Mermaids

170 12 4

by jiminmybed

by jiminmybed

[OVERVIEW]

Mermaids in folklore are depicted as an aquatic creature with the upper half of a woman and the lower half of a fish. Throughout stories they have mainly been beautiful. Some stories have then benevolent while others have them beneficent. Most are associated with having beautiful voices and events such as flooding, storms, and ship wrecks.

Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including the Near East, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The first stories appeared in ancient Assyria, in which the goddess Atargatis transformed herself into a mermaid out of shame for accidentally killing her human lover.

There are male equivalents called merman although traditions about and sightings of mermen are less common than those of mermaids.

Historical figures, people like Christopher Columbus, have written about what many believed to have been mermaids. However, historians believe what Columbus and so many other saw were actually manatees and other similar aquatic animals.

[COLUMBUS SIGHTING]

Speaking of Columbus, he described what he saw as three "female forms" which "rose high out of the sea, but were not as beautiful as they are represented". This was in 1943 off the coast of Hispaniola.

[BLACKBEARD SIGHTING]

The logbook of Blackbeard, an English pirate, records that he instructed his crew on several voyages to steer away from charted waters which he called "enchanted" for fear of merfolk or mermaids, which Blackbeard himself and members of his crew reported seeing. These sightings were often recounted and shared by sailors and pirates who believed that mermaids brought bad luck and would bewitch them into giving up their gold and dragging them to the bottom of the sea.

[HENRY HUDSON SIGHTINGS]

Henry Hudson was famously the first European to sail up the river and explore the bay that both now bear his name. In 1608, Hudson noted in his logbook that a few of his crew had spotted a mermaid swimming close to the ship's side looking up at them.

The sailors claimed that from the navel up "her back and breasts were like a woman's" but when she dove under the water "they saw her tail, which was like the tail of a porpoise."

[CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH SIGHTING]

Captain John Smith's story began before meeting Pocahontas. When he was sailing off an island in the West Indies and saw a woman "swimming with all possible grace" who, despite her "long green hair" was "by no means unattractive." The intrigued Captain Smith then observed that "from below the stomach the woman gave way to the fish" as the lovely siren slipped away.

[OTHER SIGHTINGS]

Two sightings were reported in Canada near Vancouver and Victoria, one from sometime between 1870 and 1890, the other from 1967. A Pennsylvania fisherman reported five sightings of a mermaid in the Susquehanna River near Marietta in June 1881.

In August 2009, after dozens of people reported seeing a mermaid leaping out of Haifa Bay waters and doing aerial tricks, the Israeli coastal town of Kiryat Yam offered a $1 million award for proof of its existence. In February 2012, work on two reservoirs near Gokwe and Mutare in Zimbabwe stopped when workers refused to continue, stating that mermaids had hounded them away from the sites.

[THOUGHTS]

Do you guys believe in mermaids? There aren't many theories or anything about mermaids, just some sightings and stuff.

So sorry it's so short.

If you have any conspiracy theories, unsolved cases, serial killers, or strange stories you want me to cover let me know by commenting me message me on Wattpad, Kik or Discord.