own well-known myths, imagery and worldviews. Merpeople were the perfect vessels for such cultural adaptation and hybridization.19 From the sixteenth century onwards, one can find similar developments in practically every culture. Although Hindu cultures had believed in fish-tailed gods and goddesses like Vishnu and Matysa Kanya (fish-woman) for centuries, Portuguese influence during the sixteenth century implanted Western notions of merpeople into the Indian psyche, albeit that such imagery appeared only in Catholic churches until British rule during the nineteenth century. Buddhist Thailand, however, proved more open to Western imagery of merpeople. Thai peoples passed down the tale of Hanuman and Suvannamatcha in which the ape king, Hanuman, fell in love with the nang ngueak (เงือก, female-fish), Suvannamatcha. In traditional lore Suvannamatcha’s classification as a nang ngueak did not necessarily mean she was half-woman, half-fish in the Western sense of mermaids. Like early depictions of Japanese ningyo, the nang ngueak might have taken on all sorts of hybrid, even monstrous, forms. Yet, as first Portugal and then other European nations maintained heightened contact with Thailand after the sixteenth century, Thai depictions steadily integrated Western imagery of merpeople into their pre-existing tales. In 1782 an artist painted Thailand’s 224

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national epic, the Ramakien, in a giant mural in Wat Phra Kaew, Bangkok. The story of Hanuman and Suvannamatcha appears on the mural and depicts Suvannamatcha as a Western-style mermaid rather than an ambiguous nang ngueak, complete with bare breasts, a beautiful face, flowing hair and an undulating fish-tail (illus. 108).20 It seems Thai culture absorbed aspects of Western culture deemed fit, and merpeople made the cut. West Africans also integrated Western notions of merpeople into their pre-existing water deities. The transatlantic slave trade proved critical in this process, as hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans were forced to adapt to Western cultural, religious and imperialistic motivations between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.21 West African peoples worshipped a variety of water deities long before Europeans ever arrived on their shores. Benin and Yorubaland had Yemoja (mother of fish) and Oshun, the spirit of the river, both of whom symbolized wealth and happiness. Other peoples in the region, like the Fon, believed that a variety of water spirits resided in their rivers and lakes. When Europeans

108 Ramakien mural painting of Hanuman and Suvannamaccha, 1782.

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first arrived in West Africa, they commissioned craft goods that depicted Western-style mermaids. Local artists often ‘Africanized’ these creations and integrated them into African depictions of merpeople.22 Yet by the late sixteenth century European empires like Portugal and Spain demanded massive labour forces for their mining works in the New World, and consequently began to purchase African peoples as slaves en masse. This massive displacement of African people across the Atlantic formed the beginnings of a global ‘African Diaspora’, which in turn established myriad new cultures throughout the world.23 As always, representations of merpeople provide a keen lens through which to understand these brutal and world-changing cultural, religious and imperial transformations. As diasporic African cultures emerged in the New World, they merged African and Western notions of merpeople to create Sirena and Mami Wata (mother water). Sirena was a direct descendant of Yemoja, the Yorubaland ‘mother of fish’. However, in African Diaspora peoples’ New World depictions of Sirena, the water deity took on the visual form of the Western mermaid while retaining her hybrid nature of both causing harm and lending help: she was awful when angered but could also protect women and children. Sirena retained a firm foothold in their African past with minor, local adjustments intended to protect enslaved peoples.24 As the EuroAfrican notion of Sirena travelled west from the Caribbean into South, Central and North America, she merged with pre-existing deities indigenous to these other corners of the European empires. In Jamaica she became Riba Muma (river maid), while Haitians called her ‘Ezili of the Waters’.25 In Central America Sirena merged with Sihuanaba, a beautiful long-haired woman who, when initially seen from behind, lured men in before revealing her horse’s skull face and killing them. Enslaved Africans in the North American ‘Lowcountry’ (present-day South Carolina) steadily developed sirenas who avenged them for the brutality they had endured.26 227

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Sirena, however, proved far less enduring than her counterpart Mami Wata. As the historian Henry Drewal alluded, African and African-American peoples continued a centuries-long process in their worship of Mami Wata by choosing to take ‘exotic images and ideas, interpret them according to indigenous precepts, invest them with new meanings, and then recreate and re-present them in new and dynamic ways to serve their own aesthetic, devotional, and social needs’.27 Although Mami Wata continued a centurieslong trend of adoption and adaptation, her enduring importance for so many African Diaspora cultures in the twentieth century made her different, as did her unique combination of Indian, African, Black Atlantic and European influences. Mami Wata took root in African regions that did not have pre-existing water deities – the Yorubaland and Fon peoples, content with Yemoja and Tohosu, never adopted her. She was initially the product of European interaction, as Africans integrated Western notions of merpeople into their own belief systems. For this reason, Mami Wata’s original form (in the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries) maintained a Euro-African hybridity: a beautified mermaid surrounded by African crocodiles.28 By the early twentieth century Mami Wata took on a more transcultural form than ever before. It all started with a ‘chromolith’ (an early form of colour print) that was originally made in Hamburg, Germany, in 1885, but found massive popularity in India, England, Sub-Saharan and West Africa over the next eighty years (illus. 109). Although the chromolith was originally intended to depict a snake charmer, African viewers interpreted it as an ‘exotic’ representation of a European water spirit. Recall that Africans were already familiar with the Western mermaid and would have accordingly ‘found’ what they wanted in the image. But this woman spoke to them in new ways, for she had dark skin and hair, and was surrounded by a snake, which for many Africans symbolized water and rainbows. It only made sense that she should both control 228

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and be protected by this asp, as it coiled over her head like a rainbow. Twentieth-century Africans depicted Mami Wata on shrines, statues and posters. She became a critical symbol of Africans’ ever-changing, ever-evolving relationship with themselves and the foreign world.29 Mami Wata’s origins and expansion pointed to larger transformations in humanity’s visions of merpeople. While in the early modern period various cultures integrated Western notions of merpeople into pre-existing water deities, by the nineteenth century Western capitalism, combined with the popularity of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, led many peoples to create their own form of merperson according to the Western ‘model’. Consider Russia, Ukraine and Poland’s Rusalka, for example. Though Slavic folklore regarding dangerous seasonal spirits dated back thousands of years, nothing like the Western mermaid emerged in Slavic society until the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. Slavs called her the Rusalka, and much of her origins and appearance can be dated to the arrival of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid in Russia (mid- to late nineteenth century). Associated both with fertility and death, Rusalki – like Western mermaids – ‘present a complex and somewhat contradictory image’.30 Artists and writers depicted Rusalki in the Westernized siren form, ‘with enhanced feminine qualities, such as a beautiful (often-nude) physique, long green or blonde hair, and large breasts’. A Rusalka often lingered on riverbanks, combing her long hair and singing her siren song to lure unsuspecting men who would find her feminine, seductive features irresistible – that is, until they got close enough for her to pull them to their watery graves.31 An 1871 painting by the Russian artist Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoy depicted a Rusalka in beautiful detail (illus. 110). Here 229

109 Adolph Friedlander Company (possibly Christian Bettels), Der Schlangenbandiger (The Snake Charmer), originally commissioned 1880s; reprinted 1955 in Bombay, India.

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the Rusalka creeps among the weeds on a river’s bank, her long, flowing hair just covering large breasts. Notice that the Rusalka looks towards the viewer rather than at the women in the painting. With white dresses and longing looks on their faces, it is implied that the twenty bathing maidens are in no danger. This makes sense, as Rusalki were the outcome of the untimely or unnatural death of beautiful virgin women, who were now intent on destroying human males and helping women during the springtime Rusal’naia week of fertility and wedlock. There are no men in this painting. Maybe the Rusalka has already claimed them? Or perhaps the male artist Kramskoj imagined himself – or a male viewer – as the next target of this seductive siren? Ultimately, the Rusalka, like Mami Wata, was the product of complicated cultural adaptations. Slavs used the Western mermaid as a model for their own contradictory hybrids who might reflect ongoing tensions around gender, marriage, birth and death. Such developments and imagery resonated throughout the globe in the twentieth century, as disparate cultures from Australia to East Asia to Latin America to Africa to the Middle East to India to the Arctic regions embraced Western notions of merpeople for commercial purposes. Though a full study of this process is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is important to realize that the Western world’s obsession with mermaids (and, to a lesser extent, tritons) created a ripple effect throughout the rest of the world, with global mer-imagery coalescing around the Western model. In Australia performers like Annette Kellerman, combined with the popularity of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, piqued the public’s interest in Western mermaids and culminated in a series of beaches and statues which Australians associated with mermaids (illus. 112).32 Likewise, Asian cultures latched onto Andersen’s Little Mermaid during the twentieth century, thereby creating their own fictional tales, statues and films according to this Western ‘model’. South Koreans and Filipinos can still gaze at Western-style 230

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mermaid statues on various of their countries’ beaches, while in the post-Second World War era, Filipinos encountered mermaids in full colour in the American-inspired Filipino comic series ‘Dyesebel’. By 1953 the eponymous mermaid, Dyesebel, had her own feature film and comic series, and she continues to spawn Filipino media to this day (illus. 111). When the Chinese translated Andersen’s work in the early twentieth century, they kicked off a cultural obsession with the Western-style mermaid that reached fever pitch by the end of the century through a number of films, fictional stories and tourist attractions. The Japanese also integrated Andersen’s vision of the mermaid into two of their most popular visual narrative forms, manga and anime, while dotting their beaches with mermaid-based tourist attractions like statues and shows.33 Latin American, African, Caribbean and Middle Eastern cultures followed suit, steadily depicting Mami Wata, Sirena and arous al-bahr (Arabic for bride/maid/doll of the sea) inflected towards Western ideals of the mermaid.34 Middle Eastern peoples held out against Westernized depictions of arous al-bahr in the first half of the twentieth century, instead imaging her as a less-sexualized

110 Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoy, The Mermaids, 1871, oil on canvas.

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111 Cover image of Dyesebel Komiks (1953).

figure whose body is entirely covered in scales. Yet towards the end of the twentieth century, Western-style mermaids began to appear on Egyptian television series, thus signalling a steady – if slow – transition beyond long-held fears of sexuality and sin. In Dubai, audiences can watch the Mall Aquarium mermaid show, where mermaid performers sport less than is allowed on uae beaches.35 232

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Although decimated by Western European and Americans’ expansionist agendas, twentieth-century Native North Americans and First Nations also integrated Western notions of merpeople into long-standing religious and cultural traditions.36 The Mi’kmaq peoples (present-day coastal Nova Scotia) tell of Lone Bird, who fell in love with a mermaid named Minnow, brought her to shore and had a child with her named Sea Pebble. When Minnow grew homesick, Lone Bird agreed to live with her and Sea Pebble in Minnow’s aquatic home. However, Minnow had to protect Lone Bird and Sea Pebble from sharks and perished in the effort.37 The tale of Lone Bird and Minnow bears a striking resemblance to Scottish and Irish stories of human males who fall in love with mermaids, only to find death and despair. This is probably no coincidence, as Mi’kmaq peoples experienced protracted contact with English, Irish and Scottish invaders during the seventeenth and

112 Three mermaid statues on Daydream Island, Whitsunday Islands, Australia.

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eighteenth centuries, and may have had contact with the same Viking raiders who attacked and colonized coastal and island areas of Britain. For thousands of years, Inuit peoples of Greenland and Canada revered Sedna (ᓴᓐᓇ) as a humanoid (or, sometimes, nondescript) water spirit who created their main sources of survival: whales, seals and walruses. After heightened European contact in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, Inuit people steadily depicted Sedna according to the Western model of the mermaid. The Ojibwa peoples of Lake Superior (present-day northern United States and southern Canada) also maintain belief in the Maymaygwayshi (or Memegwesi), ‘merfolk with children’s bodies and hairy faces’. They argue that merpeople rise out of the water and touch the rocks, which explains the various ancient red hand prints that dot certain parts of Lake Superior’s shoreline.38 Once again, not only did the Ojibwa peoples endure prolonged contact and conflict with Europeans and Africans, but such analogues also reflect Western tendencies to use merpeople as a way to explain otherwise curious phenomena such as the features of manatees or the apparent capriciousness of storms. From religious to imperial to commercial contexts, merpeople reveal ongoing transitions, adaptations and transformations in the beliefs and habits of humankind throughout space and time. Interestingly, the Western version of mermaids and tritons had the most impact on global interpretations of merpeople during the twentieth century. This can probably be explained by the boom of Western capitalism, empire and commerce. The ‘Americanization’ of the world – with McDonald’s restaurants taking hold in India, Coca-Cola widely available in the poorest regions of Africa and, of course, Starbucks sirens popping up on every city corner from London to Beijing – became undeniable by the end of the twentieth century.39 Western merpeople, recognizable by their bare torsos, fish-tails and flowing hair, seemed to accompany this process every step of the way. 234

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But this is not to argue that the West had somehow forcefully ‘conquered’ the rest of the world through cultural and capital infusion by the end of the twentieth century. Quite the contrary: as numerous scholars have demonstrated, not only was it ‘the [rest of the] world that made Europe’ during the early modern period, but by the twentieth century Europe and America had ‘climbed up on the back’ of the rest of the world in a bid for (temporary) global power.40 Global cultures accordingly adopted Western cultural motifs (including merpeople), but continued to adapt and transform them to best serve their own purposes. These efforts served them quite well, as global economic and manufacturing power steadily shifted back east towards the end of the twentieth century. The cycle of cultural sharing, recycling and reinterpretation continued, just as it always had.

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Come, mariner, down in the deep with me, And hide thee under the wave; For I have a bed of coral for thee, And quiet and sound shall thy slumber be, In a cell of the mermaid’s cave And she who is waiting with cheek so pale At the tempest and ocean’s roar, And weeps when she hears the menacing gale, Or sighs to behold her mariner’s sail Come whitening up to the shore She has not long to linger for thee, Her sorrows will soon be o’er; For the cord shall be broken, the prisoner free, Her eyes shall close, and her dreams will be So sweet she will wake no more.1

Conclusion: Tail-ending

T

he twenty-first century stands witness to humanity’s ongoing obsession with all things merpeople. Mermaids and tritons provide us a deep connection with our shared past: from ancient myth, to medieval religion, to early modern wonder, to Victorian science and entertainment, to modern global commerce, these half-human, half-fish creatures have enchanted Western audiences since the dawn of civilization. And as humankind grows more connected than ever, with the mass distribution of smartphones and high-speed Internet allowing diverse peoples to exchange information at light speed, merpeople offer a fluid lens through which to trace the ever-changing, often-contradictory ebbs and flows of the human condition. Even with such monumental developments in communication, commerce and technology, our present age has not changed human nature. As I often reflect in my classroom lectures, the world we live in has changed, but humans have not. To be human is to be hybrid: full of contradictions, half-truths and wonders. Our ongoing relationship with merpeople demonstrates this reality in concise fashion. We have harnessed our ‘improvements’ to better connect with and understand mermaids and tritons, and in doing so have turned merpeople into cultural, commercial phenomena. A mermaid represents the most powerful coffee chain in the world, and merpeople served as key plot drivers in the fourth 237

merpeople 113 Romina Lozano, Miss Peru 2018, poses on stage during the 2018 Miss Universe national costume presentation in Thailand.

volume (2000) of the most popular book series in history, Harry Potter.2 Mermaids and tritons also star in various Hollywood films, television series, advertisements, toys, and online photoshoots and videos, not to mention appearing on countless clothing and fashion accessories.3 Adolescents especially have become enamoured with merpeople, as myriad companies have created series and courses dedicated to fantasies of ‘becoming’ mermaids.4 Of course, this obsession transcends toddlers and teenagers. When Miss Peru, Romina Lozano, stepped onto the stage for the ‘national costume’ portion of the Miss Universe Competition in 2018, she revealed 238

Conclusion: Tail-ending

herself as a mermaid as her dress transformed into a mermaid tail (illus. 113). Mermaids have also become critical symbols for environmentalism and ‘green living’. British woman Lindsey Cole channelled her inner Annette Kellerman in 2018 by swimming 320 kilometres (200 mi.) along the River Thames in a mermaid tail to raise awareness of the dangers of single-use plastic (illus. 114). Five years earlier, the Australian Hannah Fraser donned a mermaid costume and swam with manta rays to draw attention to ocean conservation issues.5 Unfortunately, the global environmental crisis seems to have multiplied right along with the popularity of mermaids and tritons. As the oceans’ ability to sustain life is threatened, debating the existence of merpeople might be a pastime we lose altogether.6 Further reflecting the twenty-first-century world’s increasing cognizance of social issues, mermaids and tritons have emerged as important representations of body positivity, feminism, lgbtq+ rights and the disruption of binary understandings of humans.

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114 Lindsey Cole, ‘The Urban Mermaid’, in Lechlade (2018), at the start of a 320-km swim down the Thames dressed as a mermaid to raise awareness about the effect of singleuse plastic on the environment.

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For example, New Yorkers have gathered for the Coney Island ‘Mermaid Parade’ since 1983. A celebration of difference, self-esteem, sexuality and ‘freakishness’, the Mermaid Parade has become a key platform for public expression of changing worldviews and nonbinary understandings of humankind, as heterosexual and lgbtq+ participants don (often-revealing) mermaid costumes and march through Coney Island for various causes (illus. 115). Drag performers and ‘mermaiders’ (men and women who pose as merpeople for both professional and recreational purposes) have also joined the

115 Participants march in the 2016 Coney Island Mermaid Parade.

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initiative, ‘becoming other’ to challenge preconceptions of gender and performance. So too have many physically disabled people embraced the identity of merpeople as a means through which to disrupt traditional notions of ‘able-ness’. Mermaiders ‘see themselves as true hybrids, in this world but not of it. Being a mermaid . . . creates an identity that is hybrid in a mystical way, part-human and part-an-other that is super-human.’ Lines of ‘normative heterosexuality’, race, gender and physical difference become blurred as men, women and children don the guise of merpeople.7 Unfortunately, gender still defines merpeople in obvious ways. Mermaids are generally associated with females, with mermen under-represented in commercial and artistic circles.8 For instance, while the ‘Snuggie’ brand marketed mermaid tails to young girls in 2018, the equivalent ‘Snuggie Tail’ for boys was a ‘Fiery Dragon’. Never mind that boys apparently have to be eaten by a fiery dragon while their female counterparts get to swim happily in the sea – why couldn’t these Snuggie Tails be geared towards all genders? In another example, Weeki Wachee Springs, Florida, only began to hire men for their shows in June 2018, but they call them ‘princes’ instead of mermen, and do not allow them to wear tails.9 But there are small changes underway. Take the Barbie mermaid trio who represented a variety of skin colours and body sizes, for example. While Mattel made a positive step towards truly diversifying its depictions of mermaids, when they finally released merman Ken in 2018 he was only available as a thin, white merman with platinum blond hair, blue eyes and six-pack abs.10 Mer-Ken was hardly representative of the diverse audience of children and adults who might purchase him (illus. 116). So, although powerful companies like Mattel are beginning to appreciate mermen as tangible partners to mermaids, their offerings are still mired in traditional categories of gender, sex and ethnicity. Apple, the second most valuable company in the world, might have taken the first step beyond such traditional categories in 2017. 241

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116 Trio of Barbies and Merman Ken, 2018.

When the global behemoth wanted to include mermaids in their popular line of digital ‘emojis’ (small icons used to express emotions), they came face to face with evolving understandings of identity and gender. Ultimately, Apple chose the term ‘merperson’ rather than ‘mermaid’ and ‘merman’ in 2017 to transcend classifications of gender, sex and ethnicity. They also allowed users to choose among six different skin tones for their merpeople.11 Beyond commercial, environmental, humanitarian and genderqueering endeavours, the twenty-first century also marks a period of monumental advances in technology and science. Humans accordingly like to think of ourselves as advanced, ‘civilized’ arbiters of rational thinking. Yet ‘civilization’ is a subjective term at best. As shown in the preceding pages, Western thinkers have always believed themselves as civilized leaders.12 And yet they have repeatedly chased merpeople to the furthest reaches of the globe. 242

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In 1870 a contributor to the New York Times reflected on this odd intersection of myth and science, exclaiming, Superstition and credulity can scarcely be regarded as salient features of our nineteenth century civilization, and yet few of us would like to confess how often we have given our faith to the supernatural . . . Barnum’s bogus mermaid would have been a less successful cheat had its ingenuity not found an efficient ally in the wishes of the spectators.13 Today, we would like to think that we are beyond such ‘supernatural’ tricks and cheats. If only it were that simple. Despite our modern claims of ‘improvement’ and rationality, humanity’s ongoing realization of how little we know about the universe (let alone our own oceans), combined with the popularity of merpeople, led many twenty-first-century Westerners into the same trap as those Londoners and New Yorkers who flocked to see Eades and Barnum’s ‘Feejee Mermaid’ in the first half of the nineteenth century.14 The American television network Animal Planet seized upon and fuelled such credulity with its 2012 ‘docufiction’ Mermaids: The Body Found (illus. 117). Although the network was clear in its conviction that this ‘documentary’ was wholly fictional, Western audiences wanted to believe in the reality of merpeople, and thus often viewed the fictional piece – a blend of cutting-edge computer graphics, primary sources and modified interviews and actors – as a non-fictional exposé. With 3.4 million viewers and an accompanying website labelling itself as harbouring ‘seized evidence’ from America’s Department of Homeland Security, Mermaids: The Body Found rekindled Barnum’s nineteenth-century buzz. When Animal Planet aired a sequel to the docu-fiction in 2013, the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association received so many unsolicited callers seeking clarification that it had to issue an official statement on its website. Even with Mermaids: 243

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117 Mermaids: The Body Found (dir. Sid Bennett, 2011), promotional poster.

The Body Found publicly debunked by scientists and openly presented as fiction by Animal Planet, the sequel (Mermaids: The New Evidence) garnered 200,000 more viewers than its predecessor. Westerners had found their new Feejee Mermaid, and many could not get enough of it: supposed sightings of merpeople still crop up throughout the world.15 But this is not to argue that everyone suddenly believed in merpeople. While the Mermaids docu-fictions garnered considerable attention, the majority of twenty-first-century humans continue to be unconvinced of merpeople’s existence and, accordingly, associate these creatures with entertainment and fantasy. When the eleventh most-profitable movie series of all time, Pirates of the Caribbean (2003–17), needed dangerous enemies for its fourth instalment, On Stranger Tides (2011), the producers relied upon mermaids, with their tears serving as healing salves and their songs and kisses luring sailors to their deaths. In an odd twist, a South African tabloid magazine used the Pirates of the Caribbean mermaid props for a 2014 photograph which alleged that the president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, had used witchcraft during the apartheid era to defeat his opponents.16 And South Africa’s tabloid publishers were hardly alone in using mermaids for bizarre scandal and profit. America’s National Enquirer often prints mermaid stories that cover ‘10 Astonishing and Infamous Mermaid Sightings’ and ask, ‘are they real?’17 Talk of merpeople has even made its way into the hallowed halls of British politics. When members of Britain’s parliament fell into yet another row over the ‘Brexit’ conundrum on 14 January 2018, one exasperated member of the opposition party could only wonder whether a ‘mermaid riding a unicorn will happen by and provide a solution’.18 From alleged sightings to merchandising to self-expression, merpeople continue to challenge humankind’s perceptions of person and place. Importantly, merpeople seem to have become more human over time, as we instil our own hopes and shortcomings 244

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in these fantastical hybrids. As the lines between humans and merpeople continue to blur, our own hybridity will only become more apparent. Monstrous yet beautiful, mysterious yet predictable: humans and merpeople are not as different as many like to think.

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Introduction 1 Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York, 1998), p. 27. See also Alison Luchs, The Mermaids of Venice: Fantastic Sea Creatures in Venetian Renaissance Art (London, 2010), pp. 32–5. 2 Erica Fudge, Perceiving Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early Modern English Culture (Urbana, il, 2002), pp. 2–3; Harriet Ritvo, The Platypus and the Mermaid and other Figments of the Classifying Imagination (Cambridge, ma, 1997), p. xii. See also Marie-Hélène Huet, Monstrous Imagination (Cambridge, ma, 1993). 3 Jacqueline Leclercq-Marx, The Mermaid in the Thought and Art of Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Brussels, 1997; reprint 2002), pp. vii–40; Beatrice Phillpotts, Mermaids (New York, 1980), pp. 9–10. 4 Katharine Shepard, The Fish-tailed Monster in Greek and Etruscan Art (New York, 1940); Leclercq-Marx, The Mermaid in the Thought and Art, pp. vii–40; Meri Lao, Sirens: Symbols of Seduction, trans. John Oliphant (Rochester, vt, 1998), pp. 1–57. 5 Leclercq-Marx, The Mermaid in the Thought and Art, pp. vii–40; Luchs, Mermaids of Venice, pp. 25–35; Gwen Benwell and Arthur Waugh, Sea Enchantress: The Tale of the Mermaid and her Kin (New York, 1965), p. 61. 6 Luchs, Mermaids of Venice, p. 28. For ideas of nudity in the early Christian era and the Middle Ages, see Sherry C. M. Lindquist, ed., The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art (Farnham, 2012); Jean Sorabella, ‘The Nude in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance’, The Met: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, www.metmuseum.org, 29 August 2018. 249

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7 Historian Barbara G. Walker argued that the spread-tailed mermaid was connected to the ancient medieval symbol of the ‘Sheela-na-gig’, who posed with spread legs and revealed an exaggerated vulva. See Barbara G. Walker, The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects (New York, 1988), p. 16. 8 As Beatrice Phillpotts noted, ‘the mermaid’s comb, also a popular feature from scenes of Venus’ toilette, carried additional sexual connotations which would have been immediately apparent to the Greeks and Romans, whose words for comb, kteis and pectin, also mean the female pudenda.’ Phillpotts, Mermaids, p. 10. See also Arthur Waugh, who argued, ‘It is the Bestiaries which gave the mermaid all the attributes associated with her from early Christian days – her vanity, constantly with comb and mirror, her alluring appearance and voice, and her danger to the human soul. Early on in the Christian Era, a fish was a symbol of the soul.’ Arthur Waugh, ‘The Folklore of the Merfolk’, Folklore, lxxi/2 (1960), p. 77. Lao argued, ‘the mirror is also illusion and lends itself easily to illusionism. It represents the double, the shadow: the soul outside the body.’ Lao, Sirens, p. 109. 9 As Alison Luchs argued, ‘Fish-tailed lovers appear only occasionally in ancient art.’ She continues, ‘Fish-tailed women, relatively scarce in the ancient visual arts, went on to outnumber their male counterparts in medieval art, where they assumed a portentous new role. Sea-dwelling females emerge from the waves to blow triton-like horns in nautical scenes in Carolingian psalters. But by that period, around 800, a new and fruitful identification had become attached to the mermaid: that of the ancient Greek siren.’ Luchs, The Mermaids of Venice, pp. 19, 21. 10 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History (Berkeley, ca, 2005), pp. 127–81. 11 As Alison Luchs argued, such representations in Renaissance art, text and physical objects ‘reveal striking evidence of peoples’ readiness to see mermaids and mermen’. Luchs, Mermaids of Venice, p. 184. 12 As Leclercq-Marx contended, ‘Being double, unnatural and symbolic by tradition, the Mermaid had no place, in fact, in the art of thought of an elite committed to a new humanism, who sacrificed more to the fantastic and the bizarre than to the monstrous, and who preferred allegory to the symbol.’ At least in church decoration, Leclercq-Marx argues that such grotesques were largely intended to ‘amuse the eye’. She also notes that, 250

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17 18

beyond the church, ‘the Sirens appear at the end of the eleventh century at the latest, as real beings, compassionate and full of solicitude for sailors in distress.’ Leclercq-Marx, The Mermaid in Thought and Art, p. 231. Chet Van Duzer, Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps (London, 2013). Jan Bondeson, The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History (Ithaca, ny, 1999), pp. 36–63; Ritvo, Platypus and the Mermaid, pp. 131–87. James W. Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 73–118. Heather Brink-Roby, ‘Siren Canora: The Mermaid and the Mythical in Late Nineteenth-century Science’, Archives of Natural History, 35/1 (2014), pp. 1–14; Béatrice Laurent, ‘Monster or Missing Link?: The Mermaid and the Victorian Imagination’, Cahiers Victoriens et Édouardiens (Victorian and Edwardian Notebooks) lxxxv (Spring 2017), http://journals.openedition.org, 31 October 2018; Ritvo, Platypus and the Mermaid, pp. 50–60. Philip Hayward, ed., Scaled for Success: The Internationalisation of the Mermaid (Bloomington, in, 2018). As Alison Luchs argued, ‘Among mythical hybrids, sirens stood out for their connection with learning. The knowledge with which they tempted Odysseus, in the words Homer gives to their song, was not carnal. It was wisdom, a vast new understanding of the world and all that transpires in it.’ Luchs, Mermaids of Venice, p. 32.

One Medieval Monsters 1 Although we cannot know whether a deacon ever actually experienced this exact interaction with a mermaid sculpture, myriad primary sources reveal medieval churchmen’s complicated attitudes towards these lustful icons. Exeter Cathedral, moreover, boasts such a mermaid carving. Each of the following six chapters will begin with a piece of historical anecdote (a ‘faction’, or combination of fact and fiction), based upon primary source evidence yet also taking certain liberties in order to demonstrate – and contemplate – contemporary interactions with merpeople. 2 Quoted in H. Clay Trumbull, ‘Jonah in Ninevah’, Journal of Biblical Literatures, vol. xi–xii (Boston, ma, 1892), pp. 55–6; Gwen Benwell and Arthur Waugh, Sea Enchantress: The Tale of the Mermaid and her Kin (New York, 1965), pp. 23–30. 251

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3 Henry Lee, Sea Fables Explained (London, 1884); Alison Luchs, Mermaids of Venice: Fantastic Sea Creatures in Venetian Renaissance Art (London, 2010), pp. 8–9; Juliette Wood, Fantastic Creatures in Mythology and Folklore: From Medieval Times to the Present Day (London, 2018), pp. 49–92. 4 Homer, The Odyssey, xii, ll. 85–100, trans. A. T. Murray (Cambridge, ma, 1938), pp. 438–9; Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, iv, trans. R. C. Seaton (London, 1930), lines 890–921. This paragraph owes much to Luchs, The Mermaids of Venice, pp. 12–32, and Jacqueline Leclercq-Marx, The Mermaid in the Thought and Art of Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Brussels, 1997; reprint 2002), pp. vii–40. These two authors – especially Leclercq-Marx – delve deeper into ancient interpretations of merpeople than I do. Leclercq-Marx’s entire volume is dedicated to pre- and early Christian interpretations, while Luchs provides a summary of ancient and pre-Christian beliefs before dedicating the rest of her book to Renaissance representations of merpeople in Venice. See also Leofranc HolfordStrevens, ‘Sirens in Antiquity and the Middle Ages’, in Music of the Sirens, ed. Inna Naroditskaya and Linda Phyllis Austern (Bloomington, in, 2006), pp. 16–51; Meri Lao, Sirens: Symbols of Seduction, trans. John Oliphant (Rochester, vt, 1998), pp. 1–61. 5 For a collection of eighty green men in British churches, see Fran Doel and Geoff Doel, The Green Man in Britain (Stroud, 2010). 6 R. M. Jensen, ‘The Femininity of Christ in Early Christian Iconography’, in Studia patristica, vol. xxix, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone (Louvain, 1997), pp. 269–282; Rosemary Radford Ruether, Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History (Berkeley, ca, 2005), p. 131. 7 Ruether, Goddesses and the Divine Feminine, p. 131; Leclercq-Marx, The Mermaid in Thought and Art, p. 35; Holford-Strevens, ‘Sirens in Antiquity’, p. 22. 8 Quoted in Ruether, Goddesses and the Divine Feminine, pp. 179, 127–181; Sirach, xxxxii/14–16. 9 See Sherry C. M. Lindquist, ed., The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art (London, 2012), p. 3; Anthony Weir and James Jerman, Images of Lust: Sexual Carvings on Medieval Churches (London, 1999), pp. 48–57; Kirk Ambrose, The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-century Europe (London, 2013), pp. 1–20; Sarah Alison Miller, Medieval Monstrosity and the Female Body (London, 2010). Special thanks to Dr David O’Hara for alerting me to this idea. 252

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10 Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (New York, 2009). 11 Luchs, Mermaids of Venice, p. 25. 12 Historians Benwell and Waugh recorded the locations of 55 different sculptures of mermaids in British churches. Benwell and Waugh, Sea Enchantress, pp. 37–9; Alex Woodcock, Of Sirens and Centaurs: Medieval Sculpture at Exeter Cathedral (Exeter, 2013), pp. 48–9. Woodcock provided a broader investigation of merpeople in southern England churches in Alex Woodcock, Liminal Images: Aspects of Medieval Architectural Sculpture in the South of England from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries (Oxford, 2005), pp. 89–108. 13 Woodcock, Of Sirens and Centaurs, pp. 45–53; Arthur Waugh, ‘The Folklore of the Merfolk’, Folklore, lxxi/2 (1960), p. 78. 14 Woodcock, Of Sirens and Centaurs, pp. 52–3. The medieval Bishop William Durandus celebrated sculpture which projected from walls, noting that ‘the carved images which project from the walls, appear as it were to be coming out of it: because when by reiterated custom virtues so pertain to the faithful, that they seem naturally implanted in them, they are excised in all their various operations.’ William Durandus, The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments: A Translation of the First Book of the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, ed. John Mason Neale and Benjamin Webb (New York, 1893), p. 55. For the Saint Thiébault mermaid, see Lao, Sirens, p. 105. 15 For an amazing collection of over six hundred images (and growing) of mermaids and mermen carved into medieval European churches, see the Public Group Pool, ‘Flickr: Mermaids in Church Art’, www.flickr.com, 24 January 2019. Special thanks to Rex Harris for alerting me to this website. 16 See, for instance, Woodcock, Of Centaurs and Sirens, p. 49. 17 Inna Naroditskaya and Linda Phyllis Austern, ‘Introduction’, in Music of the Sirens, p. 4 (quotes). See also Woodcock, Of Sirens and Centaurs, pp. 47–8. For a mermaid in Ludlow Church, England (misericord), see ‘Great English Churches’, http:// greatenglishchurches.co.uk, 24 September 2018. 18 Quoted in Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York, 1998), p. 24; Willene B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-family Bestiary: Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Woodbridge, 2006), p. 14. 19 Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, p. 24. 20 Pliny, Natural History (Naturalis historia), trans. H. Rackham et al. (Cambridge, ma, 1940–63), Book ix, 3: pp. 168–9. 25 3

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21 Mary Allyson Armistead, ‘The Middle English Physiologus: A Critical Translation and Commentary’, Master’s thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and University, 2001, pp. 3, 86. 22 Quoted in David Williams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature (Montreal, 1996), p. 188. 23 James Cotter Morison, The Life and Times of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, a.d. 1091–1153 (London, 1884), p. 132. See also Waugh, ‘The Folklore of the Merfolk’, p. 78. 24 Benwell and Waugh, Sea Enchantress, p. 71. 25 Phillipe de Thaon, The Bestiary of Philippe de Thaon, Originally Published as Part of Popular Treatises on Science, Written During the Middle Ages, in Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and English, ed. Thomas Wright (London, 1841), pp. 27–8. 26 For medieval maps which feature mermaids and tritons, see Chet Van Duzer, Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps (London, 2013), pp. 21, 25, 45. 27 Pliny, Natural History, Book ix, 4: pp. 168–9. Skye Alexander, Mermaids: The Myths, Legends, and Lore (New York, 2012), p. 86. 28 For a full account of ancient sightings, see Pierre Boaistuau, Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature Containing a Description of Sundry Strange Things, Seeming Monstrous in Our Eyes and Judgement, Because We are not Privie to the Reasons of Them (London, 1569), pp. 47–54. 29 Quoted in Benwell and Waugh, Sea Enchantress, p. 161. 30 Ibid., p. 163. 31 Quoted ibid., p. 141; Luchs, Mermaids of Venice, p. 17. 32 Quoted in Luchs, Mermaids of Venice, p. 28. 33 Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (London, 1807), ii: p. 290. 34 Benwell and Waugh, Sea Enchantress, p. 141; The King’s Mirror (Speculum regale/Konungs Skuggsjá), trans. Laurence Marcellus Larson (New York, 1917), pp. 136–7. 35 Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, &c, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 1781), vol. vii, p. 4901; Benoît de Maillet, Telliamed; or Conversations between an Indian Philosopher and a French Missionary on the Diminution of the Sea, trans. and ed. Albert V. Carozzi (Urbana, il, 1968), p. 193; The Wonders of Nature and Art, 2nd edn (London, 1768), vol. ii, p. 198. 36 Luchs, Mermaids of Venice, p. 184. 254

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two New Worlds, New Wonders 1 Alison Luchs, Mermaids of Venice: Fantastic Sea Creatures in Venetian Renaissance Art (London, 2010); Thomas P. Campbell and Maryan Wynn Ainsworth, Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence (New Haven, ct, 2002), p. 372; Meri Lao, Sirens: Symbols of Seduction, trans. John Oliphant (Rochester, vt, 1998), p. 102. Tara E. Pedersen argued that ‘Mermaids were indeed ubiquitously “pictured” in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England – both as a subject of the viewer’s gaze and discursively . . . In turn, mermaids frequently appear among the pages of early modern printed texts, and they are not only visually represented in illuminated manuscripts and maps, but also appear as characters, tropes, and subjects within literary, scientific and religious texts.’ Tara E. Pedersen, Mermaids and the Production of Knowledge in Early Modern England (Farnham, 2016), p. 2. 2 Peter David Blanck, ed., Interpersonal Expectations: Theory, Research and Applications (Cambridge, 1993). Benwell and Waugh argued that ‘men began to find rational explanations for natural phenomena’ during the Renaissance. Gwen Benwell and Arthur Waugh, Sea Enchantress: The Tale of the Mermaid and her Kin (New York, 1965), p. 86. See also Peter C. Mancall, Nature and Culture in the Early Modern Atlantic (Philadelphia, pa, 2017), pp. 1–42; Persephone Braham, ‘Song of the Sirenas: Mermaids in Latin America and the Caribbean’, in Scaled for Success: The Internationalisation of the Mermaid, ed. Philip Hayward (Bloomington, in, 2007), pp. 150–64. 3 As historians Daston and Park contended, ‘the very outlandishness of strange facts was a positive virtue . . . these were to enlarge ordinary natural history, correct natural philosophical axioms with counterexamples . . . point the way to inventions of art, and liberate the understanding from theoretical preconceptions.’ Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York, 1998), p. 250. 4 Kate Aughterson, Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook; Constructions of Femininity in England (London, 1995), pp. 103, 41 (first and second quotes). 5 Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, p. 247. In his Advancement of Learning (1605), Francis Bacon compared closeminded men to mermaids’ originator, Scylla, who ‘was transformed into a comely virgin for the upper parts . . . but then when you descend into their distinctions and decisions, instead of a fruitful 255

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6

7

8

9 10

womb for the use and benefit of man’s life, they end in monstrous altercations and barking questions’. Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, ed. William Aldis Wright (London, 1876), p. 31. For prostitute connections, see Ailene S. Goodman, ‘The Extraordinary Being: Death and the Mermaid in Baroque Literature’, Journal of Popular Culture, xvii/3 (1983), p. 33. Surekha Davies, Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 183–216; Surekha Davies, ‘The Unlucky, the Bad, and the Ugly: Categories of Monstrosity from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle (London, 2012), p. 64; Susan Scott Parrish, ‘The Female Opossum and the Nature of the New World’, William and Mary Quarterly, liv/3 (1997), p. 485. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ‘The Puzzle of the American Climate in the Early Colonial Period’, American Historical Review, lxxxvii/5 (1982), pp. 1262–89; Anya Zilberstein, A Temperate Empire: Making Climate Change in Early America (Oxford, 2016), pp. 1–10. Susan Scott Parrish argued that European explorers’ initial observations of the New World were defined by ‘utopian visions of benign plenty and negative images of monstrosity’. She continued to contend that European thinkers had long equated nature with the feminine, and the feminine with fecundity, which they considered ‘inseparable from diabolism’. Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, nc, 2006), pp. 481, 36 (quotes). Hugh Honour, moreover, summarized the litany of animals which piqued Europeans’ sense of wonder, strangeness and monstrosity in the New World – including the parrot, toucan, turkey, armadillo, opossum, tapir and llama – in Hugh Honour, The New Golden Land: European Images of America from the Discoveries to the Present Time (New York, 1975), pp. 37–41. See also Mancall, Nature and Culture, pp. 1–42, for strange New World creatures. John Josselyn, Account of Two Voyages to New-England Made during the Years 1638, 1663 (Boston, ma, 1865), p. 23. For a summary of ancient sightings see Pierre Boaistuau, Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature (London, 1569), pp. 47–54. See also Cristina Brito, ‘Connected Margins and Disconnected Knowledge: 256

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16 17

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Exotic Marine Mammals in the Making of Early Modern Natural History’, in Cross Cultural Exchange and the Circulation of Knowledge in the First Global Age, ed. Amélia Polónia et al. (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2018), pp. 106–32. Anthony Grafton argued that the contact between Europe and new worlds ‘juxtaposed a vast number of inconvenient facts with the elegant theories embodied in previous authoritative books’. Anthony Grafton, ‘Introduction’, in New Worlds, Ancient Texts, ed. Anthony Grafton (Cambridge, ma, 1995), p. 5. Christopher Columbus, Journal of Christopher Columbus (During his First Voyage, 1492–93), ed. Clements R. Markham (Cambridge, 2010), p. 154. Columbus actually was not first, as the Norseman Leif Erikson landed in North America in the tenth century ce. But fifteenth-century Europeans did not know this. Parrish, American Curiosity, p. 481. Henry Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492– 1763 (New York, 2003), pp. 112–21. Alexander ab Alexandro, Dies Geniales (Rome, 1522); John Swan, Speculum mundi, 2nd edn (London, 1643), p. 371; Conrad Gessner, Historia animalum, 2nd edn (London, 1604, originally published in 1581–7), p. 1588. Parrish, American Curiosity, p. 481. ‘Article viii, Diego Hurtado to Polynesia [This account is taken from Herrera, decad. v. lib. vii. Cap. 3, 4. And never was translated before. Vid. Voyag. Aux Terr. Austr. Vo. i. p. 162.]’, in Charles de Brosses, Terra Australis Cognita; or, Voyages to the Terra Australis, or Southern Hemisphere, during the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. John Callander (Edinburgh, 1766), pp. 123–4; Andre Thevet, The New Found World; or, Antarctike, trans. Thomas Hacket (London, 1568, originally published in 1556), p. 28; ‘Translation of Hist. de la compagnie de Jesus, P. ii T. iv. No 276’, in Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, &c, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 1781), vol. vii, p. 4901. Andrew Laurence, The noble lyfe and natures of man of bestes, serpentys, fowles and fishes [that] be moste knoweu (Antwerp, 1527), n.p.; Conrad Lycosthenes, Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon (Basel, 1557), p. 28; Benwell and Waugh, Sea Enchantress, p. 90. Boaistuau, Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature, pp. 47–8. Benjamin Braude, ‘The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geographical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods’, William and Mary Quarterly, liv/1 (1997), p. 106. 257

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20 Antonio de Torquemada, The Spanish Mandeville of Miracles (London, 1600), n.p. 21 Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica (London, 1646), p. 260. 22 Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus; or, Purchas His Pilgrimes (Glasgow, 1906), vol. xvi, p. 282. 23 G. M. Asher, ed., Henry Hudson the Navigator: The Original Documents in which his Career is Recorded (London, 1860), p. 28. 24 Captain Richard Whitbourne, A Discourse and Discovery of New-Found-Land (London, 1620), Conclusion (n.p.). 25 Ludwig Gottfried, Historia antipodum oder Newe Welt (Frankfurt, 1631), p. 193; Theodore de Bry, Dreyzehender Theil Americae (Frankfurt, 1628), p. 5. Although Bry died in 1598, his wife and son carried on his projects and released 21 more volumes, including Dreyzehender Theil Americae. 26 For an in-depth analysis of Stengel’s ‘mistake’, see Vaughn Scribner, ‘Fabricating History Part Two: The Curious Case Continues’, The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History, www.earlyamericanists.com, 29 September 2018. 27 Josselyn, Account of Two Voyages to New-England, p. 23. 28 Benoît de Maillet, Telliamed; or Conversations between an Indian Philosopher and a French Missionary on the Diminution of the Sea, trans. and ed. Albert V. Carozzi (Urbana, il, 1968), pp. 193–4. De Maillet claimed that eleven years later residents of the Mediterranean island Sestri-Levante (Italy) captured a ‘sea man’ who did not have a fish-tail, but was ‘a man from his waist down as well as up’. De Maillet, Telliamed, pp. 194–5. 29 For a description of the source, as well as the image, see ‘Monstre Marin Tue Par Les François S.D’., Louis Nicolas: Sa vie et son oeuvre de François-Marc Gagnon, www.aci-iac.ca, 28 September 2018. See also W.M.S. Russell and F. S. Russell, ‘The Origin of the Sea Bishop’, Folklore, lxxxvi/2 (1975), pp. 94–8. 30 Thomas Glover, ‘Account of Virginia, its Scituation, Temperature, Productions, Inhabitants, and their Manner of Planting and Ordering Tobacco’, Philosophical Transactions, xi/126 (1676), pp. 625–6. For more on the Royal Society of London’s flowering – and importance – in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see James Delbourgo, Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum (Cambridge, ma, 2017). 31 Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, p. 249. 32 Glover, ‘Account of Virginia’, pp. 625–6. 258

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33 John Green, comp., A Collection of Voyages and Travels, Some Now First Printed from Original Manuscripts, Others Now First Published in English. In Six Volumes (London, 1732), vol. v, p. 517. 34 Girolame Merolla, Breve e succinta relatione del viaggio nel regno di Congo nell’Africa meridionale, fatto dal P. Girolamo Merolla da Sorrento (Naples, 1692), p. 82. 35 P. G., A Most Strange and True Report of a Monstrous Fish, that Appeared in the Forme of a Woman, from her Waist Upwards (London, 1603), n.p. 36 John Philip Abelinus, Theatrum Europaeum (Frankfurt, 1619), vol. i, p. 215. See also Thomas Bartholin, ‘Of the Mermaid, &c’., in the Miscellane naturae curiosorum. An1, Dec. 1. Obs. 23. p. 85. In Acta Germanica; or, The Literary Memoirs of Germany (London, 1742), vol. i, p. 119. 37 Pierre Gassendi, The Mirrour of True Nobility and Gentility being the Life of the Renowned Nicolaus Claudius Fabricius, Lord of Pieresk, Senator of the Parliament at Aix, trans. William Rand (London, 1657), pp. 140–41. See also British Apollo, 24–26 April 1710. 38 Bartholin, ‘Of the Mermaid’, p. 119; Lucas Debes, Faeroae & Faeroa reserata, that is, A description of the islands & inhabitants of Foeroe being seventeen islands subject to the King of Denmark, lying under 62 deg. 10 min. of North latitude (London, 1676), pp. 188–9. 39 Reverend John Brand, A Brief Description of Orkney, Zetland, Pightland-Firth and Caithness [1707], in John Pinkerton, A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World (London, 1809), vol. iii, pp. 788–9. 40 ‘Modern’ is, of course, a subjective term wedded to time, place, peoples and perceptions. Certain late seventeenth-century thinkers believed their approaches were more modern, which made them so for this book’s purposes. Scholars still attempt to trace the beginnings of what we now consider ‘modernity’. Roy Porter found the ‘creation of the modern world’ in the eighteenth-century British Enlightenment, while Steven Pincus argued that the British ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 was the ‘first modern revolution’. Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment (London, 2000); Steven Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven, ct, 2009). 41 Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, pp. 255–301; Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, ca, 1994), pp. 1–16. 259

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42 Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus; or, Purchas his Pilgrimes in Twenty Volumes (Glasgow, 1905), vol. viii, p. 363; Jacob Larwood and John Camden Hotten, The History Signboards, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (London, 1867), p. 225. 43 Quoted in Arthur MacGregor, ‘The Tradescants as Collectors of Rarities’, Tradescant Rarities (Oxford, 1983), p. 21; Thomas Bartholin, Historiarum anatomicarum rariorum, centuria 1 en 11, vol. i (Amsterdam, 1654), p. 191. In 1662, Bartholin listed a mermaid’s hand and rib among the collections in his famed Copenhagen anatomy house. See Thomas Bartholin, The Anatomy House in Copenhagen, Briefly Described, ed. Niels W. Bruun, trans. Peter Fisher (Birketinget, 2015), pp. 105, 111. 44 Nehemiah Grew, Musaeum regalis societatis; or, A Catalogue & Description of the Natural and Artificial Rarities Belonging to the Royal Society and Preserved at Gresham College (London, 1694; originally published in 1681), pp. 80, 42, 81. 45 Wilma George, Animals and Maps (London, 1969), p. 62. Lao, Sirens, p. 102. As Lao put it, ‘hic sunt sirenae was used in the same way to mark unexplored waters.’ 46 The fact that Neptune – often drawn as a merman or a god riding a seahorse accompanied by mermaids – was the God of the Sea probably did not hurt either. Chet Van Duzer argued, I would suggest that sea monsters on maps have two main roles. First, they may serve as graphic records of literature about sea monsters, indications of possible dangers to sailors – and data points in the geography of the marvelous. Second, they may function as decorative elements which enliven the image of the world, suggesting in a general way that the sea can be dangerous, but more emphatically indicating and drawing attention to the vitality of the oceans and the variety of creatures in the world, and to the cartographer’s artistic talents. Of course these two roles are compatible, and sea monsters can play both at the same time . . . During the Renaissance, sea monsters on maps reflect and express an increased general interest in wonders and marvels.

Chet Van Duzer, Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps (London, 2013), pp. 11–12. 47 Others have written more detailed studies. See, for example, Van Duzer, Sea Monsters; George, Animals and Maps; Adele Haft, ‘The Mocking Mermaid: Maps and Mapping in Kenneth Slessor’s Poetic Sequence The Atlas, Part Four’, Cartographic 260

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48 49 50 51

52 53

54

55 56

Perspectives, lxxix (2014), www.cartographicperspectives.org, 2 October 2018. Parrish, American Curiosity, p. 481. For the Diego Gutiérezz image, see Van Duzer, Sea Monsters, p. 39; Pierre Desceliers, Planisphere (Arques, 1550). British Library Add. ms 24065, www.bl.uk, 7 November 2018. For Mercator image, see Van Duzer, Sea Monsters, p. 104. For Jode, see Cornelius Jode, Novae Guineae forma, & situs (Antwerp, 1593), n.p. See also, for instance, Giovanni Antonio Magini, ‘Regno di Napoli’, in Atlas (Bologna, 1620); Hendrick Hondius, Africae nova tabula (s.n., 1631); William Janszoon Blaue, ‘Asia Noviter Delineata’, in Blaue Atlas Maior (Amsterdam, 1662), vol. x., n.p. Lao, Sirens, p. 102. For an excellent survey of scholarship as well as an original argument regarding the placard, see Debra Barrett-Graves, ‘Mermaids, Sirens, and Mary, Queen of Scots: Icons of Wantonness and Pride’, in The Emblematic Queen: Extra-literary Representations of Early Modern Queenship, ed. Debra BarrettGraves (New York, 2013), pp. 69–100. Andrew Belsey and Catherine Belsey, ‘Icons of Divinity: Portraits of Elizabeth i’, in Renaissance Bodies: The Human Figure in English Culture c. 1540–1660, ed. Lucy Gent and Nigel Llewellyn (London, 1990), p. 14 (quote); Kristen G. Brookes, ‘A Feminine “Writing that Conquers”: Elizabethan Encounters with the New World’, Criticism, xxxxviii/2 (2006), p. 239 (quote). Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer, Folk-lore of Shakespeare (New York, 1884), pp. 500–503; Pedersen, Mermaids and the Production of Knowledge, p. 2. Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, p. 260. For armor, see Stefan Krause, ‘Fellows Series: The Etched Decoration of German Renaissance Armor’, The Met Online, www.metmuseum.org, 13 November 2018.

three Enlightened Experiments 1 This chapter is adapted from Vaughn Scribner, ‘“Such monsters do exist in nature”: Mermaids, Tritons, and the Science of Wonder in Eighteenth-century Europe’, Itinerario, xli/3 (2017), pp. 507–38, and Vaughn Scribner, ‘Diving into Mysterious Waters: Why Some of the Smartest Men in Early Modern Europe Believed in Merpeople’, History Today, lxviii/5 (2018), pp. 50–59. 261

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2 Though Enlightenment thinkers considered themselves arbiters of a ‘new science [with an] objective approach to the study of nature’, wonder, mystery and superstitions remained central to their investigations of humanity and the natural world. See Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York, 2001), p. 20; Barbara M. Benedict, Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry (Chicago, il, 2001), p. 2; Joy Kenseth, ‘The Age of the Marvelous: An Introduction’, in The Age of the Marvelous, ed. Joy Kenseth (Hanover, 1991), p. 54; Bob Bushaway, ‘“Tacit, Unsuspected, but Still Implicit Faith”: Alternative Belief in Nineteenth-century Rural England’, in Popular Culture in England, c. 1500–1850, ed. Tim Harris (New York, 1995), p. 189. 3 Daston and Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, pp. 1–11. As Richard Carrington noted, ‘the eighteenth century, which prided itself on its worldliness, cynicism, and good sense, was nevertheless as passionately addicted to mermaids as the preceding age.’ Richard Carrington, Mermaids and Mastodons: A Book of Natural and Unnatural History (New York, 1957), p. 10. 4 Susan Scott Parrish, American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, nc, 2006), pp. 24–76; Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York, 2001), pp. 275–443; Kathleen S. Murphy, ‘Collecting Slave Traders: James Petiver, Natural History, and the British Slave Trade’, William and Mary Quarterly, lxx/4 (2013), pp. 630–70; Mark Laird, ‘Mark Catesby’s Plant Introductions and English Gardens of the Eighteenth Century’, in The Curious Mister Catesby: A ‘Truly Ingenious’ Naturalist Explores New Worlds, ed. E. Charles Nelson and David J. Elliott (Athens, ga, 2015), pp. 265–80. 5 British Curiosities in Nature and Art (London, 1713), p. xx; Patrick Gordon, Geography Anatomiz’d; or, The Geographical Grammar, 9th edn (London, 1722), p. 331. 6 Al Luckenbach, ‘Ceramics from the Edward Rumney/Stephen West Tavern, London Town, Maryland, Circa 1725’, Chipstone: Ceramics in America 2002, www.chipstone.org, 20 December 2018. Special thanks to Kyle Dalton, Public Programs Administrator at Historic London Town, for bringing this plate to my attention (and for piquing my curiosity in further possibilities about the plate). 7 The mermaid depicted on one of the carved powder horns in the From Maps to Mermaids: Carved Powder Horns in Early America 262

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8

9

10

11 12

exhibition at the Fort Pitt Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by an anonymous artist that collectors have nicknamed the ‘Master Carver’. The original owner’s name was partially scraped off at some point, but ‘George S’ and the date 1761 remain. For another eighteenth-century powder horn which depicts a mermaid, see ‘Powder Horn (American: 1780)’, an 37.131.18, The Collection of J. H. Grenville Gilbert, of Ware, Massachusetts, Gift of Mrs. Gilbert, 1937, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Pennsylvania Gazette (pa), 6 May 1736; Providence Gazette (ri), 15 July 1769; Virginia Gazette (va), 3 November 1738 and 20 July 1739. For examples from English newspapers, see St. James Evening Post, 31 January – 3 February 1747; Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer, 7 September 1717. In Dr Samuel Johnson’s opinion, newspapers were ‘enlightening’ outlets that destroyed ‘barbarous’ ignorance through the ‘diffusion’ of knowledge. James Boswell, Boswell’s Life of Johnson (London, 1904), p. 452. Boston Evening-Post (ma), 17 May 1762; Captain Richard Whitbourne, A Discourse and Discovery of New-Found-Land (London, 1620), Conclusion (n.p.). Though historians have repeatedly claimed that John Smith viewed a mermaid off the coast of North America sometime between 1610 and 1614, this is not true. George Stengel falsely attributed Whitbourne’s account to Smith. See Vaughn Scribner, ‘Fabricating History: The Curious Case of John Smith, a Green-haired Mermaid, and Alexander Dumas’ and ‘Fabricating History Part Two: The Curious Case Continues’, The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History, https://earlyamericanists.com, 7 November 2008. British Apollo, 24–26 April 1710. As early as 1668, the Englishman John Wilkins produced An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language for the Royal Society of London in which he sought to provide definitions of every creature in the animal world. But ‘as for fictitious Animals, as Syren, or Mermaid, Phoenix, Griffin . . . &c’., Wilkins contended, ‘there is no provision made for them in these tables, because they may be infinite; and besides, being but bare names, and no more, they may be expressed as Individuals are.’ John Locke echoed Wilkins 22 years later when he exclaimed, ‘there neither were, nor had been in Nature such a Beast as an Unicorn, nor such a Fish as a Mermaid’. John Wilkins, An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (London, 1668), n.p.; John 263

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13 14

15 16

17

Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London, 1690), p. 196; Thomas Boreman, A Description of Some Curious and Uncommon Creatures, Omitted in the Description of Three Hundred Animals (London, 1740), p. 43; Benjamin Martin, The Philosophical Grammar (London, 1753), p. 358; The Naturalist’s Pocket Magazine; or, Compleat Cabinet of Nature (London, 1698); John Stewart, The Revolution of Reason; or, The Establishment of the Constitution of Things in Nature, of Man, of Human Intellect, of Moral Truth, of Universal Good (London, 1790), p. 166. ‘Sir Robert Sibbald to Sir Hans Sloane, November 29, 1703 (Edinburgh)’, Sloane ms 4039, ff. 218–19, British Library, London. ‘Cotton Mather to the Royal Society, July 5, 1716’, Cotton Mather Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, ma). I avoid using the term ‘scientist’ to describe early modern gentlemen in this work, as it is an anachronistic term denoting a professionalization that simply did not exist at the time. Instead, I rely upon the term ‘naturalist’ (in Aristotle’s sense of the term, which denoted one who systematically studied nature, natural history, natural philosophy, astronomy, optics and medicine) or, simply, ‘philosopher’. ‘Cotton Mather to the Royal Society, July 5, 1716’. Jean O’Neill and Elizabeth P. Mclean, Peter Collinson and the Eighteenth-century Natural History Exchange (Philadelphia, pa, 2008), p. 25 (quotes on Bevan’s mermaid and Royal Society presentation); Norman G. Brett-James, The Life of Peter Collinson (London, 1926), p. 198; Sylvanus Urban, Gentleman’s Magazine for January 1755 (London, 1755), vol. xxv, p. 504; In 1703, Sloane had received a letter from Sir Robert Sibbald explaining his efforts to inventory historical sightings of aquatic creatures (including mermaids and sirens) off the coast of Scotland. ‘Sir Robert Sibbald to Sir Hans Sloane, November 29, 1703’. ‘Carl Linnaeus to Kungliga Svenska Vetenskapsakademien, August 29, 1749’, The Linnaean Correspondence, http://linnaeus.c18. net, 24 January 2019. Special thanks to Lina Waara for translation assistance. Sylvanus Urban reported in his Gentleman’s Magazine in 1749, ‘At Nykoping, in Jutland, was lately caught a mermaid, which from the waist upward had a human form, but the rest was like a fish, with a tail turning up behind, the fingers were joined together by a membrane; it struggled, and beat itself to death in the net.’ Sylvanus Urban, Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle for 1749 (London, 1749), vol. xix, p. 428. 264

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18 The early eighteenth-century philosopher Benoî t de Maillet similarly noted that a merman seen in the Nile in the sixth century had ‘Skin of a Brownish Colour’. Benoît de Maillet, Telliamed; or, Conversations between an Indian Philosopher and a French Missionary on the Diminution of the Sea, trans. and ed. Albert V. Carozzi (Urbana, il, 1968), p. 192. 19 Theodore W. Pietsch, ‘Samuel Fallours and his “Sirenne” from the Province of Ambon’, Archives of Natural History, xviii (1991), pp. 1–7. 20 Ibid., pp. 6–7. 21 Ibid., pp. 7–8. 22 Louis Renard, Poissons, ecrevisses et crabes, 2nd edn (Amsterdam, 1754); Pietsch, ‘Samuel Fallours and his “Sirenne”’, pp. 10; Theodore W. Pietsch, ed., Fishes, Crayfishes, and Crabs: Louis Renard’s Natural History of the Rarest Curiosities of the Seas of the Indies, in Two Volumes (Baltimore, md, 1995), p. xii. 23 Emanuel da Costa, ‘Art. iii. Elements of Conchology; or, An Introduction to the Knowledge of Shells. By Emanuel Mendez da Costa, Member of the Academia Caesar. Imper. Nat. Curios. Plinius 1v. And of the Botanic Society of Florence. With Seven Plates, containing Figures of every Genus of Shells. 8 vo. 7s. 6d. Boards. White. 1776’, in The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, Volume lvi, From January to June 1777 (London, 1777), p. 94. 24 Sylvanus Urban, Gentleman’s Magazine for November 1755 (London, 1755), vol. xxv, pp. 502–4. 25 G. Robinson, The Beauties of Nature and Art Displayed in a Tour Through the World (London, 1764), p. 58; Thomas Smith, The Wonders of Nature and Art, Being an Account of Whatever is Most Curious and Remarkable Throughout the World, 2nd edn (London, 1768), vol. 11, p. 197. 26 ‘Jacques-Fabien Gautier, or Gautier d’Agoty’, in Sarah Lowengard, The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-century Europe (New York, 2006). 27 Sylvanus Urban, Gentleman’s Magazine for December 1759 (London, 1759), vol. xxix, p. 590. 28 Ibid. 29 Sylvanus Urban, Gentleman’s Magazine for June 1762 (London, 1762), vol. xxxii, p. 253. 30 Sylvanus Urban, Gentleman’s Magazine for May 1775 (London, 1775), vol. xlv, pp. 216–17. 31 Ibid. 32 Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia, pa, 2004), pp. 14, 49, 30–50. 265

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33 Maillet, Telliamed, pp. vii, 1–2, 191–2, 197. Other philosophers also wondered about the Earth’s aquatic origins. See James Rodger Fleming, Historical Perspectives on Climate Change (New York, 1998), pp. 1–30. 34 J. Dezallier d’Argenville, L’Histoire naturelle éclaircie dans une de ses parties principals, la conchyliolgie (Paris, 1757), p. 74; Maillet, Telliamed, pp. 3–4. 35 Erik Pontoppidan, The Natural History of Norway, in Two Parts, translated from the Danish original (London, 1755; originally published 1752–3), pp. iv, 186–7. 36 Given certain scholars (Rondoletius) had taken creative licence with this theory, going so far as to suggest that there were ‘sea monks’ and ‘sea bishops’. See also Thomas Bartholin, ‘Of the Mermaid, &c. from the Miscellanea naturae curiosorum, Dec. 1, 1671’, in Acta Germanica; or, The Literary Memoirs of Germany, &c., vol. 1 (London, 1742), pp. 118–21; Paracelsus, Four Treatises of Theophrastus Von Hohenheim Called Paracelsus, ed. Henry E. Sigerest (Baltimore, md, 2010), pp. 213–53. 37 Pontoppidan, The Natural History of Norway, pp. 186–91; Stepan Petrovich Krasheninnikov, The History of Kamtschatka, and the Kurilski Islands, with the Countries Adjacent, abridged translation (London, 1765; originally published in 1755 in Russia), pp. 136–7. 38 Carl Linnaeus and Abraham Osterdam, Siren lacertina, dissertatione academica orbi erudito data (Uppsala, 1766); Margaret Jean Anderson, Carl Linnaeus: Father of Classification (Springfield, il, 1997); Bartholin, ‘Of the Mermaid, &c. from the Miscellanea naturae curiosorum, Dec. 1, 1671’, pp. 118–21; Richard Wahlgren, ‘Carl Linnaeus and the Amphibia’, Bibliotheca herpetologica, 9 (2011), pp. 5–37; Carina Nynäs and Lars Bergquist, A Linnaean Kaleidoscope: Linnaeus and his 186 Dissertations, vol. 11 (Stockholm, 2016), pp. 439–43. The ‘siren lacertina’ still inhabits the southeastern portion of North America as one of America’s largest amphibians. See also Philip Hayward, Making a Splash: Mermaids (and Mermen) in 20th and 21st Century Audiovisual Media (Bloomington, in, 2017), p. 169. 39 Other mermaid shows occurred in eighteenth-century England. See, for instance, General Advertiser, 10 February 1749; Public Advertiser, 8 March 1775 (this mermaid was shown until 3 April 1775); Adrian Craciun, Fatal Women of Romanticism (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 215–16. See also The General Chronicle and Literary Magazine, from Jan. to April 1812 (London, 1812), vol. iv, pp. 236–40. 266

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four Freakshows and Fantasies 1 Technically, 4.34 times per year: between 1810 and 1845 (36 years), I identified 152 separate articles covering merpeople which appeared in British and American (English-language) newspapers and periodicals. 2 See also Richard Carrington, Mermaids and Mastodons: A Book of Natural and Unnatural History (New York, 1957), pp. 13–20. 3 Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, ma, 1978); Joe Nickell, Secrets of the Sideshows (Lexington, ky, 2005), pp. 1–18. 4 Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States Through 250 Years (New York, 1941), p. 216. See also Andrew King, Alexis Easley and John Morton, eds, The Routledge Handbook to Nineteenth-century British Periodicals and Newspapers (London, 2016). 5 ‘Soliloquy on the Annuals (Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1829)’, in John Wilson, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (Philadelphia, pa, 1842), vol. i, p. 70. 6 A search on the keyword ‘mermaid’ between 1800 and 1900 on www.newspapers.com (a repository of thousands of Western newspapers from the 1700s to the 2000s) and the digital archives of the New York Times returned over 95,000 results, which allowed me to develop a timeline of merpeople in Western newspapers. I ran this search throughout 2018–19. 7 ‘Thomas Jefferson to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, 9 February 1818’, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders. archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-12-02-0352, 11 April 2019 [original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, vol. xii: 1 September 1817 to 21 April 1818, ed. J. Jefferson Looney (Princeton, nj, 2014), pp. 441–8]; Harriet Ritvo, The Platypus and the Mermaid and other Figments of the Classifying Imagination (Cambridge, ma, 1997), pp. 1–8. 8 Morning Chronicle, 13 June 1809; ‘The Mermaid: Extract from the Glasgow Courier’, in Lancaster Gazette, 28 October 1809; Freeman’s Journal, 26 October 1809. For another newspaper which published the story, see Weekly Raleigh Register (nc), 14 September 1809. For mermaid sightings in Canada in the nineteenth century, see Auguste Vachon, ‘The Mermaid in Canadian Heraldry and Lore’, Heraldry in Canada, xlvii/3 (2013), pp. 17–29. All newspapers are uk unless the usa state of publication is given in brackets. 9 Morning Post, 13 March 1810. 267

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10 Raleigh Minerva (nc), 28 June 1811; The Times, 29 November 1811; Gwen Benwell and Alfred Waugh, Sea Enchantress: The Tale of the Mermaid and her Kin (New York, 1965), pp. 113–16; ‘On Mermaids’, in Sylvanus Urban, Gentleman’s Magazine for 1823 (London, 1823), vol. cxxxii, p. 39. 11 The Observer, 30 August 1812; Liverpool Mercury, 4 September 1812; Pennsylvania Gazette (pa), 4 November 1812. 12 Aberdeen Chronicle, 20 August 1814; Caledonian Mercury, 27 August 1814; Buffalo Journal (ny), 6 December 1814. 13 The Observer, 21 August 1814; Morning Post, 25 August 1814; Liverpool Mercury, 26 August 1814. 14 James W. Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 16–17. 15 Morning Chronicle, 8 September 1814. 16 Caledonian Mercury, 8 October 1814 (this newspaper reported on the Belfast Chronicle story); Morning Post, 12 October 1814; The Gleaner (pa), 20 December 1814; Morning Post, 21 October 1814. 17 Pass was not the only revered early nineteenth-century illustrator to imagine merpeople in wondrous colour. Five years earlier, in 1812, the celebrated English artist George Cruikshank used mermaids, mermen and sea monsters to joke about George, Prince of Wales’s propensity for lust, mistresses and selfindulgence in his etching ‘The Sea of Politics: The Prince of Whales or the Fishermen at Anchor’. See ‘The Prince of Whales or the Fisherman at Anchor’, Met Online, www.metmuseum.org, 13 November 2018. 18 For Captain Eades, see Jan Bondeson, The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History (Ithaca, ny, 1999), pp. 38–49; Beatrice Phillpotts, Mermaids (New York, 1980), p. 58; Ritvo, Platypus and the Mermaid, pp. 178–80; Benwell and Waugh, Sea Enchantress, pp. 124–5; Cook, The Arts of Deception, p. 89. 19 Bondeson, The Feejee Mermaid, pp. 38–9. For Philip, see Exeter Flying Post, 25 July 1822; Aberdeen Journal, 31 July 1822. 20 Morning Chronicle, 25 September 1819; Morning Post, 30 December 1820, 19 January 1821, 28 April 1821. Ritvo, Platypus and the Mermaid, pp. xi–xii, 4, 7, 50, 130–33, 181–2. 21 Paoli Viscardi et al., ‘Mermaids Uncovered’, Journal of Museum Ethnography, 27 (2014), pp. 98–116. See also Paoli Viscardi, ‘Mermaids in a Medical Museum?’ The Wellcome Collection Online, https://wellcomecollection.org, 28 October 2018. 268

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22 Viscardi et al., ‘Mermaids Uncovered’. Philip Hayward, ‘Japan: The “Mermaidisation” of the Ningyo and Related Folkloric Figures’, in Scaled for Success: The Internationalisation of the Mermaid, ed. Philip Hayward (Bloomington, in, 2018), pp. 51–4; Juni’chiro Suwa, ‘Ningyo Legends, Enshrined Islands and the Animation of an Aquapelagic Assemblage Around Biwako’, Shima, xii/2 (2018), p. 78. 23 Morning Chronicle, 7 November 1822; Royal Cornwall Gazette, 3 August 1822; Morning Chronicle, 29 October 1822; Manchester Guardian, 5 October 1822; Bondeson, The Feejee Mermaid, pp. 38–47. 24 Morning Post, 4 November 1822. 25 This paragraph owes much to Bondeson, The Feejee Mermaid, pp. 41–9. 26 Bury and Norwich Post, 30 October 1822; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 8 November 1822; Morning Chronicle, 7 November 1822; Caledonian Mercury, 7 November 1822; Leeds Mercury, 23 November 1822; Worcester Journal, 28 November 1822; Derby Mercury, 11 December 1822; Morning Chronicle, 17 December 1822; Leeds Intelligencer, 7 February 1823; Morning Chronicle, 7 February 1823; Morning Post, 14 May 1823. 27 Derby Mercury, 28 January 1824; Morning Post, 12 May 1824; The Observer, 3 September 1826; Long Island Star (ny), 9 May 1832. 28 Morning Post, 7 July 1841. 29 The Examiner, 13 July 1823. 30 Leigh Hunt, ‘The Sirens and Mermaids of the Poets’, The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, Part Two (London, 1836), pp. 273–82; Leigh Hunt, ‘Tritons and Men of the Sea’, The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, Part One (London, 1837), pp. 505–18. 31 For the scientific articles, see the Hampshire Telegraph and Naval Chronicle, 5 March 1827; Morning Post, 6 June 1827, 25 June 1827; London Times, 6 July 1827; Liverpool Mercury, 11 July 1828; Caledonian Mercury, 2 October 1828; Susquehanna Democrat (pa), 21 November 1828; Morning Post, 5 January 1830; Long-Island Star (ny), 9 May 1832; Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, 23 March 1839; Times-Picayune (la), 26 June 1840; Bradford Observer, 20 August 1840; Boston Post (ma), 4 February 1841, 27 July 1841. 32 Bradford Observer, 20 August 1840. 33 For the stage, see The Observer, 16 April 1826. For poems, see the ‘Mermaid’s Cave’, which captivated readers throughout America and Britain beginning in 1832. Sentinel and Democrat (vt), 269

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37 38 39 40 41

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7 December 1832. See also Alfred Lord Tennyson’s 1830 poem ‘The Mermaid’. For fictional pieces, see Boston Post (ma), 9 May 1833; Evening Post, 28 March 1835. For a joke, see the Public Ledger (pa), 24 May 1836, in which the editor noted, ‘on Monday evening last, young lady fell into a Canal, at a height of nearly twenty feet, between the corner of the new brick store, and the arch bridge near the mansion house, and escaped unhurt. She was probably a mermaid.’ Hull Packet, 18 March 1842. See also the Caledonian Mercury, 1 June 1829. Tioga Eagle (pa), 14 February 1840. P. T. Barnum, The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself, with Related Documents [1855], ed. Stephen Mihm (Boston, ma, 2018), p. 71. See also Zach Hutchins, ‘Herman Melville’s Feejee Mermaid, or a Confidence Man at the Lyceum’, esq: A Journal of the American Renaissance, lx/1 (2014), pp. 80–84; Steven C. Levi, ‘P. T. Barnum and the Feejee Mermaid’, Western Folklore, xxxvi/2 (1977), pp. 149–54. Barnum, The Life of P. T. Barnum, pp. 71–2, Times-Picayune (la), 13 July 1842; Baltimore Sun (md), 28 July 1842. Barnum, The Life of P. T. Barnum, pp. 73–5; Nickell, Secrets of the Sideshows, p. 12. New-York Tribune (ny), 4 August 1842, 11 August 1842; Barnum, The Life of P. T. Barnum, pp. 73–5. Times-Picuyane (la), 12 February 1843; Raleigh Microcosm (nc), 25 February 1843; Middlebury People’s Press (vt), 1 March 1843; Bondeson, The Feejee Mermaid, pp. 53–4. Ibid.; Cook, The Arts of Deception, pp. 102–3; North American and Daily Advertiser (pa), 13 August 1842; William T. Alderson, Mermaids, Mummies, and Mastodons: The Emergence of the American Museum (Washington, dc, 1992). Cook, The Arts of Deception; Brooklyn Daily Eagle (ny), 10 August 1860. Heather Brink-Roby, ‘Siren Canora: The Mermaid and the Mythical in Late Nineteenth-century Science’, Archives of Natural History, xxxv/1 (2014), pp. 1–14; Béatrice Laurent, ‘Monster or Missing Link?: The Mermaid and the Victorian Imagination’, Cahiers Victoriens et Édouardiens [in English], lxxxv (Spring 2017), accessed 31 October 2018, http://journals.openedition.org/cve/3188; doi: 10.4000/cve.3188; Ritvo, Platypus and the Mermaid, pp. 50–60. Brink-Roby, ‘Siren Canora’, p. 2. Laurent argued that ‘the scientific wrangling to make sense of [mermaids’] nature and to include her 270

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53

in one theory or another shows the resistance of ancient beliefs, concomitant in the nineteenth century with new ways of understanding the world.’ Laurent, ‘Monster or Missing Link’. William Jardine, ‘Review of Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, xi (1860), p. 282. Manchester Weekly Times and Examiner, 24 October 1849. See the Manchester Weekly Times and Examiner, 10 August 1847; North Carolinian (nc), 3 August 1850; Buffalo Morning Express (NY), 8 August 1850; New Orleans Crescent (la), 7 December 1850; The Standard, 27 January 1851; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 1 February 1852; Nottinghamshire Gazette, 7 April 1853; Liverpool Mercury, 14 May 1854; Lancashire Advertiser, 24 March 1860; Liverpool Mercury, 22 May 1860; Waterford News, 6 February 1863; Irish People (Ireland), 9 July 1864; Huddersfield Chronicle, 10 February 1866; Deseret News (ut), 3 May 1866; New York Times (ny), 24 July 1871; Yorkshire Herald, 16 December 1874; Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), 22 July 1875; Bradford Observer, 16 August 1875; Morning Post, 30 August 1875; Weekly Standard and Express, 30 December 1876; Morning Post, 21 June 1878; The Standard, 27 June 1878; Hamilton County Democrat (ia), 26 July 1878; Washington Standard (wa), 23 May 1879; Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, 4 October 1880; New York Times (ny), 11 July 1886; The Messenger (nc), 2 November 1888; Manchester Weekly Times and Examiner, 13 July 1889; The Sun (ny), 26 January 1890; Parsons Daily Sun (ks), 2 August 1893; Logansport Pharos-Tribune (ia), 2 March 1894; Los Angeles Herald (ca), 16 June 1895; Yorkshire Herald and the York Herald, 14 January 1896; New York Times (ny), 23 May 1897. Monongahela Valley Republican (pa), 26 May 1854; Illustrated Police News, 6 July 1878; Chicago Times (il), 23 May 1879; Saint Paul Globe (mn), 4 July 1892; New York Times (ny), 23 May 1897. Laurent, ‘Monster or Missing Link’, n.p. (quote). ‘Prose Idylls, by the Rev. C. Kingsley’, in Hampshire Advertiser, 13 June 1874. Washington Sentinel (Washington, dc), 11 June 1898. The Era, 27 February 1853; The Standard, 28 January 1852. New York Times (ny), 16 December 1854; Buffalo Commercial (ny), 21 April 1855. See also The Observer, 7 January 1855; Weekly Raleigh Register (nc), 4 April 1855, 7 April 18; Semi-weekly Standard (nc), 14 April 1855. Buffalo Morning Express (ny), 1 January 1851; Baltimore Sun (md), 31 May 1851. 271

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54 Buffalo Commercial (ny), 20 June 1851; Raleigh Register (nc), 1 October 1851; Asheville News (nc), 9 March 1854. For other pieces which use merpeople as symbols of the nation’s political woes in the years leading up to the American Civil War, see the Weekly Pantagraph (il), 1 January 1851; Wisconsin Argus (wi), 9 July 1851; Daily Sentinel (vt), 19 December 1851; Daily Delta (la), 29 November 1854; Richmond Enquirer (va), 30 March 1855; New York Times (ny), 26 June 1855; Hartford Courant (ct), 16 October 1856; Buffalo Morning Express (ny), 22 October 1860. By 3 November 1880, the Chicago Tribune (il) used the imagery of the mermaid to mock the women’s suffrage movement. 55 The Times, 22 April 1851. 56 Nebraska State Journal (nb), 26 July 1884; Summit County Beacon (oh), 17 January 1855; Buffalo Morning Express (ny), 11 February 1875. For similar articles, see The Standard, 27 January 1851; The Times, 22 April 1851; The Guardian, 6 September 1851; Lloyd’s Weekly, 30 January 1853; Alexandria Gazette (va), 26 June 1860; Daily Milwaukee News (wi), 29 January 1861; New York Daily Herald (ny), 29 April 1869; London Observer, 23 July 1871; Freeman’s Journal, 20 August 1873; Morning Post, 30 August 1875; Larned Eagle-Optic (ks), 9 September 1881; Boston Globe (ma), 11 November 1881; News and Citizen (vt), 5 February 1885; Juniata Sentinel and Republican (pa), 24 February 1885; Times and News (al), 19 August 1886; National Republican (Washington, dc), 18 November 1887; Eufaula Daily Times (al), 28 May 1889; Record-Union (ca), 1 January 1890; Boston Globe (ma), 4 August 1890; New York Times (ny), 8 July 1899. 57 Southern Weekly Post (nc), 8 October 1853. For Barnum, see Bondeson, The Feejee Mermaid, pp. 54–6. 58 ‘A Real Mermaid, from a correspondent of the Delhi Gazette, writing from Benares on the 19th December’, Nottinghamshire Guardian, 11 February 1870. 59 See, for instance, Lloyd’s Weekly, 30 January 1853; Green-Mountain Freeman (vt), 9 June 1853; Chicago Tribune (il), 30 December 1859; Buffalo Commercial (ny), 19 July 1860; Buffalo Courier (ny), 11 February 1860; Daily Milwaukee News (wi), 29 January 1861; The Times, 25 April 1864; Glasgow Herald, 16 February 1870; New York Daily Herald (ny), 25 May 1870; Evening Telegraph, 18 May 1870; Times-Picayune (la), 3 June 1870; Chicago Tribune (il), 3 November 1880; Caldwell Tribune (ks), 2 November 1889; Eufaula Daily Times (al), 28 May 1889. 60 Era, 24 April 1886. 272

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61 Huddersfield Chronicle and West Yorkshire Advertiser, 8 September 1874. 62 The Times (pa), 6 April 1890. This illustrated exposé was based off a piece published in the New England Farmer (ma), 18 December 1880; Philadelphia Times (pa), 5 August 1883. See also the New York Daily Herald (ny), 1 June 1853; Brooklyn Evening Star (ny), 11 August 1860; Boston Weekly Globe (ma), 28 July 1880; Cincinnati Enquirer (oh), 30 September 1883; Harrisburg Telegraph (pa), 18 February 1884; Republican Citizen (ks), 4 July 1884; Quad-City Times (ia), 8 February 1886; Star Tribune (mn), 5 March 1887; Saint Paul Globe (mn), 29 November 1887; New York Times (ny), 12 February 1888; Lawrence Daily Journal (ks), 6 September 1888; Record-Union (ca), 1 January 1890; Galveston Daily News (tx), 28 September 1891; Stevens Point Journal (wi), 8 May 1896. 63 Henry Lee, Sea Fables Explained (London, 1883), pp. 15, 51. 64 Fletcher S. Bassett, Legends and Superstitions of the Sea and of Sailors in All Lands and at All Times (Chicago, il, 1885), p. 201. 65 For other published histories, see Bradford Observer, 3 May 1873; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 27 July 1873; Boston Globe (ma), 11 November 1881; Chicago Tribune (il), 24 July 1882; Boston Globe (ma), 13 January 1884; Guernsey Star, 17 March 1887; Boston Globe (ma), 26 August 1888; Pittsburgh Dispatch (pa), 23 November 1890; Winnipeg Tribune (Canada), 28 July 1892; Philadelphia Inquirer (pa), 26 August 1894; Kansas City Journal (mo), 3 November 1895; Yorkshire Herald and the York Herald, 14 January 1896. 66 T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (Chicago, il, 1994); Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York, 1967). 67 Courier and Argus, 21 July 1854. For articles which mocked certain Britons for their superstitions and folklore surrounding merpeople, see Manchester Weekly Times and Examiner, 22 October 1851; Hartford Courant (ct), 13 December 1851; Weekly Standard and Express, 21 September 1853; New York Times (ny), 7 September 1857; Manchester Weekly Times and Examiner, 28 December 1861; Democratic Press (oh), 26 September 1861; North Wales Chronicle, 30 September 1865; Evening Telegraph, 28 April 1866; Leeds Mercury, 11 September 1866; Pittsburgh Daily (pa), 22 February 1868; Freeman’s Journal, 20 August 1873; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 18 January 1874; New York Times (ny), 27 December 1874; Weekly Standard and Express, 30 December 1876; New York Times (ny), 9 April 1882; New York Times (ny), 22 October 1882; Manchester 273

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Weekly Times and Examiner, 4 October 1884; Chicago Tribune (il), 2 July 1893; Royal Cornwall Gazette, 17 August 1899; New York Times (ny), 2 September 1890. See also Benwell and Waugh, Sea Enchantress, pp. 154–79; Frederica Gordon Cumming, In the Hebrides (London, 1883), p. 376; Murray G. H. Pittock, The Invention of Scotland: The Stuart Myth and the Scottish Identity, 1638 to the Present (London, 1991), pp. 73–133; Ronald MacDonald Douglas, Scottish Lore and Folklore (New York, 1982), p. 112; Alex Tyrrell, ‘The Queen’s “Little Trip”: The Royal Visit to Scotland in 1842’, Scottish Historical Review, lxxxii/213 (April 2003), pp. 47–73. D. L. Rinear, Stage, Page, Scandals and Vandals: William Burton and Nineteenth-century American Theatre (Carbondale, il, 2004), p. 112 (Public Ledger quote); Reynolds’s Newspaper, 6 June 1852; Daily News, 22 January 1852. For Romanticism, see Richard Mills, ‘Psychedelic Deep Blues: The Romanticised Sea Creature in Jimi Hendrix’s “1983 . . . (A Merman I should Turn to Be)” (1968), Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren” (1968) and Captain Beefheart’s “Grow Fins” (1972)’, in Beasts of the Deep, ed. John Hackett and Seán Harrington (Bloomington, in, 2018), pp. 94–108. Boston Globe (ma), 13 May 1896; Green-Mountain Freeman (vt), 31 July 1872. Examiner, 17 May 1862; Morning Post, 30 October 1862. For more on mermaids in nineteenth-century art, see Lynda Nead, ‘Woman as Temptress: The Siren and the Mermaid in Victorian Painting’, Leeds Arts Calendar, lxxxxi (1982), pp. 5–20; Lauren Sanford, ‘Littoral Crossings: Imagery of Women and Water in Nineteenth-century Britain’, PhD thesis, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 2014, pp. 71–119. Newspapers often noted sailors’ mermaid tattoos as identifiers. See, for example, Columbian Fountain (Washington, dc), 18 April 1846; Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), 16 April 1847; Weekly Standard, 5 September 1849. See also Lotti Mealing, ‘The Mermaid as Postmodern Muse in Sarah Hall’s The Electric Michelangelo’, Contemporary Women’s Writing, viii/2 ( July 2014), pp. 226–7. For the mermaid skirt, see Patricia Hunt-Hurst, ‘Mermaid Dress’, in Clothing and Fashion: American Fashion from Head to Toe, in Four Volumes, ed. José F. Blanco (Santa Barbara, ca, 2016), vol. ii, p. 186. Sailors had also cultivated a long-standing tradition of crafting ‘Jenny Hanivers’ – dried rays which sailors modified to resemble other small aquatic creatures – for sale on shore. See George M. 274

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Eberhart, Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology (Santa Barbara, ca, 2002), p. 256. 72 Butte Miner (mt), 6 May 1899. 73 Lears, No Place of Grace, p. xi.

five Modern Mermaids 1 This is based on a true account. Mr Peabody and the Mermaid and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein filmed on the same lot in 1948. Tourists were once shocked to see Glenn Strange in his Frankenstein’s monster costume and Ann Blyth in her mermaid costume sharing lunch. For an image of Strange as Frankenstein’s monster holding Blyth as a mermaid, see www.imdb.com, accessed 5 December 2018. 2 Henry Luce, ‘The American Century’, Life (17 February 1941), pp. 61–5. 3 Rebecca Edwards et al., America’s History, 9th edn (Boston, ma, 2018), pp. 731–3; Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York, 2003); Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (Cambridge, 2001). 4 For the early twentieth-century mermaid art of the Australian painter Norman Lindsay, see Philip Hayward, ‘Swimming Ashore: Mermaids in Australian Public Culture’, in Scaled for Success: The Internationalisation of the Mermaid, ed. Philip Hayward (Bloomington, in, 2018), pp. 174–6. See also Beatrice Phillpotts, Mermaids (New York, 1980), pp. 76–9. 5 ‘A Mermaid, 1900’, Royal Academy Online, www.royalacademy. org.uk, 27 November 2018. 6 See, for instance, ‘Mermaid Stories for Montana Boys and Girls’, Anaconda Standard (mt), 10 May 1903; ‘W. S. Wallace, The First Journey from One Garden to Another, in “Our Young Folks”’, Altoona Times (pa), 7 November 1903; Gwen Benwell and Alfred Waugh, Sea Enchantress: The Tale of the Mermaid and her Kin (New York, 1965), pp. 234–77. 7 Times Recorder (oh), 14 September 1914; Tampa Tribune (fl), 11 April 1915. Historians remain surprisingly silent on Kellerman. The most in-depth investigation is included in Angela Woollacott, Race and Modern Exotic: Three ‘Australian’ Women on Global Display (Monash, 2011), pp. 1–45. Woollacott rightly argues that Kellerman used a combination of physical prowess and sexuality to gain 275

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popularity. Two popular biographies of Kellerman also exist: Emily Gibson and Barbara Firth, The Original Million Dollar Mermaid: The Annette Kellerman Story (Sydney, 2005), and Shana Corey, Mermaid Queen: The Spectacular True Story of Annette Kellerman, Who Swam Her Way to Fame, Fortune, and Swimsuit History (New York, 2009). The Original Million Dollar Mermaid is an in-depth popular biography, while Mermaid Queen is children’s fiction. Finally, two unpublished pieces exist. Christine Schmidt M. Des wrote ‘Second Skin: Annette Kellerman, the Modern Swimsuit, and an Australian Contribution to Global Fashion’, PhD thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2008, and Clarice M. Butkus produced an ma thesis on Kellerman: Clarice M. Butkus, ‘“A Story of Girls and Pearls”: Genre and Gender in the Films of Annette Kellerman’, ma thesis, New York University, 2008. See also Philip Hayward, Making a Splash: Mermaids (and Mermen) in 20th and 21st Century Audiovisual Media (Bloomington, in, 2017), pp. 53–5; Clarice M. Butkus, ‘Annette Kellerman’, in Women Film Pioneers Project, ed. Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal and Monica Dall’Asta, Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, New York, Columbia University Libraries, https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/ pioneer/ccp-annette-kellerman, 28 November 2018. Annette Kellerman, ‘Physical Beauty – How to Keep It’, Boston Globe (ma), 14 July 1918; Gibson and Firth, The Original Million Dollar Mermaid, pp. 57–64; Woollacott, Race and the Modern Exotic, pp. 12–13. The Tennessean (tn), 20 September 1908. A French silent film, La Sirène, had been released in 1904, but never enjoyed the popularity and accessibility of Kellerman’s mermaid. St Louis Star and Times (mo), 6 February 1911; Tacoma Times (wa), 26 August 1911; New York Times, 9 June 1911; Woollacott, Race and the Modern Exotic, p. 19; Gibson and Firth, The Original Million Dollar Mermaid, pp. 87–98. Hayward, Making a Splash, p. 54. Los Angeles Times (ca), 7 June 1914; Times Recorder (oh), 14 September 1914. Oregon Daily Journal (or), 1 December 1912. ‘New Productions at the Sydney Theatres’, Green Room (Australia), 1 February 1917; Woollacott, Race and the Modern Exotic, pp. 23–32. Los Angeles Times (ca), 14 September 1919; 9 December 1919; ‘Filmed Interview with Annette Kellerman, 1932’, from ‘The Original Mermaid: Rickets (Michael Cordell, 2002)’, National Film and 276

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16 17 18

19 20 21 22

23

Sound Archive of Australia, www.nfsa.gov.au, 28 November 2018; Woollacott, Race and the Modern Exotic, pp. 39–41. In 1924 the silent film Peter Pan also featured mermaids bathing on a rock, but only as minor figures. By 1938, Walt Disney’s studio released a short animated film under its ‘Silly Symphonies’ series called Merbabies in which baby merpeople played on the ocean floor. Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic, pp. 193–398. Disney’s animated film Peter Pan (1953) also briefly featured mermaids. They conformed to contemporary notions of gender and sex. See the Des Moines Register (ia), 20 July 1952. The film was based on a 1946 novel by Guy and Constance Jones, Mr Peabody’s Mermaid. Hayward, Making a Splash, p. 57. For mermaids in other fictional entertainment in the 1950s and 1960s, see Melissa Jones, ‘A Mermaid’s Tale: The Evolution of the Representation of Mermaids in Popular Culture’, Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History, viii/2 (2018), pp. 27–8; Phillpotts, Mermaids, pp. 78–82. For mermaids in 1960s and 1970s popular music, see Richard Mills, ‘Psychedelic Deep Blues: The Romanticised Sea Creature in Jimi Hendrix’s “1983 . . . (A Merman I should Turn to Be)” (1968), Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren” (1968) and Captain Beefheart’s “Grow Fins” (1972)’, in Beasts of the Deep, ed. John Hackett and Seán Harrington (Bloomington, in, 2018), pp. 94–108. Life (12 July 1948), p. 81. Susan White, ‘Split Skins: Female Agency and Bodily Mutilation in The Little Mermaid ’, in Film Theory Goes to the Movies, ed. Jim Collins, Hilary Radner and Ava Preacher (London, 1993), p. 185. Originally staged at London’s Embassy Theatre, the film was released shortly thereafter in the cinema. Howard, Making a Splash, p. 62. David Fantle and Tom Johnson, Reel to Real: 25 Years of Celebrity Interviews (New York, 2003), p. 99; Scott Eyman, Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer (New York, 2005), p. 421. This paragraph owes much to Jennifer A. Kokai, ‘Weeki Wachee Girls and Buccaneer Boys: The Evolution of Mermaids, Gender, and “Man versus Nature” Tourism’, Theatre History Studies, xxxi (2011), pp. 69–70. See also Jennifer A. Kokai, Swim Pretty: Aquatic Spectacles and the Performance of Race, Gender, and Nature (Carbondale, il, 2017), pp. 1–17, 54–95. Hayward, Making a Splash, p. 68 (quote), 68–70, 70–72. For a reproduction of the film poster for Aqua Sex, see www.allposters.com 277

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24 Morning Post, 7 July 1841. 25 Kokai, ‘Weeki Wachee Girls’, p. 71 (quote). 26 Tampa Times (FL), 4 August 1948; Tampa Tribune (fl), 31 July 1955; St Louis Post-Dispatch (mo), 2 May 1954. 27 Kokai, ‘Weeki Wachee Girls’, pp. 73–4; St. Petersburg Times (fl), 12 August 1961. 28 As historian Jennifer Kokai noted, ‘cultural representations of mermaids in the United States have often wavered between overtly sexual and the stuff of children’s stories, and managing this dichotomy was one of the key concerns for Weeki Wachee.’ Kokai, ‘Weeki Wachee Girls’, p. 74. 29 Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley, ca, 1985), pp. xv–xxii. Interestingly, in October 2005 the Evian water company printed an advertisement that was almost identical to the Schweppes ad. A mermaid drinks a bottle of Evian and looks at the viewer. See ‘Evian: Mermaid’, Ads of the World, www.adsoftheworld.com, 2 December 2018. In the early twentieth century, mermaids also appeared in advertisements for Mennen’s Borated Talcum Powder and Venetian sponges. 30 Advertisers predictably capitalized on this feeding frenzy, and the advertising industry entered its ‘golden era’ after 1945. Over the next forty years, consumerism, capitalism and the mass media became wholly intertwined with the American Dream; simultaneously, gender norms and patriarchy emerge as critical facets of American culture and society. Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic, pp. 8–9; Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (New York, 2001), pp. 1, 8–9. For bread advertisements see the Tampa Times (fl), 4 August 1948. In 1969 ‘Groom & Clean’ hair gel ran a print ad which displayed a seductive mermaid holding the product and saying ‘Hey, Mister . . . come clean with me!’ A year before they ran another print ad, also displaying a mermaid. She is depicted saying, ‘New Groom & Clean is Water-Active Just Like Me!’ Travel companies also often depicted mermaids in their advertisements, as did cruise lines. 31 ‘Joyce B. Brand, Commercial Artist, Dies at 88’, New York Times (ny), 18 May 2006. For more on the evolution of pin-up girls and advertising, see Maria Elena Buszek, Pin-up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture (Durham, nc, 2006), pp. 232–67. 278

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32 Even the famed American artist Norman Rockwell entered the fray when he depicted a partially naked mermaid on the cover of the Indianapolis (in) Saturday Evening Post (22 August 1955). Although some readers called the image ‘lurid and pornographic’, an editor’s poll determined that only one in twenty subscribers objected to the piece. Many found it amusing, with one respondent quipping, ‘What bait is best? Do I need a license?’ Others surely gravitated to the caged mermaid’s beautiful smile and barely covered breasts. Sex sells, even on the cover of a weekly periodical known for its family friendly demeanor. Patrick Perry, ‘Lucky Catch’, Saturday Evening Post, 2 March 2015. Unfortunately, excessive copyright costs prevented me from including this image in Merpeople: A Human History. A scan of the cover image can be easily found online. 33 Ed Zern, How to Catch a Mermaid (Glendale, ca, 1959). For more on Zern see Editor, ‘Obituary: Ed Zern, 83, Writer for Field & Stream and Conservationist’, New York Times, 27 March 1994. 34 Zern, How to Catch a Mermaid. Special thanks to Charlotte Vecchia at Western Filament, Inc. for sending me a copy of ‘How to Catch a Mermaid’. A year later the Western Fishing Line Company released their ‘w-80’ line. Once again, they used a mermaid in their print advertisements. She is a female actress who is topless underwater, and only barely covers her nipple with her arm. 35 Howard, Making a Splash, p. 63 (quote). 36 Grace Lee Whitney and Jim Denney, The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy (Clovis, ca, 1998), pp. 35–6. 37 Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia epidemica (London, 1646), p. 260. 38 John Tosh, The Pursuit of History, 5th edn (London, 2010), p. 6. 39 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (pa), 9 November 1960. See also Pittsburgh Press (pa), 25 August 1949; Des Moines Register (ia), 20 July 1952; Petaluma Argus-Courier (ca), 9 May 1962. 40 Richard Carrington, Mermaids and Mastodons: A Book of Natural and Unnatural History (New York, 1957), pp. xv, 5, 19. 41 Sona Rosa Burstein, ‘Obituaries: Sir Arthur Waugh, k.c.i.e., c.s.i., m.a., 1891–1968’, Folklore, lxxix/1 (1968), p. 57; Gwen Benwell and Arthur Waugh, Sea Enchantress: The Tale of the Mermaid and her Kin (New York, 1965), pp. 13, 276–7. 42 Molly Cox and David Attenborough, David Attenborough’s Fabulous Animals (London, 1975), pp. 25, 27. 43 A ‘Mermaid Look’ also became popular among European women in the 1960s, as they would apply green eyeshadow and add subtle 279

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hints of green to their hair. One newspaper proclaimed, ‘it’s a green that is more of a mood than a color. Nobody really sees it, but everyone feels its presence, evanescence and ethereal qualities. Want to be this mysterious mermaid called La Sirene?’ Press and Sun Bulletin (ny), 6 January 1960. Daily News (ny), 3 January 1954. Statesman Journal (or), 6 March 1961. See also Benwell and Waugh, Sea Enchantress, p. 277. Laura Sells, ‘“Where do the Mermaids Stand?”: Voice and Body in The Little Mermaid ’, in From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture, ed. Elizabeth Bell, Lynda Haas and Laura Sells (Bloomington, in, 1995), p. 190. For the origins of the post-feminist movement, see Rosi Braidotti, ‘Envy: Or, With My Brains and Your Looks’, in Men in Feminism, ed. Alice Jardine and Paul Smith (New York, 1987), pp. 233–41; Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London, 1990). Roberta Trites, ‘Disney’s Sub/Version of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid ’, Journal of Popular Film and Television, xviii/4 (1991), pp. 152, 145. White, ‘Split Skins’, pp. 183, 185; Sells, ‘Where do the Mermaids Stand?’, pp. 176–7, 186; Efrat Tseëlon, ‘The Little Mermaid: An Icon of Woman’s Condition in Patriarchy, and the Human Condition of Castration’, International Journal of Psycho-analysis, lxxvi/5 (1995), p. 1023. Sells, ‘Where do the Mermaids Stand?’, p. 190, 188; Lucy Rollin, ‘Fear of Faerie: Disney and the Elitist Critics’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, xii (1987), pp. 90–93. Other films and acts also featured mermaids in the 1980s and 1990s. See, for instance, Mermaids (1990), Madonna’s music video for ‘Cherish’ (1991) and the comedian Bette Midler’s 1980s act in which she performed as a mermaid in a wheelchair (thanks, Miranda!). See also The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), in which a girl in Donegal, Ireland, investigates tales of local merpeople, and Hook (1991), in which beautiful mermaids rescue an adult Peter Pan after Captain Hook’s pirates throw him overboard. Philip Hayward, ‘Introduction’, in Scaled for Success: The Internationalisation of the Mermaid, ed. Philip Hayward (Bloomington, in, 2018), pp. 3–4; Hayward, Making a Splash, pp. 151–66, 75–89. Tseëlon, ‘The Little Mermaid ’, p. 1027. 280

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six Into Global Waters 1 This chapter defines the Middle East as the region comprising Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Israel. 2 Scientists often term this ‘cultural bias’, or, in the more extreme form, ‘ethnocentrism’. For an in-depth study, see Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis and Aaron Wildavsky, Cultural Theory (Boulder, co, 1990). 3 Beatrice Phillpotts, Mermaids (New York, 1980), p. 8; Henry Lee, Sea Fables Explained (London, 1883), pp. 3–4; Manal Shalaby, ‘The Middle Eastern Mermaid: Between Myth and Religion’, in Scaled for Success, pp. 7–20. 4 Phillpotts, Mermaids, pp. 10–14; Meri Lao, Sirens: Symbols of Seduction, trans. John Oliphant (Rochester, vt, 1998), pp. 1–57; Jacqueline Leclercq-Marx, The Mermaid in the Thought and Art of Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Brussels, 1997), pp. vii–xi; Phillpotts, Mermaids, pp. 9–10; Alison Luchs, The Mermaids of Venice: Fantastic Sea Creatures in Venetian Renaissance Art (London, 2010), pp. 1–20; Gwen Benwell and Arthur Waugh, Sea Enchantress: The Tale of the Mermaid and her Kin (New York, 1965), pp. 23–50; Juliette Wood, Fantastic Creatures in Mythology and Folklore: From Medieval Times to the Present Day (London, 2018), pp. 49–92. 5 Lee, Sea Fables Explained, pp. 4, 7. 6 Irving Finkel, The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood (New York, 2013); Anastasia G. Yanchilina et al., ‘Compilation of Geophysical, Geochronological, and Geochemical Evidence Indicates a Rapid Mediterranean-derived Submergence of the Black Sea’s Shelf and Subsequent Substantial Salinification in the Early Holocene’, Marine Geology, ccclxxxiii (2017), pp. 14–34; Shalaby, ‘The Middle Eastern Mermaid’, in Scaled for Success, pp. 9–11. 7 Lee, Sea Fables Explained, p. 4; Charles Russel Coulter and Patricia Turner, Encyclopedia of Ancient Deities (Chicago, il, 2000), pp. 129, 133; Llewellyn Jewitt, ‘The Mermaid, and the Symbolism of the Fish, in Art, Literature, and Legendary Lore’, Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeologist, xix (1879), pp. 193–200. 8 James Athearn Jones, Traditions of the North American Indians, vol. i (London, 1830), p. 47. Lee noted that the Mandan and Lenni-Lape tribes also had flood myths with Noah-like figures and arks. Lee, Sea Fables Explained, pp. 5–7. 281

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9 Henry Schoolcraft, Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Part One (Philadelphia, pa, 1853), pp. 406–7. Native American tales in present-day Louisiana and Connecticut also reference mermaid worship. See Anne E. Duggan, Donald Haase and Helen J. Callow, eds, Folktales and Fairy Tales: Traditions and Texts from Around the World, 2nd edn (Santa Barbara, ca, 2016), vol. ii, p. 647. 10 David Lewis-Williams, Thomas A. Dowson and Janette Deacon, ‘Rock Art and Changing Perceptions of Southern Africa’s Past: Ezeljagdspoort Reviewed’, Antiquity, lxvii (1993), pp. 273–91; Renée Rust and Jan Van Der Poll, Water, Stone, and Legend: Rock Art of the Klein Karoo (Cape Town, 2011), pp. 91–120; Thomas A. Dawson, ‘Reading Art, Writing History: Rock Art and Social Change in Southern Africa’, World Archaeology, xxv/3 (1994), pp. 332–45; A. B. Smith, ‘Hunters and Herders in the Karoo Landscape’, in The Karoo: Ecological Patterns and Processes, ed. W. Richard J. Dean and Suzanne J. Milton (Cambridge, 2004), p. 255 (quote). 11 Lee, Sea Fables Explained, p. 9; Philip Hayward, ‘Matsya Fabulism: Hindu Mythologies, Mermaids and Syncretism in India and Thailand’, in Scaled for Success, pp. 21–3; Gerardo Aldana, ‘Discovering Discovery: Chich’en Itza, the Dresden Codex Venus Table and 10th Century Mayan Astronomical Innovation’, Journal of Astronomy and Culture, i (2016), pp. 57–76. I used the Förstemann version of the Dresden Codex, available for download at the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc, www.famsi.org/mayawriting/codices/dresden.html, 15 January 2019 12 Sonya Rhie Quintanilla, History of Early Stone Sculpture at Mathura: Ca. 150 bce – 100 ce (Leyden, 2007), p. 21; Douglas Fraser, ‘The Fish-legged Figure in Benin and Yoruba Art’, in African Art and Leadership, ed. Douglas Fraser and Herbert M. Cole (Madison, wi, 1972), p. 287; Benwell and Waugh, Sea Enchantress, p. 47. 13 Fraser, ‘The Fish-legged Figure in Benin and Yoruba Art’, p. 287. 14 Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System a.d. 1250–1350 (Oxford, 1989). 15 Shalaby, ‘The Middle Eastern Mermaid’, pp. 11–13. 16 Lee, Sea Fables Explained, p. 7; Philip Hayward and Pan Wang, ‘Millennial Měìrényú: Mermaids in 21st Century Chinese Culture’, in Scaled for Success, p. 130. For the monstrous representation of merpeople in Japan, see also William Huttmann, ‘Mermen and Mermaids’, Asiatic Journal and Monthly Miscellany, xxi (1836), p. 48. 282

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17 Michael Dylan Foster, The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore, with original illustrations by Shinonome Kijin (Berkeley, ca, 2015), p. xii; Juni’chiro Suwa, ‘Ningyo Legends, Enshrined Islands and the Animation of an Aquapelagic Assemblage Around Biwako’, Shima, xii/2 (2018), p. 72. 18 Philip Hayward, ‘Japan: The “Mermaidisation” of the Ningyo and Related Folkloric Figures’, in Scaled for Success, p. 66 (quote translation by Yamamoto Sota and Hamashima Miki). 19 Hayward argued that ‘we can effectively regard the Western mermaid as having been adopted into Japanese culture as (one potential version of ) the ningyo.’ Ibid., p. 56. 20 Hayward, ‘India and Thailand’, in Scaled for Success, pp. 21–5, 40–41. 21 John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1998). 22 Nettrice R. Gaskins, ‘Mami Wata Remixed: The Mermaid in Contemporary African-American Culture’, in Scaled for Success, pp. 196–7; Marilyn Houlberg, ‘Sirens and Snakes: Water Spirits in the Arts of Haitian Vodou’, African Arts, xxix/2 (1996), p. 32; Henry John Drewal, ‘Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diasporas’, African Arts (2008), pp. 60–83. 23 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, ma, 1993); Patrick Manning, The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture (New York, 2010). 24 Persephone Braham, ‘Song of the Sirenas: Mermaids in Latin America and the Caribbean’, in Scaled for Success, p. 164. 25 Gaskins, ‘Mami Wata Remixed’, in Scaled for Success, p. 198; Houlberg, ‘Sirens and Snakes’, p. 32. 26 Anna M. Fernández Poncela, ‘Las niñas buenas van al cielo y las malas . . . Género y narrativa oral tradicional’, Nueva Sociedad, cxxxv (1995), pp. 104–15; Ras Michael Brown, African-Atlantic Cultures and the South Carolina Lowcountry (Cambridge, 2012), p. 253. 27 Henry John Drewal, ‘Performing the Other: Mami Wata Worship in Africa’, Drama Review, xxxii/2 (1988), p. 160. 28 Henry John Drewal, ‘Introduction’, in Sacred Waters: Arts for Mami Wata and Other Divinities in Africa and the Diaspora, ed. Henry John Drewal (Bloomington, in, 2008), pp. 1–2. 29 As the historian Marilyn Houlberg asserted, ‘Other Mami Wata images throughout the world have no identifying name, allowing a freedom of interpretation according to local needs and beliefs . . . elements of American popular culture will probably get recycled 283

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into water-spirit shrines in Haiti [and beyond].’ Houlberg, ‘Sirens and Snakes’, pp. 34–5. Henry John Drewal, ‘Mermaids, Mirrors, and Snake Charmers: Igbo Mami Wata Shrines’, African Arts, xxi/2 (1988), p. 38; Bennetta Jules-Rosette, ‘Simulations of Postmodernity: Images of Technology in African Tourist and Popular Art’, in Visualizing Theory: Selected Essays from Visual Anthropology Review 1990–1994, ed. Lucien Taylor (New York, 1994), pp. 345–62; Braham, ‘Mermaids in Latin America and the Caribbean’, pp. 149–70; Gaskins, ‘The Mermaid in Contemporary African-American Culture’, pp. 195–208; Lindsay Hale, Hearing the Mermaid’s Song: The Umbanda Religion in Rio De Janeiro (Albuquerque, nm, 2009), p. x. There is so much more that can be said about Mami Wata, but such a discussion extends beyond the scope of this volume. For an exhaustive study, see Drewal, Sacred Waters. Citizens of the Karoo desert also began to tell of mermaid myths in the early nineteenth century. See Juliette Wood, Fantastic Creatures in Mythology and Folklore: From Medieval Times to the Present Day (London, 2018), pp. 48–92. Linda J. Ivanits, Russian Folk Belief (London, 1992), p. 78. Lena Doubivko, ‘No Nailing Fins to the Floor: Ambivalent Femininities in Anna Melikian’s The Mermaid ’, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, v/2 (2014), pp. 257–8; Natalie K. Moyle, ‘Mermaids (Rusalki) and Russian Beliefs About Women’, in New Studies in Russian Language and Literature, ed. Anna Lisa Crone and Catherine V. Chvany (Bloomington, in, 1987), pp. 221–38; Joanna Hubbs, Mother Russia: The Feminine Myth in Russian Culture (Bloomington, in, 1988), pp. 3–36. Russians also called these water mermaids ‘willies’. Elizabeth Wayland Barber, The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance (New York, 2013), pp. 13–27 (see p. 20 for illustrations of nineteenth-century wood carvings of ‘willies’ in Russian houses that closely resemble Western depictions of mermaids). Philip Hayward, ‘Swimming Ashore: Mermaids in Australian Public Culture’, in Scaled for Success, pp. 171–94; Philip Hayward, Making a Splash: Mermaids (and Mermen) in 20th and 21st Century Audiovisual Media (Bloomington, in, 2017), pp. 50–73. Sarah Keith and Sung-Ae Lee, ‘Legend of the Blue Sea: Mermaids in South Korean Folklore and Popular Culture’, in Scaled for Success, p. 76; Philip Hayward, ‘Changelings, Conformity and Difference: Dyesebel and the Sirena in Filipino Popular 284

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34

35 36

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Culture’, in Scaled for Success, pp. 107–28; Hayward and Wang, ‘Millennial Měìrényú’, pp. 129–47; Hayward, ‘Japan’, pp. 51–68. Shalaby noted that Arabic people have various terms for various sorts of merpeople/aquatic entities, ranging from arous al-bahr (bride/maid/doll of the sea) to khayilaan (sea monster that is half-human, half-fish) to al-naddaha (dangerous siren) to insan al-maa (man of the water). Shalaby, ‘The Middle Eastern Mermaid’, in Scaled for Success, pp. 7–8. Ibid., pp. 14–15. See also Lao, Sirens, p. 170. The Native American population reached a nadir between 1890 and 1900 at 250,000 (4 to 5 per cent of its original size, ‘a decline of approximately 1.25 million per century’ since the arrival of Western empire). Their population rebounded in the twentieth century, reaching 4.1 million by the end of the century. Russell Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492 (Norman, ok, 1987), p. 43; ‘The American Indian Population: 2000’, American Census Bureau, www.census.gov, 7 January 2019. C. J. Taylor, Spirits, Fairies, and Merpeople: Native Stories of Other Worlds (Toronto, 2009), pp. 7–11. Michel Meurger and Claude Gagnon, Lake Monster Traditions: A Cross-cultural Analysis (London, 1988), p. 198. Henry Schoolcraft noted in 1851 that the Algonquian peoples (present-day northeastern United States and southern Canada) believed that ‘the water besides its appropriate class of aquatic fairies, is supposed to be the residence of a race of beings called Nibanaba which have their analogy, except as to sex, in the mermaid. The Indian word indicates a male.’ Henry R. Schoolcraft, The American Indians (Buffalo, ny, 1851), p. 217; ‘Becoming Mermaids,’ American Museum of Natural History, www.amnh. org/exhibitions/mythic-creatures/water/becoming-mermaids, 28 September 2019. Peter Conrad, How the World Was Won: The Americanization of Everywhere (London, 2014); Bartow J. Elmore, Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism (New York, 2016). Andre Gunder Frank, Reorient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley, ca, 1998), pp. 3, 5. See also Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: Europe, China and the Making of the Modern World (Princeton, nj, 2000); Roy Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of the European Experience (Ithaca, ny, 1997); Thornton, Africa and Africans; Alfred Crosby, Ecological 285

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Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge, 1986); Jared Rubin, Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East Did Not (Cambridge, 2017); Anthony Pagden, Worlds at War: The 2,500-year Struggle Between East and West (New York, 2008).

conclusion Tail-ending 1 H. F. Gould, The Mermaid’s Cave (New York, 1832). 2 Josh Weiss, ‘Harry Potter Becomes Best-selling Book Series in History with More than 500 Million Copies Sold Worldwide’, SyFy Wire, www.syfy.com, 19 January 2019. 3 There are too many twenty-first century films, advertisements and products which use merpeople to cover in the current volume. For various examples, see Philip Hayward, Making a Splash: Mermaids (and Mer-men) in 20th and 21st Century Audiovisual Media (Bloomington, in, 2017); and Philip Hayward, ed., Scaled for Success: The Internationalisation of the Mermaid (Bloomington, in, 2018). 4 Hayward, Making a Splash, pp. 129–49; Maria Mellins, ‘Mermaid Spotting: The Rise of Mermaiding in Popular Culture’, in Beasts of the Deep: Sea Creatures and Popular Culture, ed. Jon Hackett and Seán Harrington (Bloomington, in, 2018), pp. 128–41. 5 ‘“Mermaid” to Swim Along River Thames to Raise Plastic Awareness’, bbc News, www.bbc.com, 17 January 2019; Mellins, ‘Mermaid Spotting’, in Beasts of the Deep, p. 136. 6 Daniel Denoon, ‘Salt-water Fish Extinction Seen by 2048’, cbs News, www.cbsnews.com, 2 November 2006. 7 Mellins, ‘Mermaid Spotting’, in Beasts of the Deep, pp. 128–41; Hayward, Scaled for Success, pp. 209–26; Vanetia Laura Delano Robertson, ‘Where Skin Meets Fin: The Mermaid as Myth, Monster and Other-than-human Identity’, Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, xxvi/3 (2013), pp. 311–12; Hayward, Making a Splash, p. 109; Brooke A. Porter and Micahel Lück, ‘Mermaiding as a Form of Marine Devotion: A Case Study of a Mermaid School in Boracay, Phillipines’, Shima, xii/2 (2018), pp. 231–49; Tara E. Pedersen, ‘Thinking With Mermaids Here and Now’, Shima, xii/2 (2018), pp. 250–55; Skye Annica, ‘Cripping the Mermaid: A Borderlands Approach to Feminist Disability Studies in Valerie Martin’s “Sea Lovers”’, Journal of Narrative Theory, xxxxvii/3 (2017), pp. 379–402; Hayward, Making a Splash, pp. 129–49; Sally Campbell Galman, ‘Enchanted Selves: 286

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Transgender Children’s Persistent Use of Mermaid Imagery in Self-portraiture’, Shima, xii/2 (2018), pp. 163–80. Hayward, Making a Splash, pp. 151–66. ‘Meet the World-famous Weeki Wachee Mermaids’, Weeki Wachee Springs State Park, www.weekiwachee.com, 19 January 2019. In a further example of femininity being linked with mermaids, ‘young feminine-identified transgender children repeatedly drew themselves as mermaids in self-portraits and highlighted the importance of other mermaid-related play throughout their drawings and narratives.’ Galman, ‘Enchanted Selves’, p. 163 (quote), 163–80. Although Mattel has sold Barbie as a mermaid multiple times, 2018 was the first time that she enjoyed such racial diversity. ‘The Ten Most Valuable Brands in 2018’, www.inc.com, 17 January 2019; Ben Zimmerman, ‘Word on the Street: Swimming Among the Merpeople’, Wall Street Journal: Eastern Edition, 27 May 2017, c.4. Every major phone and computer manufacturer and software developer, including Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Whatsapp, Twitter and Facebook, has now included ‘merpeople’ among their emojis. See ‘Merman’, Emojipedia, https:// emojipedia.org/merman, 19 January 2019. See also Olle Jilkén, ‘“A Phallus Out of Water”: The Construction of Mer-masculinity in Modern Day Illustrations, Shima, xii/2 (2018), pp. 195–207. As historian David Livingstone opined, ‘what it is to be rational is different for an eleventh-century monk, a fifteenth-century navigator, a seventeenth-century astrologer, and a twentiethcentury laboratory scientist.’ David N. Livingstone, ‘Climate’s Moral Economy: Science, Race and Place in Post-Darwinian British and American Geography’, in Geography and Empire, ed. Anne Godlewska and Neil Smith (Oxford, 1994), p. 133. New York Times, 16 November 1870. To date, we have only explored around 5 per cent of the world’s oceans. ‘How Much of the Ocean Have We Explored?’, National Ocean Service: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, u.s. Department of Commerce, www.oceanservice. noaa.gov, 1 February 2018. Hayward, Making a Splash, pp. 167–85; Peter Goggin, ‘“Are Mermaids Real?”: Rhetorical Discourses and the Science of Merfolk’, Shima, xii/2 (2018), pp. 12–23; Lisa de Moraes, ‘Animal Planet Nets its Biggest Audience with “Mermaids”’, Washington Post, 28 May 2013. 287

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16 John Lynch, ‘The 23 Most Successful Movie Franchises of All Time’, Business Insider, www.businessinsider.com, 18 January 2019; Philip Hayward, ‘Introduction’, in Scaled for Success, pp. 1–2. A simple search on www.youtube.com or www.google.com for ‘mermaid sighting’ will return dozens of supposed mermaid and triton sightings (and these claims multiply every year). 17 ‘10 Astonishing and Infamous Mermaid Sightings’, National Enquirer, 5 September 2017. See also Mike Walker, ‘Miley Cyrus’ Fiancé in Mermaid Panic’, National Enquirer, 30 July 2017; Goggin, ‘Are Mermaids Real?’, pp. 12–23. 18 Martin Essex, ‘gbp Price: Upward Trend May Continue After Brexit Vote (15 January 2019)’, Dailyfx: Forex Market News and Analysis, www.dailyfx.com, 18 January 2019. ‘Brexit’ is a portmanteau of ‘Britain and ‘exit’ which describes the United Kingdom’s 2016 referendum to exit the European Union. See also Lucy Guenot, ‘Lion Ships, Sirens and Illuminated Cartography: Deploying Heraldic and Folkloric Figures in Critique of Brexit’, Shima, xii/2 (2018), pp. 135–43.

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307

Acknowledgements

I could not have written this book twenty years ago. Never mind that I was still in adolescence at the time, but the infrastructure necessary for such a sprawling, often-random study simply did not exist. This work relies greatly upon a vast web of resources – people, databases, computer programs, search engines, social networks – which our current age makes possible. Accordingly, any strengths of the work are owed to these myriad aids, while any weaknesses are wholly my own. I made many friends and acquaintances throughout the world in my quest to find merpeople, and their willingness to aid a stranger researching an odd topic gave me hope in the benevolence of humans. From the inception of this project, my colleagues at the University of Central Arkansas have always supported my endeavours (and have often referred to me as the ‘mermaid man’). John Parrack deserves special mention for helping me translate some difficult Latin texts. Beatrice Phillpotts helped me track down images from her own excellent book, Becky Saylor connected me with Lina Waara to translate Swedish texts, and Leslie Tuttle, Lucy Inglis, Craig Scribner and Susan Scribner read drafts of the text. Alex Woodcock and Mark Ware proved invaluable in broadening my understanding of medieval merpeople carvings, while Richard Pell has been an excellent colleague in uncovering all things merpeople. Rhys Griffiths at History Today helped me get my ideas to a broad audience, as did the organizers of the Junto Blog. The editorial staff at Itinerario also assisted me in honing my scholarship. Finally, much thanks are owed to Alexandru Ciobanu at Reaktion Books for aiding me every step of the way, Michael Leaman for believing in my ideas, Jon K. Shaw for editing the book with aplomb and Reaktion’s editorial staff – especially Phoebe Colley – for making every step smooth. 309

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Various institutions have also proved critical in my endeavours, including (but not limited to) the Wellcome Collection, British Library, British Museum, Beinecke Library, Cleveland Museum of Art, Center for Art and Archaeology of the American Institute of Indian Studies, New York Public Library, Library of Congress (usa), National Portrait Gallery (au), London Metropolitan Archives, University of Glasgow Library, Swedish Nationalmuseum, Royal Museums Greenwich, British National Archives, Art Institute of Chicago, Gilcrease Museum (ok), Royal Collection Trust, Biodiversity Heritage Library, Bodleian Library, Royal Danish Library, Massachusetts Historical Society and Dublin’s Trinity College. Beyond physical libraries and their amazing staffs, search engines and online repositories such as Twitter, Pinterest, Alamy, Getty Images, Google and Flickr allowed me to make connections throughout time and space, not to mention acquire obscure and forgotten images and texts. Ultimately, this project could not have endured without the support of my family and friends. My parents, Susan and Craig Scribner, were always happy to talk with me about merpeople, and both read a final draft of this book. Without their keen eyes, this would have been a much lesser product. My siblings also aided me throughout the process, as did my extended family and friends (and our cat, ‘D’). More than anyone, however, this book is the product of my wife Kristen’s love and compassion. She is my siren.

310

Photo Acknowledgements The author and publishers wish to express their thanks to the below sources of illustrative material and/or permission to reproduce it. Some locations of artworks are also given below, in the interest of brevity: From James Edward Alexander, Narrative of a Voyage of Observation among the Colonies of Western Africa, vol. ii (London, 1837), courtesy British Library, London: 101; from Hans Christian Andersen, La Petite Sirène, in ‘Albums du Père Castor’ series (Paris, 1937): 73; photo Sharon Ang/Pixabay: 82; Art Institute of Chicago: 49 (left), 75; from Phineas Taylor Barnum, The Life of P. T. Barnum (New York, 1855), courtesy Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, in: 66; from Thomas Bartholin, Historiarum anatomicarum rariorum, centuria i et ii (The Hague, 1654), courtesy Wellcome Library, London: 41; from Thomas Bartholin, Opuscula nova anatomica, de lacteis thoracicis et lymphaticis vasis (Copenhagen, 1670): 36; Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, ct: 34 (ms 408); BibleLandPictures.com/Alamy Stock Photo: 14; Bibliotheek van de Universiteit van Amsterdam: 7; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris: 25 (ms 3516); Bildarchiv Monheim gmbh/Alamy Stock Photo: 4; from Pierre Boaistuau and Edward Fenton, Certaine Secrete Wonders of Nature (London, 1569), courtesy Wellcome Library, London: 53; Bodleian Library, University of Oxford: 26 (ms Ashmole 1511), 27 (ms Bodl. 764), 31 (ms Bodl. 533); British Library, London: 22 (Sloane ms 278), 24 (Add ms 62925), 28 (Add ms 42130), 42 (Add ms 24065), 65, 70; British Museum, London: 18, 49 (right), 63; The Center for Art & Archaeology, American Institute of Indian Studies, Gurugram, Haryana: Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo: 11; The Cleveland Museum of Art, oh: 15; collection of the author: 12, 93, 94, 97; photo courtesy Matt Crowley: 10; Delaware Art Museum, 311

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Wilmington: 81; photo C. M. Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images: 105; Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston upon Hull: 80; Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, ok: 38; from Johann Ludwig Gottfried and Matthaeus Merian, Newe Welt und Americanische Historien (Frankfurt, 1631), courtesy John Carter Brown Library, Providence, ri: 37; photo courtesy Groupe de Recherches sur la Peinture Murale (grpm): 5; from Illustrated Police News (London, 6 July 1878): 69; photo Stephen King: 62; from Athanasius Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus, vol. i (Rome, 1652), courtesy Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla: 3; from Anton Koberger (printer), Biblia Germanica, vol. i (Nuremberg, 1483), courtesy Boston Public Library, Rare Books Department: 29; from François Le Vaillant, Voyage de M. le Vaillant dans l’intérieur de l’Afrique par le Cap de Bonne Espérance, vol. ii (Paris, 1790), courtesy Wellcome Library, London: 58; Library of Congress, Washington, dc: 8 (Geography and Map Division), 83 and 84 (Prints and Photographs Division), 85 (Chronicling America); from Carl Linnaeus, Amoenitates academicae, vol. vii, 2nd edn. (Erlangen, 1789), courtesy University of Maryland Library, Baltimore: 59; London Metropolitan Archives: 60; courtesy Al Luckenbach, Lost Towns Project, Anne Arundel County, md: 50; from Girolame Merolla and Angelo Piccardo, Breve e Succinta Relazione del Viaggio nel Regno di Congo nell’Africa Meridional (Naples, 1726), courtesy Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: 39; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 33; courtesy Mike Ashworth Collection: 91; photo Peter Milošević: 17; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, mn: 76; Timothy Mulholland/ Alamy Stock Photo: 112; The National Archives, Kew, Surrey: 46; National Diet Library, Tokyo: 107; The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: 40; The New York Public Library: 2; photo Paul Nicholls/Barcroft Media via Getty Images: 114; from Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum orbis terrarum (Antwerp, 1570), courtesy Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, Washington, dc: 43, 44, 45; Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, Cambridge, ma: 67; private collection: 74, 79, 109; from Punch, or the London Charivari (London, 11 July 1868), courtesy Robarts Library, University of Toronto: 68; Queen’s House, Royal Museums Greenwich, London: 47, 48, 77; from Louis Renard, Poissons, ecrevisses et crabes, de diverses couleurs et figures extraordinaires (Amsterdam, 1754), courtesy Ernst Mayr Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, ma: 54; from Guillaume Rondelet, Libri de piscibus marinis (Lyon, 1554), courtesy Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: 32; photo courtesy Mr and Mrs T. C. Roth: 51; Royal Academy of Arts, London: 78; Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth ii 2020: 35; The Royal College of Surgeons of England, London: 64; courtesy Sächsische 312

Photo Acknowledgements

Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek (slub), Dresden: 103 (ms Dresd.R.310); from Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, The Indian Tribes of the United States, vol. i (Philadelphia, pa, 1884), courtesy Boston Public Library: 100; from Some British Ballads, Illustrated by Arthur Rackham (London, 1919): 1; State Library and Archives of Florida, Tallahassee/ photo courtesy Florida Memory: 90; from John Stuart (Secretary, The Spalding Club), Sculptured Stones of Scotland, vol. ii (Edinburgh, 1867), courtesy San Francisco Public Library: 21; photo Lillian Suwanrumpha/ afp/Getty Images: 113; John Trax/Alamy Stock Photo: 96; Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow: 110; Trinity College Dublin: 23 (ms 58); from Sylvanus Urban (pseud.), The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, vol. xlv (London, 1775): 57; photos Mark Ware, courtesy Dr Alex Woodcock: 6, 19; Waseda University, Tokyo: 106; photo courtesy Magdeleine Wurtz: 20. Anandajoti Bhikkhu, the copyright holder of images 13 and 108; Steven Pisano, the copyright holder of image 115; and Richie S. (rsad Media), the copyright holder of image 99, have published them online under conditions imposed by a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License. Spencer Means, the copyright holder of image 16, has published it online under conditions imposed by a Creative Commons AttributionShareAlike 2.0 Generic License. Wellcome Collection, the copyright holder of images 9, 30, 55, 56, 61 and 102, has published them online under conditions imposed by a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Readers are free to: share – copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format. adapt – remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. Under the following terms: attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. 313

Index Illustration numbers are indicated by italics

Africa, merpeople in 65–6, 75–6, 138, 213, 216, 218, 220–22, 226–31, 244, 105, 109 American Civil War 157–8 Andersen, Hans Christian 163–4, 176, 209, 72, 73, 82, 90 Atargatis 10, 26, 30, 214 Attenborough, Sir David, and Molly Cox 205 Aztecs 216 Ballantyne, Joyce 92 Barbie 241–2, 116 Barbot, John 75 Barnum, P. T. 21–2, 124, 128, 148–52, 154, 157–9, 167, 170, 10, 66, 67 Bartholin, Thomas 68, 80–81, 36, 41 Bassett, Fletcher S. 163 Bell, Robert Anning 79 Benin 220, 226, 221 Benwell, Gwen, and Sir Arthur Waugh 55, 204–6 bestiaries (illuminated manuscripts) 45–52, 65, 218, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 34

Bible 34, 55, 67 Blyth, Ann 172, 188 Böcklin, Arnold 75 Browne, Thomas 68 Burne-Jones, Edward Coley 76 cabinets of curiosities 20, 79–80, 97 Campbeltown Cross 21 Carrington, Richard 204–5 carvings 11, 13, 28, 34, 39, 42–3, 51, 54, 83, 216, 220, 2, 4, 6, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 51 Cesariano, Cesare 55 China, merpeople in 146, 220 Christian Church 11, 13–15, 25, 29–45, 51–4, 60, 90 Clift, William 143 Cobham, Thomas 44, 46 Collinson, Peter 103, 105, 108–9 Columbus, Christopher 61, 63–4, 73 Cruikshank, George 140, 63 da Costa, Emanuel Mendez 108–9 Dagon 30, 215 Darwin, Charles 22, 152–5 315

merpeople

De Morgan, Evelyn 77 Denmark, merpeople in 67, 76, 178, 82 Draper, Herbert James 80 Dyesebel 231, 111 Durandus, Bishop 39, 44

Garden, Alexander 94, 120 Gautier, Jacques-Fabien 110–15, 55 Gessner, Conrad 52, 65 Glover, Thomas 73–4 Greenland, merpeople in 56, 234 green men 33–4, 16

Ea 30 Eades, Captain Samuel Barrett 20, 126–8, 136–46, 170, 243 East Indies, merpeople in 20, 85, 136 Elizabeth i, queen of England 89–90, 47 England, merpeople in 39–40, 49, 55–6, 63, 74, 89–90, 101, 130–31, 140, 145, 182, 206, 228 environmentalism 239, 114 Epic of Gilgamesh 215, 222 Exeter Cathedral (uk) 28, 39, 40–42, 131, 6, 19 exhibits 21–2, 110–18, 124, 128, 133–6, 145–6, 148–52, 154, 157–60, 167, 170, 9, 10, 54, 55, 60, 61, 63, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70

harpies 10–11 Hayward, Philip 211 Holland, merpeople in 56–7, 63, 80, 101, 104–7 Homer 31, 35, 18 Hudson, Henry 58, 68–73 Hurtado, Diego 65

Fallours, Samuel 103, 105–8 fashion 92, 168, 182, 196–8, 238–9, 49, 84, 93, 113 Feejee Mermaid 21–2, 124, 126, 140, 148–52, 157, 159, 243–4, 9, 10, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67 feminism 173, 177, 180–88, 209–10, 240 films 7, 185–95, 206–11, 238, 86, 87, 88, 89, 98, 99, 117 folklore 22, 53, 56, 63, 66, 77, 178, 204–5, 222, 229 France, merpeople in 39, 99, 101, 111–16, 55 Franklin, Benjamin 98–9 316

India, merpeople in 66, 84, 217–20, 228–30, 102, 109 Ireland, merpeople in 38, 85, 134–5 Italy, merpeople in 39, 57, 65, 85, 5, 17, 43 Japan, merpeople in 139, 146, 156, 159, 220, 106 Jefferson, Thomas 129 Jerichau, Elisabeth 74 Jesus 34–8, 17 jewellery 92, 49 Jonah 32–3, 218, 15 Josselyn, John 63, 72–3 Karoo desert 212, 216–18, 101 Kellerman, Annette 173, 180–88, 230, 239, 84, 85, 86 Kircher, Athanasius 3 Kramskoj, Iwan Nikolajewitsch 110 Krasheninnikov, Stepan 119 lgbtq+ 240 Le Vaillant, Francois 115, 58

Index

Leclercq-Marx, Jacqueline 35 Lee, Henry 30, 162–3, 216 Linnaeus, Carl 94, 103, 105, 119–21, 129, 59 London, merpeople in 20, 58–9, 63, 73–5, 80–81, 91, 96, 99, 103–5, 108–13, 122, 126–74, 190–91 McKenzie, George 132–3 magazines 108–16, 121, 136, 143, 153–4, 173, 179, 189, 197–20, 201, 56, 57, 68, 83, 92 Maillet, Benoît de 116 Mami Wata 26, 227–31, 109 manatee 22–3, 75, 127–8, 147, 154, 160, 170, 205, 234, 11 maps 84–8, 42, 43, 44, 45 Mary, queen of Scots 87–9, 97, 46 masculinity, theories of 34–5, 177–9, 211, 241 Mather, Cotton 103–4 Mayans 218–20, 103 Melusine 54 Mermaid Tavern (London) 91, 99 Merolla, Girolame 75–6, 39 Middle East, merpeople in 26, 222, 231 monstrosity, theories of 9, 11, 15, 18, 31, 43, 59–60, 85, 153, 159, 170 Munro, William 129–30 music 42–3, 48, 117 naramakara 212, 220, 104 Native North America, merpeople traditions in 216–17, 233–4, 100 ningyo 26, 139, 223–4, 106 Noah 30, 50, 215–17, 222, 29

North America, merpeople in 63, 68–75, 97–100, 129, 216, 227, 37, 38 Norway, merpeople in 76, 118–19 Oannes 9–10, 26, 30, 214–15, 2 Odysseus (Ulysses) 10, 31, 35, 18, 80 One Thousand and One Nights 222 Paas, John 136, 61 paganism 10–11, 15, 29–42, 16 Philippines, merpeople in the 230–31, 111 Pliny the Elder 10, 44, 53–4, 104, 117 poems 43, 135, 150, 176, 236 Pontoppidan, Erik 118–19 print advertisements 12, 21, 60, 66, 63, 65, 69, 70, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 109 Pyle, Howard 81 Quran 222 race, theories of 106, 114–15, 241 Raleigh, Sir Walter 61 Renard, Louis 106–8, 54 Rome, merpeople in 38, 65, 145–6, 194, 14 Ross, Gordon 83 Royal Society of London 73–5, 81–2, 103–5, 108–9 Rusalka 26, 229–30, 110 Russia, merpeople in 26, 106–7, 119, 229–30, 110 St Botolph’s Church (uk) 16 St Mary’s Church (uk) 40–41, 20 St Thiébault Church (Switzerland) 40–41 317

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Schoolcraft, Henry 216–17, 100 Scotland, merpeople in 42, 78, 129–33, 205 Scylla 11, 31, 37, 39, 45 Shakespeare, William 91 Sibbald, Sir Robert 103 Sirena 227, 231 Sloane, Hans 103–5 songs 11, 28, 31, 42–8, 177, 188, 216, 229 Spain, merpeople in 44, 99 specimens 79–82, 96, 105, 41 South America, merpeople in 83–4, 227, 8, 42 Starbucks 201–3, 96 Sweden, merpeople in 76, 105, 119–20 television shows, merpeople in 7, 232, 238, 233–5 Thailand, merpeople in 224–6, 25, 113 Thevet, André 65–6

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tritons 10, 42, 44, 72–5, 82–5, 92, 96, 98–104, 109–13, 117–21, 132, 167–8, 222, 43, 44, 56, 75 Turf Coffeehouse (London) 138–42 Vosmaer, Aernout 107 Wales, merpeople in 75 Waterhouse, John William 78 Webber, Diane 193, 89 Weeki Wachee theatre 194–5, 199, 241, 90 West Indies, merpeople in 63–4, 72–3, 111, 148 Whitbourne, Richard 70–73, 104, 109, 37 Whitney, Grace Lee 201 Williams, Esther 191–3 Yorubaland 220, 226–8 Zern, Ed 199–201, 94