Shall I part my hair behind ? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me. (122–125).

T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)

A marine creature with the head and upper body of a beautiful young maiden and with the lower body of a fish. She can be found in seas and lakes, or lying on a rock and combing her hair with one hand while holding a mirror in the other. Mermaids sometimes foretell the future and are often accompanied by seals.

According to myth, they lure sailors by singing and with lovely music. They live in a kingdom on the bottom of the sea, and it is here they take their prisoners to. From this story, the fear amongst the sailor grew and they thought that seeing a mermaid would cause bad luck: it could predict death by drowning.

The belief in mermaids is not limited to a few countries, but there are tales from all over the world (in India, for instance, there are the Apsara, beautiful water nymphs). However, most of those tales were told by sailors who "saw" them on their long journeys. The idea of mermaids and mermen, the male equivalent, could be based on creatures from Greek and Babylonian mythology: Sirens and Tritons of the Greeks, and the fish gods, who were half human and half fish, from the Babylonians.

"Mermaid." Encyclopedia Mythica. http://www.pantheon.org/articles/m/mermaid.html
[Accessed May 21st, 2003.]

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About 1701 AD, in Orkney, two fishermen drew up with a hook a mermaid "having face, arms, breast, shoulders, etc, of a woman, and long hair hanging down the neck; but the nether-part from below the waist hidden in the water". One of the fishermen, in his surprise, drew a knife and stabbed at her, whereupon she cried out and went over backwards, breaking the hook, and was gone.

In 1775, a mermaid was caught in the Grecian islands: it had "the features and complexion of a European; its eyes of a fine light blue; its nose small and handsome; its mouth small; its lips thin; its teeth small, regular, and white; its chin well shaped; its neck full; its ears like those of the eel, but placed like those of the human species; and behind them are the gills for respiration, which appear like curls. Some are said to have hair upon the head; but this has none, only curls. But its chief ornament is a beautiful membrane, rising from the temples, and gradually diminishing till it ends pyramidically, forming a foretop like that of a lady's head-dress. It has no fin on the back, but a bone like that of the human species. Its breasts are fair and full, but without nipples; its arms and hands are well proportioned, but without nails on its fingers; its belly is round and swelling, but no navel. From the waist downward, the body in all respects resembles a codfish. It has three sets of fins, one above the other, below the waist, which enables it to swim out upon the sea; and it is said to have an enchanting voice, which it never exerts except before a storm." The writer (source: Chambers Book of Days quoting the Annual Review) states he saw the mermaid with his own eyes, and it was about three feet long altogether.

In an account of a mermaid sighting in Wales, the farmer who saw the mermaid said it resembled a youth of sixteen or eighteen years, with a very white skin; "The form of its body and arms was entirely human; but its arms and hands seemed rather thick and short in proportion to its body. The form of the head and all the features of the face were human also; but the nose rose high between the eyes, was pretty long, and seemed to terminate very sharp." The tail seemed to be of a brownish substance, submerged under the water. "It looked attentively at him and at the cliffs, and seemed to take great notice of the birds flying over its head. Its looks were wild and fierce; but it made no noise, nor did it grin, or in any way distort its face." He walked up to within about a hundred yards of it, but when he returned with others to look again, it was gone.

In French, the mermaid is "la luxure". La concupiscence is the single-tailed mermaid, and la luxure is the double-tailed.

Sylvia Volk, The Bestiary Project. http://www.iras.ucalgary.ca/~volk/sylvia/TheBestiaryProject.htm [Accessed May 21st, 2003.]

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I defy any one to say that our Becky, who has certainly some vices, has not been presented to the public in a perfectly genteel and inoffensive manner. In describing this Siren, singing and smiling, coaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride, asks his readers all round, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail above water? No! Those who like may peep down under waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or curling round corpses; but above the waterline, I ask, has not everything been proper, agreeable, and decorous, and has any the most squeamish immoralist in Vanity Fair a right to cry fie? When, however, the Siren disappears and dives below, down among the dead men, the water of course grows turbid over her, and it is labour lost to look into it ever so curiously. They look pretty enough when they sit upon a rock, twanging their harps and combing their hair, and sing, and beckon to you to come and hold the looking-glass; but when they sink into their native element, depend on it, those mermaids are about no good, and we had best not examine the fiendish marine cannibals, revelling and feasting on their wretched pickled victims. And so, when Becky is out of the way, be sure that she is not particularly well employed, and that the less that is said about her doings is in fact the better.

William Makepeace Thackeray,
Vanity Fair (1847–1848) Volume Three, 147.

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"A favourite sign for a shop, inn or tavern."

How sits my Chedreux?
Ger. O very finely! with the Locks comb'd down, like a Marmaids, on a Sign-post.

Dryden, Kind Keeper, IIi 1680 13

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