generated birds.[9] “When,” says a very Early English naturalist, “this
old wrack of ships falls in the sea, it is rotted and corrupted by the
sea, and from this decay breeds birds, hanging by the beaks to the wood;
and when they are all covered with plumage and are large and fat, then
they fall into the sea; and then God, in his grace, restores them to
their natural life.” It will thus be seen how intimate is the
association between sailors and birds, particularly the kind of bird
produced by rotten and sunken timber, and styled by the above very Early
English naturalist “crabans,” or “cravans,” though “barnacles,” perhaps,
is the term to best fit the prodigy. Even a dead bird may prove a
soothsayer, according to Jack, for, says he, if a kingfisher be
suspended to the mast by its beak it will swing its breast in the
direction of the coming wind. Easier even than whistling for a breeze,
and as a weathercock worth the lordliest and more flashing of
ecclesiastical vanes, which will only tell how the wind is actually
blowing. This is a vulgar error in Sir Thomas Browne’s list, but not
exploded by that eloquent worthy. Nay, he rather explains it by
remarking “that a kingfisher hanged by the bill showeth what quarter the
wind is by an occult and secret property converting the breast to that
part of the horizon from whence the wind doth blow. This is a received
opinion, and very strange, introducing natural weathercocks and
extending magnetical positions as far as animal natures—a conceit
supported chiefly by present practice, yet not made out by reason nor
experience.” But neither reason nor experience is desirable in
superstition—that is to say if superstition is to flourish. It was long
believed that gulls were never to be seen bleeding, and that the
shooting stars were the half-digested food of these birds.[10] Why fancy
should ever trouble itself with the blood of gulls is not clear; as to
shooting stars it was reasonable that the method by which they were
produced should be accurately stated and settled once for all. Some of
the superstitions in connection with birds and their influence over
things maritime are very curious and romantic. Anciently, swallows were
deemed unlucky at sea, and we read that Cleopatra abandoned a voyage on
observing a swallow at the masthead of the ship.
Footnote 9:
I advert to this singular article of marine superstition in another
chapter.
“Swallows have built
In Cleopatra’s sails their nests; the augurers
Say they know not, they cannot tell, look grimly,
And dare not speak their knowledge.”
Footnote 10:
Both the Rev. John Ray and Dr. Edward Browne (son of the famous
Norwich Knight) speak of this queer belief in their “Travels.”
On the other hand, it was agreed that if a kite perched on a mast the
omen was a favourable one. A crow lighting on a ship is accepted by the
Chinese as a sure sign of prosperous gales, and they feed the bird with
crumbs of bread by way of coaxing it to remain. The magpie is another
evil bird. A sailor said to Sir Walter Scott, “All the world agrees that
one magpie bodes ill-luck, two are not bad, but three are the very devil
itself. I never saw three magpies but twice, and once I nearly lost my
vessel, and afterwards I fell off my horse and was hurt.”
It is said that fishermen in the English Channel attribute the east wind
to the flight of curlew on dark nights. It is possible that such a
superstition may exist, nor could a far wilder fancy be held ill-founded
by one who, in midnight darkness upon the sea-shore, has heard the
dismal wailings and cryings of invisible birds speeding through the
blackness in detachments, and making their weird noises sound as though
they were uttered by one set of fowl wheeling round and round again.
But, spite of Coleridge’s marvellous poem, the stately albatross, taking
all the sea birds round, stands lowest in the catalogue of the feathered
tribe, accredited with special necromancy in good or bad directions.[11]
The little Mother Carey’s chicken, the stormy petrel, the tiny swallow
of the deep, is distinctly ahead of the huge creature with its span of
thirteen feet, and a score of superstitions crowd about it, such as its
power of evoking storms, its being the soul of a dead sailor, and so
forth. The albatross is beaten out of the field, too, by the common
seagull, whose familiar presence is no doubt the cause of its rich
legendary and traditional endowment. But for all that the albatross
remains the sovereign of the seas, and unless the average duration of
its life is already positively known, the discovery made in 1886 of the
bird with the compass at its neck having been alive so long ago as 1848,
will be received with interest by all admirers of the lovely and noble
creature.[12]
Footnote 11:
“About this time a beautiful white bird, web-footed, and not unlike a
dove in size and plumage, hovered over the masthead of the cutter,
and, notwithstanding the pitching of the boat, frequently attempted to
perch on it, and continued to flutter there till dark. Trifling as
this circumstance may appear, it was considered by us all as a
propitious omen.” This passage occurs in the account of the loss of
the _Lady Hobart_ in the _Mariner’s Chronicle_. What sort of bird this
was, unless a gull, I cannot imagine.
Footnote 12:
An old legend states these birds to be the disembodied spirits of
captains who have been wrecked off the Cape, and who are condemned to
wear the feathers for seven years by order of the demon of the deep.
An author writes fifty years ago: “Caught a splendid albatross;
measured nineteen feet from the tip of each wing. He had been
following the ship for many hours; but I was surprised to see what an
insignificant figure he cut when dissected. He turned out all
feathers.” He was no doubt a captain!
A boatman told me that once whilst fishing off the coast in forty feet
of water, the tide a quarter ebb, and the sea a dark clear green, he and
his mate were hanging over the boat’s side with lines in their hands
when they saw a mermaid floating past under the surface by about the
depth a man’s arm would penetrate. I asked him what the mermaid was
like, and he replied that she was of a chocolate colour, with short
black hair and very large intensely black eyes. Her figure to the waist
was that of a woman; the rest of her was fish-shaped. Altogether he
reckoned her to have been of the size of a thirty-pound salmon, only
that she was longer than a fish of that weight would be. Her face and
figure—as much of it as was human—were as small as those of a child two
years old. She was an unmistakable mermaid—he’d warrant that. Might he
never airn another shilling in this world if he wor telling a lie. She
floated by at an oar’s length; had the sight of her left him and his
mate their wits they would have secured her; but some minutes passed
before they recovered from their amazement, and though they got their
anchor and pulled in the direction of the creature they saw no more of
her. I was glad to hear that there was, at all events, one mermaid still
in existence, for I had been given to understand that the last of these
ocean Mohicans had been gorged by the sea-serpent a little before the
date on which her Majesty’s ship _Bacchante_ sighted the _Flying
Dutchman_.
It is customary to look into antiquity for the origin of mermaids, to
trace these daughters of the deep to the Nereids and Naiads, with some
reference to the Syrens and to Circe and to Hylas and the Argonautic
voyages. Would it not be easier to take Jack’s word for it? There is the
sea-serpent; nobody would care to say positively that the mighty snake
is a myth. It is like a ghost; one would rather reserve one’s opinion on
the matter. So, in spite of the Barnumisms of the aquarium, who has
courage enough in the face of the testimonies of many scores of
mahogany-cheeked eye-witnesses to assert with all cocksureness that
there is not and never was such a thing as a mermaid?
At all events, Simon Wilkin, F.L.S., who edited an edition of the works
of Sir Thomas Browne, has stated such a case for the mermaid as merits
something better than a smile. It is the business of the learned Norwich
Knight to explode the sea-nymph as a vulgar error, and he certainly
bears hard upon popular faith by denying the syren to be the mermaid’s
original, as “containing no fishy composure,” and, by tracing her to
Dagon, of whose stump “the fishy part only remained when the hands and
upper part fell before the ark.” But what writes Mr. Simon Wilkin in a
note to this passage? He takes the same view that Johnson took of
disembodied spirits, and says that he cannot admit the probability of a
belief in mermaids having lasted from remote antiquity without some
foundation in truth. He examines Sir Humphry Davy’s arguments against
the likelihood of the existence of such an object as a mermaid, and
agrees with that distinguished philosopher’s view that a human head,
human hands, and human mammæ are wholly inconsistent with a fish’s tail,
because—and the logic is good—the head, hands, and mammæ of any creature
furnished also with a tail could not be human; and so, conversely, adds
he, “the tail of such a creature could not be a fish’s tail.” The
philosopher was personally interested in the subject, for if Mr. Simon
Wilkin is to be credited, Sir Humphry, whilst swimming, was himself
mistaken by some ladies of Caithness for a mermaid. Surely no scientific
gentleman ever received a higher compliment. Mr. Wilkin quotes from the
Evangelical Magazine of September, 1822. In that publication was printed
a letter from the Rev. Dr. Philip, dated at Cape Town. The doctor said
he had just seen a mermaid that was then being exhibited. The head was
the size of a baboon’s, thinly covered with black hair, and there were a
few hairs on the upper lip. The ears, nose, lips, chin, breasts,
fingers, and nails resembled the human subject. Of the teeth there were
eight incisors, four canine, and eight molars. This creature was about
three feet long, and covered with scales. It was caught by a Chinese
fisherman, and sold to one Captain Eades, at Batavia. Sir Humphry
pronounced this mermaid to be the head and bust from two apes, fastened
to the tail of the kipper salmon; but this Mr. Simon Wilkin would not
hear of. Sir Thomas Browne’s editor is well backed. Has not Alexandre
Dumas described the mermaid of the Royal Museum at the Hague? It was not
a thing to be disputed about. “If after all this,” says the author of
_Monte Cristo_, “there shall be found those who disbelieve the existence
of such creatures as mermaids, let them please themselves. I shall give
myself no more trouble about them.”
If Sir Humphry Davy were the mermaid that was seen at Caithness in
January, 1809, it would be interesting to know what he thought of the
description of him that was sent to the public journals of that date by
two witnesses, one of whom was Miss Mackay, daughter of the Rev. David
Mackay, minister of Reay. That Sir Humphry should have been bathing in
the sea in the month of January will seem strange to persons whose blood
flows languidly. But there is more to wonder at in the following
particulars: Whilst Miss Mackay and another lady were walking by the
shore they perceived three people who were on a rock at some distance
showing signs of astonishment and terror. On approaching the ladies saw
that the object of their wonder was a face resembling the human
countenance, floating on the waves. The sea ran high, and as the waves
advanced the mermaid gently sank under them, and afterwards reappeared.
The face was plump and round, the nose small, the eyes a light grey, the
head long, the hair thick, the throat slender, smooth and white. The
hands and fingers were not webbed. “It sometimes laid its right hand
under its cheek, and in this position floated for some time.” Other
witnesses declared that it disappeared on a boy crying out. It
reappeared at a distance: the spectators followed it by walking along
the shore, until it vanished for good.[13] Could this have been Sir
Humphry Davy? The narrative was supplemented by a tale copied from an
old History of the Netherlands. There was an inundation in 1403, and
when the water retired a mermaid was found in the Dermet Mere, near
Campear. A number of boats surrounded her; she tried to dive under them,
and finding her way stopped, made a hideous deafening noise, and with
her hands and tail sunk a boat or two. On being cleaned of the sea-moss
and shells which covered her she was found a somewhat comely being, hair
long and black, face human, figure—so far as it went—very good indeed.
The rest was “a strong fish tail.” She was sent to the Haerlem
magistrates, who ordered her to be taught to pray and to spin, but she
never could be brought to speak; possibly she did not like the Dutch
tongue. She also declined to wear any kind of clothing in summer. Part
of her hair was plaited in the Dutch style, and the remainder hung down
her. “She would leave her tail in the water, and accordingly had a tub
of water under her chair, made on purpose for her; she eat milk, water,
bread, butter, and fish. She lived thus out of her element (except her
tail) fifteen or sixteen years.” That posterity might not doubt this
prodigy ever flourished, her picture was painted and hung in the Town
House of Haerlem, and her story written under it in letters of gold.
Footnote 13:
Annual Register, 1809.
But we must accept the existence of the mermaid on the mariner’s
assurance. A fig for the dugong, and manatee, and sea-horse! Let them in
certain postures look as human as they will, the ape is not more the
brother of man than are those fish the originals of the wild-eyed,
sweet-voiced, silver-shining, golden-haired beauties of the azure main,
rising out of their palaces of pearl to ravish Jack’s gaze with a
picture of girlish loveliness.
“Though all the splendour of the sea,
Around thy faultless beauty shine,
The heart that riots wild and free
Can hold no sympathy with mine.”
So the love-sick Tarpaulin may sigh; but though the foam-white form
slide into the glassy profound with virginal fear of his pursuing eyes,
let us not vulgarly call the delicate shining shape dugong, or
sea-horse! Does not John of Hesse, in his travels, tell us of a land
where he saw a stony and smoking mountain, and heard mermaids
singing—sirens who draw ships into danger by their songs? And how, if
not by the witchery of their eyes and the clear melodies of their
voices? And listen to the navigator, Hudson, “One of our men, looking
overboard, saw a mermaid, and, calling up some of the company to see
her, one more came up, and by that time she was come closely to the
ship’s side, looking earnestly at the men. A little after, a sea came
and overturned her. Her back and breasts were like a woman’s, as they
said that saw her; her body as big as one of us, her skin very white,
and long hair hanging down behind, of colour black. Seeing her go down,
they saw her tail, which was like that of a porpoise, speckled like a
mackerel.”
The mermaids must be left alone. They are Jack’s sweethearts, and no
sacrilegious hand should be suffered to rob old ocean of those seductive
spirits which sparkle in its depths or whiten with their forms and gild
with their hair the weedy and shelley embroidery of the coast.
If an ill-word must be said of these creatures, let it be directed at
the merman. _He_ is no beauty, and I believe has no claim to be
considered even respectable. They are said to be drunkards, and have
green hair, red eyes, and noses distinguished for a peculiar kind of
growth termed in ships’ forecastles “grog-blossoms.” Francis Pirard
says, in the account he gives of his shipwreck, that he saw a merman,
when at anchor in St. Augustine’s Bay, in the Island of Madagascar. He
calls it a strange phenomenon, and describes it as a monstrous fish with
a head of a man and a long beard. “It plunged into the water on our
approach, and we could only see part of its back, which was scaly.” I
can well understand the alarm confessedly felt by persons at the sight
of a merman. The mermaid is an engaging and often adorable creature, and
fills the mind with the softest emotions; but the merman is so
disgracefully ugly, and so depravedly and ironically human-like withal,
that no spectacle is more shocking. The old Bishop of Norway tells of
three sailors who saw something floating off the Danish coast. It proved
to be an old merman. He had broad shoulders, a small head, a thin face
of an abandoned and malignant cast of expression, and the usual
fish-like termination. The bishop does not positively say that this
merman was drunk, but he describes his postures as very uneasy—his
attitudes being such as perhaps might be expected in a fish that was in
liquor and that tried to balance itself on its tail—so that there is
reason to suppose the worst. The same bishop tells of a parson who found
a dead merman in his parish. The corpse was six feet long. It had a
man’s face and arms, not unlike a human being’s, only that they were
connected to its body by membranes. It is not impossible but that this
apparent corpse was a merman overtaken in liquor.
I do not gather—at least from my studies in this direction—that these
mermen are related to the mermaids. A literal-minded Swede has indeed
feigned that the merman is the mermaid’s husband, but on no better
ground than the circumstance of having seen a male and a female amicably
swimming about together. I do not mean to say that the merman, being
always found alone, is a proof that he is a bachelor, but it is hard to
reconcile the terrestrial and even marine customs of Nature with the
pairing of such a divinity as the mermaid with such a horrid, drunken
object as the merman. No; if the mermen wive at all they go for their
spouses to the dugongs. The mermaids seek elsewhere for lovers than amid
the ranks of fishes’ tails merging into drunken old men. The sailors
know her as a dainty creature that floats upwards to the surface like a
beam of golden light.
“Upstarted the mermaid by the ship,
Wi’ a glass and a kame in her hand,
Says, ‘Reek about, reek about, my merry men;
Ye are not very far from land.’”
If the mermen were the pretty creatures’ husbands they would be driven
wild with jealousy; for it is certain that in olden times—it may yet be
the artless charmers’ practice—to make love to human men, to princes as
to peasants, very properly choosing the best-looking. Sometimes, it is
true, their amorous emotions were inspired by motives extremely
sinister. There are many stories told of these marine Becky Sharps
ogling and leering at dashing and handsome and fragrant young men of
quality ashore, whilst possibly some old Lord Steyne, in the shape of a
hideous merman in the depths, watched the wicked comedy with sardonic
sneers and laughter. A mermaid nearly drowned a certain young laird of
Lorntie. The youthful nobleman saw the beautiful girl apparently
struggling for life in the water; but his henchman, bawling out a hearty
“God sauf us!” said that the lady was a mermaid; whereupon they galloped
off whilst the marine Becky piped up—
“Lorntie, Lorntie, were it na for your man
I had gart your hairt’s blood, skirl in my pan!”
Some are also charged with embracing their sweethearts from no other
motive than to suffocate them, as in the story of the Manx shepherd, who
was so much hurt by being squeezed that he pushed the mermaid away, for
which she wounded him to death by flinging a stone at him. Of this
deceitful and dangerous kind are those Swedish sea-nymphs who pass their
days upon the rocks combing their hair and viewing their perfections in
hand-mirrors. They are also said to amuse themselves by spreading out
linen to dry, but this fancy clearly springs from the mistakes of seamen
who suppose the white foam crawling about the finny maidens to be the
contents of the wash-tub. If a fisherman sees one of these mermaids, he
is on no account to mention it to his mates, or bad luck will follow.
But other kinds of these girls of the ocean are tender, and extremely
affectionate and lovable. The melancholy, melodious sounds sometimes
heard breathing amid the stillness upon the deep at night are the sighs
of mermaids who have loved and lost, and who rise from their coral beds,
their grottoes of pearl, their pavilions and palaces of shells, to make
their moan to the stars. Mermaids are great lovers of music. They have
been known to sacrifice their sweethearts for a tune. A fisherman was
induced to give his handsome son to a mermaid on her offering in
exchange a brave reward in the shape of luck. But the boy’s mother, who
sang very sweetly, so charmed the mermaid’s heart, that she undertook to
return her adored if his mamma would favour her with another air.
It is gratifying to find old Bailey in his “Dictionarium Britannicum”
(1730), defining the word mermaid with a very sober and sturdy leaning
in favour of the real existence of these ladies. “Whereas,” says he, “it
has been thought they have been only the product of the painter’s
invention, it is confidently reported that there is in the following
lake fishes which differ in nothing from mankind but in the want of
speech and reason. Father Francis de Pavia, a missionary, being in the
kingdom of Congo in Africa, who would not believe that there were such
creatures, affirms that the Queen of Singa did see in a river coming out
of the lake Zaire many mermaids, something resembling a woman in the
breasts, hands, and arms; but the lower part is perfect fish, the head
round, the face like a calf, a large mouth, little ears, and round, full
eyes. Which creatures Father Merula often saw and eat of them.” Which, I
may add, does not say much for Father Merula’s manners and tastes,
unless it is meant figuratively, as in the sense of the saying in the
comedy, “Six weeks before I married her I could have eaten her, and six
weeks after I was sorry I didn’t.” As to the face like the calf, the
large mouth, and so forth, let it be remembered that the place Father de
Pavia wrote of was the kingdom of Congo, where, to be sure, we should
not expect to find even mermaids beautiful. But that these sea-nymphs,
with their golden hair, their shining shapes, their teeth of pearl,
their eyes of the liquid blue of their own glorious element, full of
ocean mystery and the spirit of the unfathomable starless world in which
they live—that they are as beautiful as dreams among shores from whose
silent rocks neither the voice of a De Pavia nor a Merula has ever
fetched an echo, who can doubt?
The mermaid is the sailor’s love. Let us leave her to him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_OLD SEA ORDNANCE._
Not very long since a French smack fished up an old cannon a league or
so to the eastward of the North head of the Goodwin Sands. It was
believed to be a gun of the time of De Ruyter and “Trump,” but so eaten,
rusted, and defaced by time and the action of salt water that its
paternity was scarcely a determinable thing.
There is no lack of reminders ashore of the sort of weapons with which
our grandsires fought the battles of their country; but somehow an
interest that no museum could impart attaches to an object dragged from
the tomb of the deep, hauled out of the twilight of its oozy bed, and
set up for all eyes to gaze at in the staring light of day. In marine
collections there are still to be found tomahawks of the pattern which
Nelson’s men handled; but figure one of these death-dealing contrivances
fished up in Cadiz Bay! strangely hooked off a tract of the sand there,
over which the keels of the flaming and thunderous ships of that Titanic
struggle surged in their throes of conflict!