Imagine, if you will, that the three months between this and my last folklore article have never occured.
Imagine that it’s still early November. The cycle of the sun has not yet turned again towards light. Ted Knutson is still my editor. Charles Kennedy still leads the Liberal Democrats. The public face of the Tories is still – inexplicably – that of the latest in a string of evil Sith Lords. George Galloway, like a punter saving up for a January trip to Las Vegas, is still carefully rationing out his dignity so that he’ll have something to blow when his stint on Celebrity Big Brother rolls around. Gordon Brown still sits in the Chancellery, patiently biding his time. Yes, all is as it was before. The regime changes have not yet taken place. So, it’s unnecessary for me to repeat the hearty rarebit of wisdom I bestowed upon you in the first of this SCG Daily series. Just in case you’ve forgotten it all, you can link to the previous articles here: The Folklore of Magic #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5.
The feedback I received concerning the first series was glowing, albeit limited to a handful of individuals. Suddenly, I felt like an indie band, only without the corduroy. Among the suggestions made in the forums was the wish that I would include more primary sources and citations. Thy will be done! As for the other suggestions, I’ve chosen to ignore them.
Finally, if I seem a bit too glib and, even now, unwilling to cite sources, try to recall that this – folklore – is what I do. If Magic is the spare tire I keep in the boot, folklore is the whole damned car. In other words, unlike certain members of the Respect Party, I know precisely what I’m doing.
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What is it about Merfolk? Generally speaking, Magic is an equal opportunity employer. It has a greater percentage of females in top management than most American boardrooms. Look at Ravnica: four of its eight legendary creatures are women (more than that if you count the Sisters of Stone Death and members of the Chorus of the Conclave individually). But it’s not the same with Merfolk. Sure, if you study the card art, you’ll find your share of powerful women, but the gender ratio is nothing in comparison to what Northern European folklore suggests it should be. “Ah,” some of you might counter, “but who says that Magic’s Merfolk are not descended from Greek and Roman folklore which, in younger times past, were dominated by male sea-persons?” To which I’d answer, “The cards are labeled Merfolk, not Triton or Nereid.”
In any case, more so than with the other folkloric beings we’ve looked at in the series, the general concept of a merfolk is widespread, and fish-tailed humanoids have played a role in Asian and South American as well as European folklore. Indeed, from the point of view of popular culture, what stands out about the European mermaid – for, in the more recent historical period with which we concern ourselves, they were usually mermaids – is that the iconic tail is frequently absent. Both tailed (either fishy or dolphiny) and legged mermaids can be found in Nordic, German, French, and British folklore, but the latter are considerably more common. This is not the only sense in which popular culture and folklore differ: whereas today, we’re content to see mermaids as either sirens or saints, the old belief held considerably more nuance. The siren idea has some truth in it, for the merfolk oeuvre does contain a considerable minority of sailor-slaying (either by storm creation or seductive drowning) sea people. What is more difficult to explain is why the Greek siren has come to be seen as a type of mermaid; after all, the sirens were not half-woman and half-fish but, rather, half-woman and half-chicken.
The later the folklore, the more often one finds male merfolk. Ralph of Coggeshall’s startlingly detailed description from the 1200s is, though lengthy and originally in Latin, worth quoting in full:
“In the time of King Henry II [1133-1189], when Bartholomew de Glanville kept Orford Castle, it happened that the sailors there, fishing in the sea, caught a wild man in their nets, who they brought to the Castellan as a curiosity. He was completely naked, and had the appearance of a man in all his parts. He had hair too; and though the hair of his head seemed torn and rubbed, his beard was profuse and pointed, and he was exceedingly shaggy and hairy about the breasts. The Castellan had him guarded for a long time, by day and night, lest he should escape into the sea. What food was put before him he ate eagerly. He preferred raw fish to cooked; but when they were raw he squeezed them tightly in his hands until all the moisture was pressed out, and so he ate them. He would not utter any speech, or rather he could not, even when hung up by his feet and cruelly tortured. When he was taken into the church he showed no sign of reverence or even of belief, either by kneeling or bowing his head at the sight of anything sacred. He always hastened to bed as soon as the sun sank, and stayed there until it rose again. Once they took him to the sea-gate and let him go into the water, after placing a triple row of very strong nets in front of him. He soon made for the deep sea, and, breaking through all their nets, raised himself again and again from the depths, and showed himself to those watching on the shore, often plunging into the sea, and a little after coming up, as if he were jeering at the spectators because he had escaped their nets. When he had played there in the sea for a long time, and they had lost all hope of his return, he came back to them of his own accord, swimming to them through the waves, and remained with them for another two months. But when after a time he was more negligently kept, and held in some distaste, he escaped secretly to the sea, and never afterwards returned. But whether he was a mortal man, or a kind of fish bearing a resemblance to humanity, or an evil spirit lurking in the body of a drowned man, such as we read of in the life of the blessed Audon, it is difficult to decide, all the more because one hears of so many remarkable things, and there is such a number of happenings like this.”
This story is an exception to the later Northern European tradition. The fin-folk of Orkney lead, like elves, lives very much resembling those of humans and are able to walk on land, make themselves invisible, and interact with people. Although there is never any doubt in folklore that both male and female merfolk exist, the two sexes rarely appear together, and the fin-folk are just about the most social and community-valuing group of merfolk one comes across in the region.
As noted before, from about 1600 onwards, mermaids became much more common than mermen. The archetypal mermaid story runs thus: A mermaid sits alone on the beach, singing and combing her hair. A passing farmer falls in love with her voice and beautiful form and steals up on her. When he is close by, the mermaid marks his presence and leaps into the sea. Unfortunately, in her haste, she drops her comb, which is retrieved by the farmer. The farmer refuses to give the mermaid her comb, insisting instead that they wed. Unable to live in the sea without her comb, the sorrowful mermaid is forced to consent. For many years, the husband and wife live happily and produce a bushel of children. One day, however, the mermaid discovers her hidden comb and, kissing her children goodbye, races off to the sea.
What’s most fascinating in all this is that one of the present-day conceptions of mermaids is that they seduce men and force them into the sea. The most prevalent mermaid story relays the exact opposite. This does not, however, mean that mermaids were mere sissy-foots, easier to push around than a bespectacled Emo fan. Even though the tridents often wielded by Magic’s merfolk are clearly a Classical import, such is the power of the folkloric merfolk’s magic that they would never lower themselves to fighting with weapons. They can raise storms, capture drowned sailors’ souls, and hide their islands under veils of enchantment.
In closing, I’ll offer another extended quote, this time concerning a fresh-water variety of mermaid from Shropshire, the Asrai. The story was collected by Ruth L. Tongue in the first half of the 1900s. This account is far more polished than the strictly historical one by Ralph of Coggeshall so many centuries earlier. It is interesting to note the Asrai’s ambiguity, how it is both helpless and dangerous:
“A fisherman was out with a drag-net on the lake at the dark of night. As the moon rose, he moved his boat into the shadows. His net grew heavy, and he had trouble to pull it in. When the full moon shone out he saw that he had caught an Asrai. It was a wonderfully beautiful, gentle creature to look at. He had heard old people say these fairies only came up from their cool, deep homes below the water once in a hundred years, to look at the moon, and to grow. As this one seemed about the size of a twelve-year maid, the man could not guess how very very old it must be.
“He spoke to it, for it did not make him afraid, and it seemed to beg him to let it go, but its speech only sounded to him like the ripples among the lake-side sedges. The fisherman had half a mind to set it free, but he wanted to show it to his children, and then he began to think how the rich folk in the castle might like to show it in their fish-ponds, and would pay him well. So he hardened his heart, and began the long row homewards.
“The Asrai got one arm out of the net, and pointed again and again to the waning moon, and then laid a hand on his arm— “like cool foam, the touch was,” he said later. But it seemed that his human warmth hurt it, for it shrank away from him, and huddled down in the bottom of the boat, covering itself with its long green hair. He was afraid the light of the day might be too strong for it, and covered it with wet rushes. The lake was long, and the sun had risen by the time he got to his own creek.
“He drew the boat ashore, and lifted the rushes away from where the Asrai had lain. His net was empty, and a damp patch was all there was left of it. But the arm that it had touched was icy cold all the rest of his life, and nothing would warm it.”
Skål!
Adam Grydehøj
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