Merman and mermaid shown in a medieval bestiary engraving
Stories of merpeople or merbeings, marine creatures with human-like upper bodies and fish-like tails, have been told by seafarers from the dawn of humanity. These stories have usually been written off as little more than old-fashioned folklore, and in some situations, this is undoubtedly true. There are numerous such cases of dugongs and manatees being mistaken for seals or other sirenians.
Manatee with mermaid in a semi-comic engraving from the 19th century.
Additionally, most reports of well-preserved mermaid specimens are based on cleverly constructed hoaxes (gaffs), typically consisting of a monkey’s head and torso skillfully affixed to a huge fish’s tail – less real people with fins than false people with fins. The infamous “Feejee Mermaid,” which American circus magnate Phineas T. Barnum displayed at Broadway’s Concert Hall in 1842, is a prime example of these unusual beings:
‘Feejee Mermaid’ by Barnum, engraved
in addition to the fantastic, incredibly outstanding contemporary artificial mermaid created especially for me by skilled movie model-maker Alan Friswell – thanks Al!
My very own authentic fictitious mermaid! Dr. Karl Shuker) On the other hand, there are a few other documented cases that can’t be easily dismissed as fables or scams, as the following collection of intriguing but unresolved examples demonstrates.
SWALLOWED BY A SHARK
If merfolk exist, they must at times be preyed upon by sharks, one of the ocean’s greatest predators. This possibility is supported by a previously unreported case, which may also shed light on the anatomy of merfolk. The aforementioned creature was discovered in the stomach of a shark caught off Iceland’s northwest coast, where the priest of Ottrardale carefully observed it. The following is an excerpt from a 19th-century book written by Sabine Baring-Gould called Iceland, Its Scenes and Sagas:
“The lower a piece of the creature was totally consumed, while the upper part, from the epigastric and hypogastric district, was in certain spots to some extent eaten, in others totally gobbled up. The sternum, or bosom bone, was awesome. This animal had a man-shaped head and appeared to be about the size of an eight- or nine-year-old boy. The nape of the neck had a significant indentation or sinking, and the anterior surface of the occiput had a lot of protrusion. The alae, or ear lobes, were extremely large and extended far back. In addition to the larger teeth, it had long, pointed front teeth. The eyes were lustreless, and looked like those of a codfish. It wore long, coarse, black hair on its head, resembling the filamentous seaweed fucus filiformis; The shoulders were covered in this hair. It had a large, rounded forehead. The skin above the eyelids was thin, very wrinkled, and a bright olive color—the color of the body as a whole. The neck was unusually short, the shoulders were high, and the chin was cloven. The arms were the normal size, and each hand had four flesh-covered fingers and a thumb. It also had something resembling nipples, and its breast was shaped exactly like a man’s; The back also resembled a man’s. It had extremely cartilaginous ribs; Additionally, a black, coarse flesh resembling that of the seal could be seen in areas where the skin had been rubbed off. This creature, subsequent to having been uncovered about seven days on the shore, was again tossed into the ocean.”
‘Swamp Occupant’ merman painting (Jade Gengko)
THE MERMONKEY OF YELL
During the 1800s, six anglers familiar with naturalist Dr Robert Hamilton were fishing off the island of Holler, one of the Shetland Islands north of Scotland, when they caught a quite monkey-like mermaid, which had become snared in their lines:
“The animal was about three feet long, had protruding mammae like a woman, and had a human-like upper body; the face, the brow, and neck were short, and looking like those of a monkey; The small arms, which were folded across the breast, the fingers were unmistakable, not webbed; It had a few stiff, long bristles on the top of the head that went all the way down to the shoulders. It could erect and depress these at will, like a crest. The second rate piece of the body resembled a fish. The skin was grey in color and smooth. It made a low, melancholy sound and neither resisted nor attempted to bite. Six members of the crew carried it aboard their vessel; They carefully freed it from the lines and a hook that had accidentally attached to its body, but curiosity prevailed over superstition, and they returned it to its natural state. It dived right away and descended in the opposite direction.
SOME LITTLE-PUBLICISED MERFOLK REPORTS
I am especially grateful to American cryptozoologist Michael Newton for passing on the following reports, which have not received much mainstream attention in the past.
On June 24, 1873, the Daily Kennebec Journal of Augusta, Maine, published the first of these. The most important part is as follows:
“At the same time, around 1737, there was a story from Virgo, Spain, that some fishermen had caught a kind of merman who was five feet and a half from head to foot. A goat-like head with a long beard and moustache, black skin that was somewhat hairy, a very long neck, short arms, hands that were longer than they should be, and long fingers with nails that looked like claws were all present; webbed toes, as well as a fin on the lower back.”
It is interesting to note that the second edition of Conrad Gesner’s Historiae Animalium Liber IV featured an engraving of a strange goat-headed merbeing that was either called a sea-Pan, a sea-satyr, or a sea-devil. It was based on a skeleton and some mummified objects. Who is Aquatilium Animantium Naturale and Piscium? Supposedly, it had been lethally injured by stones tossed at it by certain mariners who had seen it hurling itself out of the Illyrian Ocean onto the shore trying to catch a little kid there. This must most likely have been another shrewdly developed extortion.
“The magazines for 1775 gave a record of a mermaid which was caught in the Levant and brought to London. The mermaid had the complexion and features of a European, similar to those of a young woman, according to a grave statement in one of the learned periodicals to its readers; that the eyes were light blue, that the nose was small and elegantly shaped, that the mouth was small and thin, and that the edges were round like those of a codfish; that the teeth were white, normal, and small; that the neck was well-rounded, that the ears resembled those of an eel but were placed similarly to those of humans, and that the respiration gills looked like cork.” The head “rolls.” There was a fin that rose pyramidally from the temples, “forming a foretop, like that of a lady’s headdress.” There was no hair on the head. The bust was almost similar to that of a youthful maiden, a legitimate conventional mermaiden, yet, goodness! Everything below the waste resembled a fish! She was able to swim thanks to three sets of fins, one above the other and one below the waist. At long last it is said to have a charming voice, which it never applies besides before a tempest.” This three-foot-tall mermaid, which was described in the Gentleman’s Magazine, was probably not visible to the author of the Annual Register. After that, it was found to be a ruse made from the angle [angel] shark’s skull.
“In 1782, a Welsh farmer by the name of Reynolds, who was living at Pen-y-hold, saw something that he appears to have thought was a mermaid; He told the story to Dr. George Phillips, who then told the story to Mrs. Moore, who then told the story to a young girl who was a student of hers. Mrs. Moore then wrote a story about it for Mrs. Morgan, who then included it in her “Tour to Milford Haven.” Like the Three Black Crows or the parlor game of Russian Scandal, we are left to determine how much it gained from its travels; in any case, its definitive structure was so follows: Reynolds saw what he thought to be a person bathing in the sea with the upper body out of the water one morning just outside the cliff. On closer inspection, it appeared to be the upper part of a young person in a tub, perhaps 16 or 18, with nice white skin!, a body that was sort of brownish and a tail that was below the water. The body and head were human-like, but the arms and hands were thicker than they were long, and the nose ended sharply, appearing to be high above the eyes. With a wild gaze, the enigmatic being looked intently at Reynolds, the cliffs, and the flying birds, but made no…[sound]. Reynolds went to see the merman or mermaid with some friends, but when he got back, it had vanished. We may not be too far off in assuming that Reynolds had seen a seal and that the narration had evolved into something else by Reynolds freely repeating from mouth to mouth.
Likewise of interest is the accompanying report, distributed by the Cape Brooklyn Falcon paper on 22 August 1886:
“The sightings of a mermaid in the waters a few days ago have excited the fishermen of Gabarus, Cape Breton, an island off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada.” They thought they saw a corpse floating on the surface of the water a few yards from Mr. Bagnall’s boat, which was accompanied by several fishermen. They approached it with the intention of bringing it to shore and saw it move. To their great surprise, it sat down, turned around, looked at them, and then vanished. It returned to the surface a short while later and turned its back on them before completely disappearing. The face, head, shoulders and arms looked like those of an individual, however the lower limits resembled a fish. It had long, dark hair on the back of its head that looked like a horse’s mane. The arms were formed like an individual’s, then again, actually the fingers of one hand were extremely lengthy. The skin was similar to that of a human being in color. The enigmatic stranger is without a shadow of a doubt a “mermaid,” the very first to be observed in the waters of Cape Breton.
If it weren’t for the mention of fingers, I might think this particularly hirsute creature was a seal, most likely a fur seal. Could it be that an unidentified species of seal has flippers in which the digits are more prominently visible than in other seals? This would make the seal’s face appear humanoid from a distance. A number of notable merbeing reports would closely match this species.
L. Heafner’s seal in upright mermaid posture Another noteworthy report was published in the Cape Brooklyn Eagle on November 3, 1896:
“On November 3, a group of Englishmen who were porpoise fishing in the Pacific found and killed a creature that looked like a mermaid. When someone called out, “Look there!” the group was on the hunting boat off the island of Watmoff, and Lord Devonshire, one of the fishermen, had just killed a porpoise. pointing to a terrifying creature that was about a cable’s length away. His lordship fired quickly, hitting the creature in the eyes with his weapon. The shot, however it didn’t kill it, so shocked the creature that it lay totally still on the outer layer of the ocean.
“It showed battle when pulled into the boat and must be killed to keep it from overwhelming the specialty. One of the strangest freaks ever, the monster is said to be. From its nose to the tip of its fluke-shaped tail, it is 10 feet long, and its human-shaped body is only 6 feet wide. It would be roughly 500 pounds in weight. It had the appearance of a man from about the breastbone to a point at the base of the stomach. It has long, coarse, dark reddish hair covering its entire body, as well as its arms, which are human-like in shape.
“It had, or had, at one at once and a thumb on each hand, practically human in shape, then again, actually instead of finger nails there were long, thin hooks. However, the forefinger of the right hand, the little finger of the left hand, and the left thumb are all gone, indicating that it had probably fought some monster in long ago. A large, unsightly scar that appeared to have been left by a swordfish appeared immediately beneath the right breast. The creature will be shipped to the British museum after being frozen in Seattle.
If it had actually made it to the British Museum, I am going to assume that it was never shipped there at all because I am confident that the scientific community would have learned more about this being. In June 2008, I sent information about this fascinating case to Mandy Holloway in the Natural History Museum of London’s Department of Zoology. She graciously agreed to look into the matter for me through the museum’s archives just in case! However, there was no sign of any merman. Well, at least we tried, right?
SOUTH AFRICA’S MERMAID ROCK PAINTINGS
Made for untold hundreds of years by the San agrarian individuals, the stone compositions in the Karoo, South Africa, portray a few momentous substances, yet none more so than specific ones looking similar to mermaids! Anthropologists have proposed that they either depict departed spirits (a prevalent theme in San society) or the hallucinogenic experience of San shamans in an effort to provide a rational scientific explanation for them following the discovery of additional examples in Ezeljachtpoort (again in the Karoo) in 1998. However, a senior San man who was questioned by the researchers about the paintings claims that they depict genuine water maidens, which are still reported quite frequently in this African region.
AN UNDISCOVERED AQUATIC PRIMATE?
Professor Sir Alister Hardy, a prominent British scientist, published a hypothesis in New Scientist in July 1960 that sparked a lot of discussion. He proposed that, rather than coming from upright plains-dwelling ancestors, man learned to stand up by coming from aquatic ape-like forms. Elaine Morgan, a researcher, pursued this startling concept in great detail in her 1982 book The Aquatic Ape and subsequent works, resulting in widespread disagreement among scientists. I intend to survey this thought exhaustively inside a future book. Let me just say that, if it is true, it has a significant impact on the issue of mermaids and their kind.
What would these aquatic ape-like monkeys look like today if some of them did become terrestrial and evolved into contemporary Homo sapiens, while others remained in the sea and continued to thrive and survive into the present day in their fully aquatic form? Perhaps the solution is already known to us, and it goes by the name of merfolk.
