plentiful all along the river Zaire. In the "Aberdeen Almanack" for
1688, it is predicted that "near the place where the famous Dee
payeth his tribute to the German Ocean," on the 1st, 13th, and 29th
of May, and other specified times, curious observers may "undoubtedly
see a pretty company of Mar Maids," and likewise hear their melodious
voices. In another part of Scotland, about the same time, Brand, in his
"Description of Orkney and Shetland," tells us that two fishermen drew
up with a hook a Mermaid, "having face, arm, breast, shoulders, &c., of
a woman, and long hair hanging down the neck, but the nether part, from
below the waist, hidden in the water." One of the fishermen stabbed her
with a knife, and she was seen no more! The evidence went thus:--Brand
was told by a lady and gentleman, who were told by a baillie to whom the
fishing-boat belonged, who was told by the fishers! Valentyn describes a
Mermaid he saw in 1714, on his voyage from Batavia to Europe, "sitting
on the surface of the water," &c. In 1758, a Mermaid is said to have
been exhibited at the fair of St. Germain, in France. It was about two
feet long, and sported about in a vessel of water. It was fed with bread
and fish. It was a female, with negro features.
In 1775 appeared a very circumstantial account of a Mermaid which was
captured in the Grecian Archipelago in the preceding year, and exhibited
in London. The account is ludicrously minute, and it ends with: "It is
said to have an enchanting voice, which it never exerts except before
a storm." This imposture was craftily made up out of the skin of the
angle shark. In Mr. Morgan's "Tour to Milford Haven in the year 1795,"
appears an equally circumstantial account of a Mermaid, said to have
been seen by one Henry Reynolds, a farmer, of Ren-y-hold, in the parish
of Castlemartin, in 1782. It resembled a youth of sixteen or eighteen
years of age, with a very white skin: it was bathing. The evidence
is very roundabout, so that there were abundant means for converting
some peculiar kind of fish into a Merman, without imputing intentional
dishonesty to any one. "Something akin to this kind of evidence is
observable in the account of a Mermaid seen in Caithness in 1809, which
attracted much attention in England as well as in Scotland, and induced
the Philosophical Society of Glasgow to investigate the matter. The
Editor of a newspaper, who inserted the statement, had been told by a
gentleman, who had been shown a letter by Sir John Sinclair, who had
obtained it from Mr. Innes, to whom it had been written by Miss Mackay,
who had heard the story from the persons (two servant girls and a boy)
who had seen the strange animal in the water." (Chambers's "Book of
Days.")
Then we read of a so-called Mermaid, shown in the year 1794 at No. 7,
Broad-court, Bow-street. Covent-garden, said to have been taken in the
North Seas by Captain Foster. It was of the usual description.
Much evidence comes from Scotland. Thus, in the year 1797, a
schoolmaster of Thurso affirmed that he had seen a Mermaid, apparently
in the act of combing her hair with her fingers! Twelve years
afterwards, several persons observed near the same place a like
appearance. Dr. Chisholm, in his "Essay on Malignant Fever in the West
Indies," in 1801, relates that, in the year 1797, happening to be at
Governor Van Battenburg's plantation, in Berbice, "the conversation
turned on a singular animal which had been repeatedly seen in Berbice
river, and some smaller rivers. This animal is the famous Mermaid,
hitherto considered as a mere creature of the imagination. It is called
by the Indians _méné_, mamma, or mother of the waters. The description
given of it by the Governor is as follows:--'The upper portion
resembles the human figure, the head smaller in proportion, sometimes
bare, but oftener covered with a copious quantity of long black hair.
The shoulders are broad, and the breasts large and well-formed. The
lower portion resembles the tail of a fish, is of great dimensions,
the tail forked, and not unlike that of the dolphin, as it is usually
represented. The colour of the skin is either black or tawny.' The
animal is held in veneration by the Indians, who imagine that killing
it would be attended with calamitous consequences. It is from this
circumstance that none of these animals have been shot, and consequently
examined but at a distance. They have been generally observed in a
sitting posture in the water, none of the lower extremity being seen
until they are disturbed, when, by plunging, the tail agitates the water
to a considerable distance round. They have been always seen employed in
smoothing their hair, and have thus been frequently taken for Indian
women bathing." In 1811, a young man, named John M'Isaac, of Corphine,
in Kintyre, in Scotland, made oath, on examination at Campbell-town,
that he saw, on the 13th of October in the above year, on a rock on the
sea-coast, an animal which generally corresponded with the form of the
Mermaid--the upper half human shape, the other brindled or reddish grey,
apparently covered with scales; the extremity of the tail greenish red;
head covered with long hair, at times put back on both sides of the
head. This statement was attested by the minister of Campbell-town and
the Chamberlain of Mull.
In August, 1812, Mr. Toupin, of Exmouth, in a sailing excursion, and
when about a mile south-east of Exmouth Bar, heard a sound like that
of the Æolian harp; and saw, at about one hundred yards distance, a
creature, which was regarded as a Mermaid. The head, from the crown to
the chin, formed a long oval, and the face seemed to resemble that of
the seal, though with more agreeable features. The presumed hair, the
arms, and the hand, with four fingers connected by a membrane, are then
described, and the tail with polished scales. The entire height of the
animal was from five feet to five and a-half feet. In 1819, a creature
approached the coast of Ireland. It was about the size of a child ten
years of age, with prominent bosom, long dark hair, and dark eyes. It
was shot at, when it plunged into the sea with a loud scream.
[Illustration: SEAL AND MERMAID.]
In reviewing these stories of Mermaids, it may be remarked that there
is always a fish in each tale--either a living fish of a peculiar
kind, which a fanciful person thinks to bear some resemblance in the
upper part to a human being, or a fish which becomes marvellous in the
progress of its description from mouth to mouth. It is commonly thought
the seals may often have been mistaken for Mermaids. But, of all the
animals of the whale tribe that which approaches the nearest in form to
man is, undoubtedly, the Dugong, which, when its head and breast are
raised above the water, and its pectoral fins, resembling hands, are
visible, might easily be taken by superstitious seamen for a semi-human
being, or a Mermaid. Of this deception a remarkable instance occurred
in 1826. The skeleton of a Mermaid, as it was called, was brought
to Portsmouth, which had been shot in the vicinity of the Island of
Mombass. This was submitted to the members of the Philosophical Society,
when it proved to be the skeleton of a Dugong. To those who came to
the examination with preconceived notions of a fabulous Mermaid, it
presented, as it lay on the lecture-table, a singular appearance. It
was about six feet long; the lower portion, with its broad tail-like
extremity, suggested the idea of a powerful fish-like termination,
whilst the fore-legs presented to the unskilful eye a resemblance to the
bones of a small female arm; the cranium, however, had a brutal form,
which could never have borne the lineaments of "the human face divine."
The Mermaid has been traced to the Manatee as well as to the Dugong: the
former is an aquatic animal, externally resembling a whale, and named
from its flipper, resembling the human hand, _manus_. Again, the _mammæ_
(teats) of the Manatees and Dugongs are pectoral; and this conformation,
joined to the adroit use of their flippers (whose five fingers can
easily be distinguished through the inverting membranes, four of them
being terminated by nails) in progression, nursing their young, &c.,
have caused them, when seen at a distance with the anterior part of
their body out of the water, to be taken for some creature approaching
to human shape so nearly (especially as their middle is thick set with
hair, giving somewhat of the effect of human hair or a beard), that
there can be little doubt that not a few of the tales of Mermen and
Mermaids have had their origin with these animals as well as with seals
and walruses. Thus the Portuguese and Spaniards give the _Manatee_ a
denomination which signifies Woman-fish; and the Dutch call the Dugong
_Baardanetjee_, or Little-bearded Man. A very little imagination and
a memory for only the marvellous portion of the appearance sufficed,
doubtless, to complete the metamorphosis of this half woman or man, half
fish, into a Siren, a Mermaid, or a Merman; and the wild recital of the
voyager was treasured up by writers who, as Cuvier well observes, have
displayed more learning than judgment.
The comb and the toilet-glass have already been incidentally mentioned
as accessories in these Mermaid stories; and these, with the
origin of the creature. Sir George Head thus ingeniously attempts
to explain:--"The resemblance of the seal, or sea-calf, to the calf
consists only in the voice, and the voice of the calf is certainly not
dissimilar to that of a man. But the claws of the seal, as well as the
hand, are like a lady's back-hair comb; wherefore, altogether, supposing
the resplendence of sea-water streaming down its polished neck, on a
sunshiny day, the substitute for a looking-glass, we arrive at once at
the fabulous history of the marine maiden or Mermaid, and the appendages
of her toilet."
The progress of zoological science has long since destroyed the belief
in the existence of the Mermaid. If its upper structure be human, with
lungs resembling our own, how could such a creature live and breathe at
the bottom of the sea, where it is stated to be? for our most expert
divers are unable to stay under water more than half an hour. Suppose it
to be of the cetaceous class, it could only remain under the water two
or three minutes together without rising to the surface to take breath;
and if this were the case with the Mermaid, would it not be oftener seen?
Half a century has scarcely elapsed since a _manufactured_ Mermaid was
shown in London with all the confidence of its being a natural creature.
In the winter of 1822 there was exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, in
Piccadilly, this pretended Mermaid, which was visited by from 300 to
400 persons daily! The imposture, however, was too gross to last long;
and it was ascertained to be the dried skin of the head and shoulders
of a monkey attached very neatly to the dried skin of a fish of the
salmon kind with the head cut off; the compound figure being stuffed
and highly varnished, the better to deceive the eye. This grotesque
object was taken by a Dutch vessel from on board a native Malacca boat;
and from the reverence shown to it by the sailors it is supposed to
have represented the incarnation of one of the idol gods of the Malacca
Islands. A correspondent of the "Magazine of Natural History," 1829,
however, avers that the above "Mermaid" was brought from the East
Indies; for being at St. Helena in 1813 he saw it on board the ship
which was bringing it to England. The impression on his mind was that
it was an artificial compound of the upper part of a small ape with the
lower half of a fish; and by aid of a powerful glass he ascertained the
point of union between the two parts. He was somewhat staggered to find
that this was so neatly effected that the precise line of junction was
not satisfactorily apparent: the creature was then in its best state of
preservation.
In a volume of "Manners and Customs of the Japanese," published in
1841, we, however, find the following version of the history of the
above Mermaid:--"A Japanese fisherman seems to have displayed ingenuity
for the mere purpose of making money by his countrymen's passion for
everything odd and strange. He contrived to unite the upper half of
a monkey to the lower half of a fish so neatly as to defy ordinary
inspection. He then gave out that he had caught the creature in his
net, but that it had died shortly after being taken out of the water;
and he derived considerable pecuniary profit from his cunning in more
ways than one. The exhibition of the sea monster to Japanese curiosity
paid well; yet more productive was the assertion that the half-human
fish, having spoken during the five minutes it existed out of its native
element, had predicted a certain number of years of wonderful fertility
and a fatal epidemic, the only remedy for which would be the possession
of the marine prophet's likeness! The sale of these _pictured Mermaids_
was immense. Either the composite animal, or another, the offspring of
the success of the first, was sold to the Dutch factory and transmitted
to Batavia, where it fell into the hands of a speculating American,
who brought it to Europe; and here, in the year 1822-3, exhibited his
purchase as a real Mermaid to the admiration of the ignorant, the
perplexity of the learned, and the filling of his own purse."
The Editor of the "Literary Gazette," Mr. Jerdan, was the first
to expose the fabulous creature of the Egyptian Hall. He plainly
said:--"Our opinion is fixed that it is a _composition_; a most
ingenious one, we grant, but still nothing beyond the admirably
put-together members of various animals. The extraordinary skill of
the Chinese and Japanese in executing such deceptions is notorious,
and we have no doubt that the Mermaid is a manufacture from the Indian
Sea, where it has been pretended it was caught. We are not of those who
because they happen not to have had direct proof of the existence of
any extraordinary natural phenomenon, push scepticism to the extreme
and deny its possibility. The depths of the sea, in all probability,
from various chemical and philosophical causes, contain animals unknown
to its surface-waters, rarely if ever seen by human eye. But when a
creature is presented to us having no other organization but that which
is suitable to a medium always open to our observation, it in the first
instance excites suspicion that only one individual of the species
should be discovered and obtained. When knowledge was more limited, the
stories of Mermaids seen in distant quarters might be credited by the
many, and not entirely disbelieved by the few; but now, when European
and especially British commerce fills every corner of the earth with men
of observation and science, the unique becomes the incredible, and we
receive with far greater doubt the apparition of such anomalies as the
present. It is curious that though medical men seem in general to regard
the creature as a possible production of nature, no naturalist of any
ability credits it after five minutes' observation! This may, perhaps,
be accounted for by their acquaintance with the parts of distinct
animals, of which it appears the Mermaid is composed. The cheeks of the
blue-faced ape, the canine teeth, the _simia_ upper body, and the tail
of the fish, are all familiar to them in less complex combinations,
and they pronounce at once that the whole is an imposture. And such
is our settled conviction." Though naturalists and journalists fully
exposed the imposture, this did not affect the exhibition, which for a
considerable time continued as crowded as ever; but the notoriety had
dwindled down to "a penny show," at Bartholomew Fair, by the year 1825.
After so many exposures of the absurd belief in Mermaids, it could
scarcely be expected that any person could be found in Europe weak
enough to report the existence of one of these creatures to an eminent
scientific Society. Yet, on the 22d of June, 1840, the first Secretary
of the Ottoman Embassy at Paris addressed a note to the Academy of
Sciences, stating that his father, who was in the Admiralty department
at Constantinople, had recently seen a Mermaid while crossing the
Bosphorus, which communication was received with much laughter.
We have still another recorded instance--and in Scotland. In the year
1857 two fishermen on the Argyleshire coast declared that when on their
way to the fishing-station, Lochindale, in a boat, and when about four
miles south-west from the village of Port Charlotte, about six o'clock
in a June evening, they distinctly saw, at about six yards distance, an
object in the form of a woman, with comely face and fine hair hanging
in ringlets over the neck and shoulders. It was above the surface of
the water gazing at the fishermen for three or four minutes--and then
vanished! Yet this declaration was officially attested!
In 1863 Mermaids were supposed to abound in the ponds and ditches of
Suffolk, where careful mothers used them as bugbears to prevent little
children from going too near the water. Children described them as
"nasty things that crome you (hook you) into the water;" others as "a
great big thing like a feesh," probably a pike basking in the shallow
water.
Sometimes the Mermaid has assumed a picturesqueness in fairy tale; and
her impersonation has been described by Dryden as "a fine woman, with a
fish's tail." And, laying aside her scaly train, she has appeared as a
lovely woman, with sea-green hair; and Crofton Croker relates, in his
"Fairy Legends," a marriage between an Irish fisherman and a "Merrow,"
as the Mermaid is called in Ireland.
IS THE UNICORN FABULOUS?
To this question we may reply, in the words of a writer of 1633,
"Concerning the Unicorn, different opinions prevail among authors:
some doubt, others deny, and a third class affirm its existence." The
question has lasted two thousand years, and is every now and then kept
alive by fresh evidences.
Ctesias, a credulous Greek physician, who appears to have resided at
the Court of Persia, in the time of the younger Cyrus, about 400 years
before the birth of Christ, describes the wild asses of India as equal
to the horse in size, and even larger, with white bodies, red heads,
bluish eyes, and a horn on the forehead a cubit in length; the part
from the forehead entirely white, the middle black, and the extremity
red and pointed. Drinking-vessels were made of it, and those who used
them were subject neither to convulsions, epilepsy, nor poison, provided
that before taking the poison, or after, they drank from these cups
water, wine, or any other liquor. Ctesias describes these animals as
very swift and very strong. Naturally they were not ferocious; but when
they found themselves and their young surrounded by horsemen, they did
not abandon their offspring, but defended themselves by striking with
their horns, kicking, and biting, and so slew many men and horses. This
animal was also shot with arrows and brought down with darts; for it was
impossible to take it alive. Its flesh was too bitter for food, but it
was hunted for its horn and astragalus (ankle-bone), which last Ctesias
declares he saw. Aristotle describes the Indian ass with a single horn.
Herodotus mentions asses having horns; and Strabo refers to Unicorn
horses, with the heads of deers. Oppian notices the Aonian bulls with
undivided hoofs, and a single median horn between their temples. Pliny
notices it as a very ferocious beast, similar in its body to a horse,
with the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar,
a deep bellowing voice, and a single black horn standing out in the
middle of its forehead. He adds, that it cannot be taken alive; and some
such excuse may have been necessary in those days for not producing the
living animal upon the arena of the amphitheatre.
Out of this passage most of the modern Unicorns have been described
and figured. The body of the horse and the head of the deer appear to
be but vague sketches; the feet of the elephant and the tail of the
boar point at once to a pachydermatous (thick-skinned) animal; and the
single black horn, allowing for a little exaggeration as to its length,
well fits the two last-mentioned conditions, and will apply to the
Indian rhinoceros, which, says the sound naturalist, Ogilby, "affords a
remarkable instance of the obstructions which the progress of knowledge
may suffer, and the gross absurdities which not unfrequently result from
the wrong application of a name." Mr. Ogilby then refers to the account
of Ctesias, which we have just quoted, and adds:--"His account, though
mixed up with a great deal of credulous absurdity, contains a very
valuable and perfectly recognisable description of the rhinoceros, under
the ridiculous name, however, of the _Indian Ass_; and, as he attributed
to it a whole hoof like the horse, and a single horn in the forehead,
speculation required but one step further to produce the fabulous
Unicorn."
The ancient writers who have treated of the Unicorn are too numerous for
us to specify. Some of the moderns may be referred to. Garcias describes
this marvellous creature from one who alleges that he had seen it. The
seer affirmed that it was endowed with a wonderful horn, which it would
sometimes turn to the left and right, at others raise, and then again
depress. Ludovicus Vartomanus writes, that he saw two sent to the Sultan
from Ethiopia, and kept in a repository at Mahomet's tomb in Mecca.
Cardan describes the Unicorn as a rare animal, the size of a horse, with
hair very like that of a weasel, with the head of a deer, on which one
horn grows three cubits in length (a story seldom loses anything in its
progress) from the forehead, ample at its lowest part, and tapering to
a point; with a short neck, a very thin mane, leaning to one side only,
and less on the ear, as those of a young roe.
In Jonston's "Historia Naturalis," 1657, we see the smooth-horned
solipede, "Wald Esel;" and the digitated and clawed smooth-horned "Meer
Wolff," the latter with his single horn erect in the foreground, but
with it depressed in the background, where he is represented regaling on
serpents. Then there are varieties, with the head, mane, and tail of a
horse; another smooth-horned, with a horse's head and mane, a pig's-tail
and camel-like feet; the "Meer Stenbock, Capricornus Marinus," with
hind webbed feet, and a kind of graduated horn, like an opera-glass
pulled out, in the foreground, and charging the fish most valiantly in
the water in the distance. Then there is another, with a mule's head
and two rhinoceros-like horns, one on his forehead and the other on his
nose; and a horse's tail, with a collar round his neck; a neck entirely
shaggy--and a twisted horn, a shaggy gorget, and curly tail, are among
other peculiarities.
The Unicorn seems to have been a sad trouble to the hunters, who hardly
knew how to come at so valuable a piece of game. Some described the horn
as moveable at the will of the animal--a kind of small sword, in short,
with which no hunter who was not exceedingly cunning in fence could have
a chance. Others told the poor foresters that all the strength lay in
its horn, and that when pressed by them it would throw itself from the
pinnacle of the highest rock, horn foremost, so as to pitch upon it, and
then quietly march off not a bit the worse!
Modern zoologists, disgusted as they well may be with fables, such as we
have glanced at, disbelieve, generally, the existence of the Unicorn,
such, at least, as we have referred to; but there is still an opinion
that some land animal bearing a horn on the anterior part of its head,
exists besides the rhinoceros. The nearest approach to a horn in the
middle of the forehead of any terrestrial mammiferous animal known to us
is the bony protuberance on the forehead of the giraffe; and though it
would be presumptuous to deny the existence of a one-horned quadruped
other than the rhinoceros, it may be safely stated that the insertion
of a long and solid horn in the living forehead of a horse-like or
deer-like cranium is as near an impossibility as anything can be.
Rupell, after a long sojourn in the north-east of Africa, stated that
in Kordofan the Unicorn exists; stated to be the size of a small horse,
of the slender make of the gazelle, and furnished with a long straight
horn in the male, which was wanting in the female. According to the
statements made by various persons, it inhabits the deserts to the south
of Koretofan, is uncommonly fleet, and comes only occasionally to the
Koldagi Heive mountains on the borders of Kordofan.
Other writers refer the Unicorn to the antelope. The origin of the name
of antelope is traced by Cuvier to the Greek _Anthalops_, applied to a
fabulous animal living on the banks of the Euphrates, with long jagged
horns, with which it sawed down trees of considerable thickness! Others
conjecture this animal to have been the _Oryx_, a species of antelope,
which is fabulously reported to have had only one horn, and to have been
termed _Panthalops_ in the old language of Egypt.