Mermaids in British Folklore
Here's a post about, well, mermaids in British folklore. Tagging @ivgaoriole (my number-one folklore post fan) and @laurasimonsdaughter (whose been writing about Dutch mermaid folklore lately; I'm curious how that compares to what's here) but of course anyone can interact with this post.
Cornwall
In Cornwall, mermaids are omens of storms or some other disaster [1] and can turn into seals [2]. The following stories are associated with them:
A beautiful, well-dressed woman with a gorgeous singing voice regularly went to church in the town of Zennor, but her home was unknown, and a man who followed her was never seen again. She eventually vanished for a long time, and returned when a ship anchored at Pendour Cove; she stood on deck, saying that she was returning home, but the shipâs anchor was blocking her door. The sailors, knowing how unlucky mermaids are, immediately set sail [3]
A farmer and part-time fisherman and smuggler called Lutey from the Lizard peninsula heard a cry on the beach, and saw a beautiful blonde mermaid named Morvenna (Cornish for âsea-womanâ) in a tidal pool who could speak all languages, confessing in the Cornish tongue that she had been trapped while looking for food to ensure that the mermen did not eat their children. In exchange for returning her to sea, she gave him a golden comb and three wishes, which he used to gain the power to break witchcraft, control over familiar spirits and prosperity for his descendants. She granted him gills so he could see the mermaid cities, adorned with gems and embalmed beautiful people (he accepted in order to loot alcohol), but she turned into a monster and tried to eat him, and it was only with his knife he escaped. Nonetheless, nine years later he descended into the sea permanently with her [4] and his descendants became famous healers [5].
An elderly fisherman was walking near Kynance Cove by the village of Cury at low tide when he saw a girl sitting on a rock. He realised she was a mermaid cut off from the sea by low tide, and she asked him to carry her back to the sea, where her jealous and violent husband was asleep. He did it in exchange for teaching him to be a cunning man, which he did when he came to the rock at high tide by moonlight. She gave him her comb, and told him to comb the sea for knowledge. She went on land a few times, but he never went to sea, and the comb and powers stayed in the family for a few generations [6]; their fame remained into the 19th century [7].
In addition, mermaids met at the Piper's Hole cave on the island of Tresco off the coast of Cornwall [8], a beautiful mermaid combing her hair and singing sad but beautiful music was seen near the villages of Morwenstow and Holacombe Pits [9] and a mermaid with a comb and glass was seen on a rock offshore from the village of Lamorna, and mermaids created sandbars blocking access to the sea at Padstow and Seaton in revenge for insults or injuries [10]
English Midlands
This area has a number of freshwater mermaids - one who sings and rings a sunken bell in Rostherne Mere, Cheshire, another who appears on moonlit lights in the stretch of the River Mersey by Leasowe Castle, Cheshire, another who appears in Mermaid's Pool, Kinder Scout, Derbyshire at midnight between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday and drowns or gives immortality to whoever beholds her, one who lures people to their deaths in Black Mere, Staffordshire and one in Aqualete Mere in the same county who threatened to drown the nearby village in revenge for attempts to drain the pool [11]. Other mermaid stories include one in a pool in Child's Ercall, Shropshire who invited local men to collect gold from the waters, but vanished with the gold when they swore at the sight of the volume of gold [12] and a church bell stolen and hidden by a mermaid in Marden, Herefordshire [13]; a church bell was found in a pond outside the village in 1843. The only other mention of mermaids in England outside of here and Cornwall I know of is in East Anglia, where mermaids were said to live in inland pools and pull children in to drown them [14].
Scottish Lowlands
A Galloway man was lamenting his lover dying of consumption, when a mermaid told him âwad ya let the bonnie May die iâ your hand, and the mugwort flowering iâ the land?â Mugwort juice indeed revived his girlfriend. Similarly, a mermaid in the Firth of Clyde in Renfrewshire saw a funeral of a young girl, and said âIf they wad drink nettles in March and eat muggons [mugwort] in May, sae mony braw maidens wadna gang to the clayâ [so many fine maidens would not âgo to the clayâ â be buried]. By contrast, a laird coming back from hunting with a servant and two greyhounds heard sounds like a woman drowning from a lonely lake three miles south of Lorntie, Angus; he went to save the drowning blonde, but his servant recognised what was going on. The mermaid retreated and said âLorntie, Lorntie, were it na your man, I had gart your heartâs bluid skirl in my panâ [15].
Scottish Highlands
In Gaelic Scotland, the ceasg (mermaid) has the tail of a young salmon, grants three wishes if caught, gives birth to notable pilots with human men, sometimes swallow their lovers and can only be killed by destruction of their separable souls [16]. The following stories are associated with them:
A mermaid living near Murkle, Caithness gifted her human lover with gold and jewels, who in turn gifted them to his lovers. To get revenge, she took him to Dwarwick Bay and showed him the treasure of all the ships lost in the Pentland Firth, the stretch of water between the Scottish mainland and the Orkneys. While he gazed on in rapture, she sang him to sleep, and he woke up shackled to the sea-floor with golden chains, kept by her forever [17].
Ship-owner John Reid was in a state of unrequited love for Helen Stuart, and won her heart by capturing a mermaid (complete with silver tail and sweet singing voice) in the town of Cromarty, who granted him three wishes â the third is unknown, but for the first two he chose Helenâs love and complete immunity from drowning for himself and his friends [18].
The Lake of Spirits (Loch-nan-Spoiradan) in Inverness-shire is home to a mermaid and the 1742 collapse of the Fearn Abbey church near Loch Shin, Sutherland was predicted by a mermaid washing bloody clothes in the lake [19].
A mermaid near the Hebridean island of Benbecula was taunted by a group of women, and killed by a stone thrown by a child; it washed up a few days later, and was buried without prayers in a special coffin in 1830 [20].
Orkneys and Shetlands
Mermaids try to capture people by grasping their boats, but can be escaped by giving an incorrect or evasive answer to their questions; by contrast, a mermaid rescued a Shetland child from a giant called Fluker and was rewarded for it by being hit with a rock by said giant. Hundreds of sailors saw a six-to-seven-feet long mermaid in Newark Bay, Orkney in the 1890s with a small black head, white neck and body, two arms and the swimming motions of a human being. In the most detailed story, a Shetland fisherman skinned a selkie, but the human beneath it returned to the sea and got help from a mermaid, who tried to win back the skin. The fisherman was horrified at seeing the mermaid tangled in the net, but his companions tried to sell her on shore; however, being above the water resulted in her dying, which caused a storm â by this means, the selkie got his skin back [21].
Wales
Welsh mermaids often live in lakes [22], such as the Morgan in Lake Glasfryn Uchaf in Llangybi, Caernarfonshire, who abducts naughty children [23]. Mermaids are known to haunt Aberbach Beach and Fishguard in Pembrokeshire and Cardigan, Aberystwyth and Llanina Beach in Cardiganshire [24], a sailor fell in love with a mermaid in Moel-y-Gest and a captured mermaid died of exposure in Conwy, both in Caernarfonshire. A stock story, told both in Pembrokeshire and in Nefyn and Llandrillo-y-Rhos in Caernarfonshire, is that a fisherman caught a mermaid, and she asked to be let go in exchange for calling to him three times if he was in danger. He let her go, and she upheld her end of the bargain, saving him from a storm that killed nineteen other fishermen. By contrast, a mermaid captured in Pencader, Carmarthenshire was released due to threatening to raise a storm that would wreck the next ship set out to sea if she was held captive. A farmer and his family in Llanychaearn, Cardiganshire saw a mermaid in 1826, who looked like a beautiful eighteen-year-old girl with short dark hair and very pale skin and a dark tail who made a noise like sneezing [25].
For some notable individual mermaids, MĂ´rferch was a mermaid who granted the sailors of Fishguard, Pembrokeshire warning of a French invasion in 1797 exchange for freeing her from a net [26], and Gwenhidwy (spelt variously) was a mermaid who shepherded the waves [27] and gave her name to the Ffynnon Gwenhudw in Cardiganshire [28] - in later folklore, her name was given to the sky-dwelling faerie queen [29]
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