Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/50

Rh 40 M E E M E K perance, &c. (Kong Fredericks den andens Kronike, Copenhagen, 1680, p. 302). B. A Mermaid imparts supernatural powers to a human being. Thus in the beautiful story of &quot; The Old Man of Cury &quot; (in Hunt s Popular Romances of the West of England, 1871) the old man, instead of silver and gold, obtains the power of doing good to his neighbours by breaking the spells of witchcraft, chasing away diseases, and discovering thieves. John Reid, the Cromarty shipmaster, was more selfish, his &quot; wishes three &quot; being that neither he nor any of his friends should perish by the sea, that he should be unin terruptedly successful in everything he undertook, and that the lady who scorned his love should scorn it no more. C. A mermaid has some one under her protection, and for wrong done to her ward exacts a terrible penalty. One of the best and most detailed examples of this class is the story of the &quot; Mermaid s Vengeance &quot; in Mr Hunt s book already quoted. D. A mermaid falls in love with a human being, lives with him as his lawful wife for a time, and then, some compact being umviltingly or intentionally broken by him, departs to her true home in the sea. Here, if its mermaid form be accepted, the typical legend is undoubtedly that of Melusina, which, being made the subject of a full-fledged romance by Jean d Arras, became one of the most popular folk-books of Europe, appearing in Spanish, German, Dutch, and Bohemian versions. Melusina, whose name may be a far-off echo of the Mylitta (Venus) of the Phoenicians, was married to Raymond of Lusignan, and was long afterwards proudly recognized as one of their ancestors by the Luxembourg, Rohan, and Sassenaye families, and even by the emperor Henry VII. Her story will be found in Baring Gould s Myths of the Middle Ages. E. A mermaid falls in love ivith a man, and entices him to go and live with her below the sea ; or a merman ivins the affection or captures the person of an earthborn maiden. This form of legend is very common, and has naturally been a favourite with poets. Macphail of Colonsay successfully rejects the allurements of the mermaid of Corrievrekin, and comes back after long years of trial to the maid of Colonsay. 1 The Danish ballads are especially full of the theme ; as &quot; Agnete and the Merman,&quot; an ante cedent of Matthew Arnold s &quot; Forsaken Merman&quot; ; the &quot; Deceitful Merman, or Marstig s Daughter &quot; ; and the finely detailed story of Rosmer Hafmand (No. 49 in Grimm). In relation to man the mermaid is usually of evil issue if not of evil intent. She has generally to be bribed or compelled to utter her prophecy or bestow her gifts, and whether as wife or paramour she brings disaster in her train. In itself her sea-life is often represented as one of endless delights, but at other times a mournful mystery and sadness broods over it. The fish-tail, which in popular fancy forms the characteristic feature of the mermaid, is really of secondary importance ; for the true Teutonic mermaid probably a remnant of the great cult of the Vanir had no fish-tail ; 2 and this symbolic appendage occurs in such remote mythological regions as to give no clue to historical connexion. The Tritons, and, in the later representations, the Sirens of classical antiquity, the Phoenician Dagon, and the Chaldsean Oannes are all well- known examples ; the Ottawas and other American Indians have their man-fish and woman-fish (Jones, Traditions of the North American Indians, 1830) ; and the Chinese tell stories not unlike our own about the sea-women of their southern seas (Dennis, Folklore of China, 1875). Quasi-historical instances of the appearance or capture of 1 See Leyden s &quot;The Mermaid,&quot; in Sir Walter Scott s Border Minstrelsy. 2 Karl Blind, &quot; New Finds in Shetlandic and Welsh Folk-Lore, &quot; in Gentleman s Magazine, 1882. mermaids are common enough, 3 and serve, with the frequent use of the figure on signboards and coats of arms, to show how thoroughly the myth had taken hold of the popular imagination. 4 A mermaid captured at Bangor, on the shore of Belfast Lough, in the 6th century, was not only baptized, but admitted into some of the old calendars as a saint under the name of Murgen (Notes and Queries, Oct. 21, 1882); and Stowe (Annales, under date 1187) relates how a man-fish was kept for six months and more in the castle of Orforde in Suffolk. As showing how legendary material may gather round a simple fact, the oft-told story of the sea-woman of Edam is particu larly interesting. The oldest authority, Joh. Gerbrandus a Leydis, a Carmelite monk (ob. 1504), tells (Annales, &c., Frankfort, 1620) how in 1403 a wild woman came through a breach in the dike into Purmerlake, and, being found by some Edam milkmaids, was ultimately taken to Haarlem and lived there many years. Nobody could understand her, but she learned to spin, and was wont to adore the cross. Ocka Scharlensis (Chronijk van Friesland, Leeuw., 1597) reasons that she was not a fish because she could spin, and she was not a woman because she could live in the sea ; and thus in due course she got fairly established as a genuine mermaid. Vosmaer, who has carefully investigated the matter, enumerates forty writers who have repeated the story, and shows that the older ones speak only of a woman (see &quot; Beschr. van de zoogen. Meermin der stad Haarlem,&quot; in Verh. van de I foil. Maatsch. van K. en Wet., part 23, No. 1786). As for the stuffed mermaids which have figured from the days of Bar tholomew Fair downwards, it is enough to mention that exhibited in the Turf Coffee-house, London, in 1822, and carefully drawn by Cruikshank (compare Chambers, Book of Days). The best account of the mermaid-myth is in Baring Gould s Myths of the Middle Ages. See also, besides works already men tioned, Pontoppidan, who in his logically credulous way collects much matter to prove the existence of mermaids ; Maillet, Tclli- amcd, Hague, 1755 ; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologic, i. 404, and Altddn. Hcldenliedcr, 1811 ; Waldron s Description and Train s Hist, and Stat. Ace. of the Isle of Man ; Folklore Society s Record, vol. ii. ; Napier, Hist, and Trad. Tales connected with the South oj Scotland ; Sebillot, Traditions de la Haute Bretagnc, 1882, and Contes des Marins, 1882. (H. A. W.) MEROE, in classical geography (Strabo, xvii. 2, 2 ; Pliny, ii. 73, v. 10 ; Ptol., p. 201), was the metropolis of .^Ethiopia, situated on an island of the same name between the Nile and the Astaboras (Atbara). The &quot;island&quot; is only an inaccurate name for the fertile plain between the two rivers. This Meroe, first mentioned by Herodotus (ii. 29 sg.), succeeded an older Ethiopian kingdom of Napata lower down the Nile, originally subject to and civilized from Egypt, but which afterwards became independent and even sent forth an Ethiopian dynasty to reign in Egypt, to which the So and Tirhaka of the Bible belonged (see ETHIOPIA). The name of Meroe in the form Merawi is now given to Napata. The later Meroe retained its independence when Egypt fell under foreign sovereigns. Diodorus (iii. 6) describes it as entirely controlled by the priesthood till a native prince Ergamenes destroyed the sacerdotal caste in the time of Ptolemy II. Queen Candace (Acts viii. 27) was probably sovereign of Meroe; see Lepsius s Letters, Eng. tr., pp. 196, 206; and comp. Strabo, xvii. 1, 54 for 3 Compare the strange account of the quasi-human creatures found in the Nile given by Theophylactns, llistorise, viii. 16, pp. 299-302 of Bekker s ed. 4 See the paper in Jour. Brit. Arch. Ass., xxxviii., 1882, by H. S. Cuming, who points out that mermaids or mermen occur in the arms of Earls Caledon, Howth, and Sandwich, Viscounts Boyne and Hood. Lord Lyttleton, and Scott of Abbotsford, as well as in those of the Ellis, Byron, Phene, Skeffington, and other families. The English heralds represent the creatures with a single tail, the French and German heralds frequently with a double one.