Sea Monsters Unmasked and Sea Fables Explained Part 11

"The mermaid's sweet sea-soothing lay That charmed the dancing waves to sleep."[62]

[62] John Leyden.

Mr. Robert Hunt, F.R.S., in his collection of the traditions and superst.i.tions of old Cornwall,[63] records several curious legends of the "merrymaids" and "merrymen" (the local name of mermaids), which he had gathered from the fisher-folk and peasants in different parts of that county.

[63] 'Romances and Drolls of the West of England.' London: Hotten, 1871.

And, in a pleasant article in 'All the Year Round,'[64] 1865, "A Cornish Vicar"[65] mentions some of the superst.i.tions of the people in his neighbourhood, and the perplexing questions they occasionally put to him. One of his paris.h.i.+oners, an old man named Anthony Cleverdon, but who was popularly known as "Uncle Tony," having been the seventh son of his parents, in direct succession, was looked upon, in consequence, as a soothsayer. This "ancient augur" confided to his pastor many highly efficacious charms and formularies, and, in return, sought for information from him on other subjects. One day he puzzled the parson by a question which so well ill.u.s.trates the local ideas concerning mermaids, and the sequel of which is, moreover, so humorously related by the vicar, that I venture to quote his own words, as follows:--

[64] Vol. xiii. p. 336.

[65] The "Cornish Vicar" was, evidently, the Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker, M.A., Vicar of Morwenstow, and author of 'Echoes from Old Cornwall,' 'Footprints of Former Men in Cornwall,' etc.

"Uncle Tony said to me, 'Sir, there is one thing I want to ask you, if I may be so free, and it is this: why should a merrymaid, that will ride about upon the waters in such terrible storms, and toss from sea to sea in such ruckles as there be upon the coast, why should she never lose her looking-gla.s.s and comb?' 'Well, I suppose,' said I, 'that if there are such creatures, Tony, they must wear their looking-gla.s.ses and combs fastened on somehow, like fins to a fish.' 'See!' said Tony, chuckling with delight, 'what a thing it is to know the Scriptures, like your reverence; I should never have found it out. But there's another point, sir, I should like to know, if you please; I've been bothered about it in my mind hundreds of times. Here be I, that have gone up and down Holacombe cliffs and streams fifty years come next Candlemas, and I've gone and watched the water by moonlight and sunlight, days and nights, on purpose, in rough weather and smooth (even Sundays, too, saving your presence), and my sight as good as most men's, and yet I never could come to see a merrymaid in all my life: how's that, sir?' 'Are you sure, Tony,' I rejoined, 'that there are such things in existence at all?'

'Oh, sir, my old father seen her twice! He was out one night for wreck (my father watched the coast, like most of the old people formerly), and it came to pa.s.s that he was down at the duck-pool on the sand at low-water tide, and all to once he heard music in the sea. Well, he croped on behind a rock, like a coastguardsman watching a boat, and got very near the music ... and there was the merrymaid, very plain to be seen, swimming about upon the waves like a woman bathing--and singing away. But my father said it was very sad and solemn to hear--more like the tune of a funeral hymn than a Christmas carol, by far--but it was so sweet that it was as much as he could do to hold back from plunging into the tide after her. And he an old man of sixty-seven, with a wife and a houseful of children at home. The second time was down here by Holacombe Pits. He had been looking out for spars--there was a s.h.i.+p breaking up in the Channel--and he saw some one move just at half-tide mark, so he went on very softly, step by step, till he got nigh the place, and there was the merrymaid sitting on a rock, the bootyfullest merrymaid that eye could behold, and she was twisting about her long hair, and dressing it, just like one of our girls getting ready for her sweetheart on the Sabbath-day. The old man made sure he should greep hold of her before ever she found him out, and he had got so near that a couple of paces more and he would have caught her by the hair, as sure as t.i.the or tax, when, lo and behold, she looked back and glimpsed him! So, in one moment she dived head-foremost off the rock, and then tumbled herself topsy-turvy about in the water, and cast a look at my poor father, and grinned like a seal.'" And a seal it probably was that Tony's "poor father" saw.

What, then, are these mermaids and mermen, a belief in whose existence has prevailed in all ages, and amongst all the nations of the earth?

Have they, really, some of the parts and proportions of man, or do they belong to another order of mammals on which credulity and inaccurate observation have bestowed a false character?

Mr. Swainson, a naturalist of deserved eminence, has maintained on purely scientific grounds, that there must exist a marine animal uniting the general form of a fish with that of a man; that by the laws of Nature the natatorial type of the _Quadrumana_ is most a.s.suredly wanting, and that, apart from man, a being connecting the seals with the monkeys is required to complete the circle of quadrumanous animals.[66]

[66] 'Geography and Distribution of Animals.'

Mr. Gosse[67] argues that all the characters which Mr. Swainson selects as marking the natatorial type of animals belong to man, and that he being, in his savage state, a great swimmer, is the true aquatic primate, which Mr. Swainson regards as absent. Mr. Gosse admits, however, that "nature has an odd way of mocking at our impossibilities, and" that "it _may be_ that green-haired maidens with oary tails, lurk in the ocean caves, and keep mirrors and combs upon their rocky shelves;" and the conclusion he arrives at is that the combined evidence "induces a strong suspicion that the northern seas may hold forms of life as yet uncatalogued by science."

[67] 'Romance of Natural History,' 2nd Series.

That there are animals in the northern and other seas with which we are unacquainted, is more than probable: discoveries of animals of new species are constantly being made, especially in the life of the deep sea. But I venture to think that the production of an animal at present unknown is quite unnecessary to account for the supposed appearances of mermaids.

We have in the form and habits of the _Phocidae_, or earless seals, a sufficient interpretation of almost every incident of the kind that has occurred north of the Equator--of those in which protuberant _mammae_ are described, we must presently seek another explanation. The round, plump, expressive face of a seal, the beautiful, limpid eyes, the hand-like fore-paws, the sleek body, tapering towards the flattened hinder fins, which are directed backwards, and spread out in the form of a broad fin, like the tail of a fish, might well give the idea of an animal having the anterior part of its body human and the posterior half piscine.

In the habits of the seals, also, we may trace those of the supposed mermaid, and the more easily the better we are acquainted with them. All seals are fond of leaving the water frequently. They always select the flattest and most shelving rocks which have been covered at high tide, and prefer those that are separated from the mainland. They generally go ash.o.r.e at half-tide, and invariably lie with their heads towards the water, and seldom more than a yard or two from it. There they will often remain, if undisturbed, for six hours; that is, until the returning tide floats them off the rock. As for the sweet melody, "so melting soft,"

that must depend much on the ear and musical taste of the listener. I have never heard a seal utter any vocal sounds but a porcine grunt, a plaintive moan, and a pitiful whine. But another habit of the seals has, probably more than anything else, caused them to be mistaken for semi-human beings--namely, that of poising themselves upright in the water with the head and the upper third part of the body above the surface.

One calm sunny morning in August, 1881, a fine schooner-yacht, on board of which I was a guest, was slowly gliding out of the mouth of the river Maas, past the Hook of Holland, into the North Sea, when a seal rose just ahead of us, and a.s.sumed the att.i.tude above described. It waited whilst we pa.s.sed it, inspecting us apparently with the greatest interest; then dived, swam in the direction in which we were sailing, so as to intercept our course, and came up again, sitting upright as before. This it repeated three times, and so easily might it have been taken for a mermaid, that one of the party, who was called on deck to see it, thought, at first, that it was a boy who had swam off from the sh.o.r.e to the vessel on a begging expedition.

Laing, in his account of a voyage to the North, mentions having seen a seal under similar circ.u.mstances.

A young seal which was brought from Yarmouth to the Brighton Aquarium in 1873, habitually sat thus, showing his head and a considerable portion of his body out of water. His bath was so shallow in some parts that he was able to touch the bottom, and, with his after-flippers tucked under him, like a lobster's tail, and spread out in front, he would balance himself on his hind quarters, and look inquisitively at everybody, and listen attentively to everything within sight and hearing. When he was satisfied that no one was likely to interfere with him, and that it was unnecessary to be on the alert, he would half-close his beautiful, soft eyes, and either contentedly pat, stroke, and scratch his little fat stomach with his right paw, or flap both of them across his breast in a most ludicrous manner, exactly as a cabman warms the tips of his fingers on a wintry day, by swinging his arms vigorously across his chest, and striking his hands against his body on either side. He was very sensitive to musical sounds, as many dogs are, and when a concert took place in the building a high note from one of the vocalists would cause him to utter a mournful wail, and to dive with a splash that made the water fly, the audience smile, and the singer frown.

Captain Scoresby tells us that he had seen the walrus with its head above water, and in such a position that it required little stretch of imagination to mistake it for a human being, and that on one occasion of this kind the surgeon of his s.h.i.+p actually reported to him that he had seen a man with his head above water.

Peter Gunnersen's merman (p. 24), who "blew up his cheeks and made a kind of roaring noise" before diving, was probably a "bladder-nose"

seal. The males of that species have on the head a peculiar pad, which they can dilate at pleasure, and their voice is loud and discordant.

The appearance and behaviour of Steller's "sea-ape," described on p.

25, may, I think, be attributed to one of the eared seals, the so-called sea-lions, or sea-bears. Every one who has seen these animals fed must have noticed the rapidity with which they will dive and swim to any part of their pond where they expect to receive food, and how, like a dog after a pebble, they will keenly watch their keeper's movements, and start in the direction to which he is apparently about to throw a fish, even before the latter has left his hand. This may be seen at the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park, and, better than anywhere else in Europe, at the Jardin d'Acclimatation, Paris. It would be quite in accordance with their habits that one of these _Otaria_ should dive under a s.h.i.+p, and rise above the surface on either side, eagerly surveying those on board, in hope of obtaining food, or from mere curiosity.

The seals and their movements account for so many mermaid stories, that all accounts of sea-women with prominent bosoms were ridiculed and discredited until competent observers recognised in the form and habits of certain aquatic animals met with in the bays and estuaries of the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the west coast of Africa, and sub-tropical America, the originals of these "travellers' tales." These were--first, the _manatee_, which is found in the West Indian Islands, Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, and Brazil, and in Africa in the River Congo, Senegambia, and the Mozambique Channel; second, the _dugong_, or _halicore_, which ranges along the east coast of Africa, Southern Asia, the Bornean Archipelago, and Australia; and, third, the _rytina_, seen on Behring's Island in the Kamschatkan Sea by Steller, the Russian zoologist and voyager, in 1741, and which is supposed to have become extinct within twenty-seven years after its discovery, by its having been recklessly and indiscriminately slaughtered.[68] Then science, in the person of Illeger, made the _amende honorable_, and frankly accepting Jack's introduction to his fish-tailed _innamorata_, cla.s.sed these three animals together as a sub-order of the animal kingdom, and bestowed on them the name of the _Sirenia_. This was, of course, in allusion to the Sirens of cla.s.sical mythology, who, in later art, were represented as having the body of a woman above the waist, and that of a fish below, although the lower portion of their body was originally described as being in the form of a bird.

[68] Almost all that is known of the living rytina is from an account published in 1751, in St. Petersburg, by Steller, who was one of an exploring party wrecked on Behring's Island in 1741.

During the ten months the crew remained on the island they pursued this easily-captured animal so persistently, for food, that it was all but annihilated at the time. The last one there was killed in 1768.

It has been found difficult to determine to which order these _Manatidae_ are most nearly allied. In shape they most closely resemble the whales and seals. But the cetacea are all carnivorous, whereas the manatee and its relatives live entirely on vegetable food. Although, therefore, Dr.

J. E. Gray, following Cuvier, cla.s.sed them with the cetacea in his British Museum catalogue, other anatomists, as Professor Aga.s.siz, Professor Owen, and Dr. Murie, regard their resemblance to the whales as rather superficial than real, and conclude from their organisation and dent.i.tion that they ought either to form a group apart or be cla.s.sed with the pachyderms--the hippopotamus, tapir, etc.--with which they have the nearest affinities, and to which they seem to have been more immediately linked by the now lost genera, _Dinotherium_ and _Halitherium_. With the opinion of those last-named authorities I entirely agree. I regard the manatee as exhibiting a wonderful modification and adaptation of the structure of a warm-blooded land animal which enables it to pa.s.s its whole life in water, and as a connecting link between the hippopotamus, elephant, etc., on the one side, and the whales and seals on the other.

The _Halitherium_ was a Sirenian with which we are only acquainted by its fossil remains found in the Miocene formation of Central and Southern Europe. These indicate that it had short hind limbs, and, consequently, approached more nearly the terrestrial type than either the manatee, the rytina, or the dugong, in which the hind limbs are absent. The two last named tend more than does the manatee to the marine mammals; but there is a strong likeness between these three recent forms. They all have a cylindrical body, like that of a seal, but instead of hind limbs there is in all a broad tail flattened horizontally; and the chief difference in their outward appearance is in the shape of this organ. In the manatee it is rounded, in the dugong forked like that of a whale, in the rytina crescent-shaped. The tail of the _Halitherium_ appears to have been shaped somewhat like that of the beaver. The body of the manatee is broader in proportion to its length and depth than that of the dugong. In a paper read before the Royal Society, July 12th, 1821, on a manatee sent to London in spirits by the Duke of Manchester, then Governor of Jamaica, Sir Everard Home remarked of this greater lateral expansion that, as the manatee feeds on plants that grow at the mouths of great rivers, and the dugong upon those met with in the shallows amongst small islands in the Eastern seas, the difference of form would make the manatee more buoyant and better fitted to float in fresh water.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 16.--THE DUGONG. _From Sir J. Emerson Tennent's 'Ceylon.'_]

In all the _Manatidae_ the mammae of the female, which are greatly distended during the period of lactation, are situated very differently from those of the whales, being just beneath the pectoral fins. These fins or paws are much more flexible and free in their movements than those of the cetae, and are sufficiently prehensile to enable the animal to gather food between the palms or inner surfaces of both, and the female to hold her young one to her breast with one of them. Like the whales, they are warm-blooded mammals, breathing by lungs, and are therefore obliged to come to the surface at frequent intervals for respiration. As they breathe through nostrils at the end of the muzzle, instead of, like most of the whales, through a blow-hole on the top of the head, their habit is to rise, sometimes vertically, in the water, with the head and fore part of the body exposed above the surface, and often to remain in this position for some minutes. When seen thus, with head and breast bare, and clasping its young one to its body, the female presents a certain resemblance to a woman from the waist upward. When approached or disturbed it dives; the tail and hinder portion of the body come into view, and we see that if there was little of the "_mulier formosa superne_," at any rate "_desinit in piscem_." The manatee has thence been called by the Spaniards and Portuguese the "woman-fish," and by the Dutch the "manetje," or mannikin. The dugong, having the muzzle bristly, is named by the latter the "baardmanetje," or "little bearded man." There are no bristles or whiskers on the muzzle of the manatee; all the portraits of it in which these are shown are in that respect erroneous. The origin of the word "manatee" has by some been traced to the Spanish, as indicating "an animal with hands." On the west coast of Africa it is called by the natives "Ne-hoo-le." By old writers it was described as the "sea-cow." Gesner depicts it in the act of bellowing; and Mr. Bates, in his work, "The Naturalist on the Amazon," says that its voice is something like the bellowing of an ox. The Florida "crackers" or "mean whites," make the same statement. Although I have had opportunities of prolonged observation of it in captivity, I have not heard it give utterance to any sound--not even a grunt--and Mr.

Bartlett, of the Zoological Gardens, tells me that his experience of it is the same. His son, Mr. Clarence Bartlett, says that a young one he had in Surinam used to make a feeble cry, or bleat, very much like the voice of a young seal. This is the only sound he ever heard from a manatee.[69]

[69] For a full description of the habits of this animal in captivity, see an article by the present writer in the 'Leisure Hour' of September 28, 1878; from which the ill.u.s.tration, Fig. 17, is borrowed by the kind consent of the Editor of that publication.

I believe the dugong to be more especially the animal referred to by aelian as the semi-human whale, and that which has led to this group having been supposed by southern voyagers to be aquatic human beings. In the first place, the dugong is a denizen of the sea, whereas the manatee is chiefly found in rivers and fresh-water lagoons; and secondly, the dugong accords with aelian's description of the creature with a woman's face in that it has "p.r.i.c.kles instead of hairs," whilst the manatee has no such stiff bristles.

In the case of either of these two animals being mistaken for a mermaid, however, "distance" must "lend enchantment to the view," and a sailor must be very impressible and imaginative who, even after having been deprived for many months of the pleasure of females' society, could be allured by the charms of a bristly-muzzled dugong, or mistake the snorting of a wallowing manatee for the love-song of a beauteous sea-maiden.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 17.--THE MANATEE. ITS USUAL POSITION.]

Unfortunately both the dugong and the manatee are being hunted to extinction.

The flesh of the manatee is considered a great delicacy. Humboldt compares it with ham. Unlike that of the whales, which is of a deep and dark red hue, it is as white as veal, and, it is said, tastes very like it. It is remarkable for retaining its freshness much longer than other meat, which in a tropical climate generally putrefies in twenty-eight hours. It is therefore well adapted for pickling, as the salt has time to penetrate the flesh before it is tainted. The Catholic clergy of South America do not object to its being eaten on fast days, on the supposition that, with whales, seals, and other aquatic mammals, it may be liberally regarded as "fish." The "Indians" of the Amazon and Orinoco are so fond of it that they will spend many days, if necessary, in hunting for a manatee, and having killed one will cut it into slabs and slices on the spot, and cook these on stakes thrust into the ground aslant over a great fire, and heavily gorge themselves as long as the provision lasts. The milk of this animal is said to be rich and good, and the skin is valuable for its toughness, and is much in request for making leathern articles in which great strength and durability are required. The tail contains a great deal of oil, which is believed to be extremely nutritious, and has also the property of not becoming rancid.

Unhappily for the dugong, its oil is in similarly high repute, and is greatly preferred as a nutrient medicine to cod-liver oil. As its flesh also is much esteemed, it is so persistently hunted on the Australian coasts that it will probably soon become extinct, like the rytina of Steller. The same fate apparently awaits the manatee, which is becoming perceptibly more and more scarce.

I fear that before many years have elapsed the Sirens of the Naturalist will have disappeared from our earth, before the advance of civilization, as completely as the fables and superst.i.tions with which they have been connected, before the increase of knowledge; and that the mermaid of fact will have become as much a creature of the past as the mermaid of fiction. With regard to the latter--the Siren of the poets,--the water-maiden of the pearly comb, the crystal mirror, and the sea-green tresses,--there are few persons I suppose, at the present day who would not be content to be cla.s.sed with Banks, the fine old naturalist and formerly s.h.i.+p-mate of Captain Cook. Sir Humphry Davy in his _Salmonia_ relates an anecdote of a baronet, a profound believer in these fish-tailed ladies, who on hearing some one praise very highly Sir Joseph Banks, said that "Sir Joseph was an excellent man, but he had his prejudices--he did not believe in the mermaid." I confess to having a similar "prejudice;" and am willing to adopt the further remark of Sir Humphry Davy:--"I am too much of the school of Izaac Walton to talk of impossibility. It doubtless might please G.o.d to make a mermaid, but I don't believe G.o.d ever did make one."

THE LERNEAN HYDRA.

The mystery of the Kraken, of which I treated in a companion volume to the present, recently published, is not difficult to unravel. The clue to it is plain, and when properly taken up is as easily unwound, to arrive at the truth, as a coc.o.o.n of silk, to get at the chrysalis within it. It was a boorish exaggeration, a legend of ignorance, superst.i.tion, and wonder. But when such a skein of facts has pa.s.sed through the hands of the poets, it is sure to be found in a much more intricate tangle; and many a knot of pure invention may have to be cut before it is made clear.

Nevertheless, we shall be able to discern that more than one of the most famous and hideous monsters of old cla.s.sical lore originated, like the Kraken, in a knowledge by their authors of the form and habits of those strange sea-creatures, the head-footed mollusks. There can be little doubt that the octopus was the model from which the old poets and artists formed their ideas, and drew their pictures of the Lernean Hydra, whose heads grew again when cut off by Hercules; and also of the monster Scylla, who, with six heads and six long writhing necks, s.n.a.t.c.hed men off the decks of pa.s.sing s.h.i.+ps and devoured them in the recesses of her gloomy cavern.

Of the Hydra Diodorus relates that it had a hundred heads; Simonides says fifty; but the generally received opinion was that of Apollodorus, Hyginus, and others, that it had only nine.

Apollodorus of Athens, son of Asclepiades, who wrote in stiff, quaint Greek about 120 B.C., gives in his 'Bibliotheca' (book ii. chapter 5, section 2) the following account of the many-headed monster. "This Hydra," he says, "nourished in the marshes of Lerne, went forth into the open country and destroyed the herds of the land. It had a huge body and nine heads, eight mortal, but the ninth immortal. Having mounted his chariot, which was driven by Iolaus, Hercules got to Lerne and stopped his horses. Finding the Hydra on a certain raised ground near the source of the Amymon, where its lair was, he made it come out by pelting it with burning missiles. He seized and stopped it, but having twisted itself round one of his feet, it struggled with him. He broke its head with his club: but that was useless; for when one head was broken two sprang up, and a huge crab helped the Hydra by biting the foot of Hercules. This he killed, and called Iolaus, who, setting on fire part of the adjoining forest, burned with torches the germs of the growing heads, and stopped their development. Having thus out-manoeuvred the growing heads, he cut off the immortal head, buried it, and put a heavy stone upon it, beside the road going from Lerne to Eleonta, and having opened the Hydra, dipped his arrows in its gall."

If we wish to find in nature the counterpart of this Hydra, we must seek, firstly, for an animal with eight out-growths from its trunk, which it can develop afresh, or replace by new ones, in case of any or all of them being amputated or injured. We must also show that this animal, so strange in form and possessing such remarkable attributes, was well known in the locality where the legend was believed. We have it in the octopus, which abounded in the Mediterranean and aegean seas, and whose eight prehensile arms, or tentacles, spring from its central body, the immortal head, and which, if lost or mutilated by misadventure, are capable of reproduction.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 18.--FIGURE OF A CALAMARY. _From the temple of Bayr-el-Bahree_.]

That a knowledge of the octopus existed at a very early period of man's history we have abundant evidence. The ancient Egyptians figured it amongst their hieroglyphics, and an interesting proof that they were also acquainted with other cephalopods was given to me by the late Mr.

E. W. Cooke, R.A. Whilst on a trip up the Nile, in January, 1875, he visited the temple of Bayr-el-Bahree, Thebes (date 1700 B.C.), the entrance to which had been deeply buried beneath the light, wind-drifted sand, acc.u.mulated during many centuries. By order of the Khedive, access had just at that time been obtained to its interior, by the excavation and removal of this deep deposit, and, amongst the hieroglyphics on the walls, were found, between the zig-zag lines which represent water, figures of various fishes, copies of which Mr. Cooke kindly gave me, and which are so accurately portrayed as to be easily identified. With them was the outline of a squid fourteen inches long, a figure of which, from Mr. Cooke's drawing, is here shown. As this temple is five hundred miles from the delta of the Nile, it is remarkable that nearly all the fishes there represented are of marine species.