What is a mermaid?

I'm afraid it's hard to trace the history of mermaid, because people believed in the existence of mermaid a long time ago, including female mermaid and male mermaid. Owens, the Babylonian god who brought knowledge and culture to mankind in myths and legends, is said to be a man above the waist and a fish below the waist. In addition, in ancient Syria, ancient India, ancient China, ancient Greece and ancient Rome, people worshipped gods similar to mermaids. In recent centuries, there have been many folklores around these creatures, and people constantly claim to have witnessed mermaids.

Pliny, a Roman naturalist in the 1 th century, was one of the first people to describe this creature. Because the people who lived by the sea reported many sightings, he had no doubt about the existence of the mermaid. He also pointed out: "Many mermaids were seen stranded on the beach and died there."

The Nordic version of the mermaid legend is different. It is said that they are seals living in water, and once they want to become people on land, they just need to take off their seals! Therefore, the locals call that creature the seal man. In the legend of mermaid in other places, mermaid can also change between people and fish at will. They can combine with humans on land from fish, and some can even have offspring with humans. However, they will soon have serious homesickness, and their yearning for the sea will eventually prevail, so they will eventually jump into the waves and disappear.

Sailors usually think that seeing a mermaid is a sign of death, and then there is often a violent storm. In the traditional ballet "Mermaid", the crew saw a mermaid sitting on the reef, with a comb in one hand and a mirror in the other. So the captain said, "This mermaid has warned us that bad luck is coming and we will sink to the bottom of the sea." ...

First, but mermaids are more than just legendary creatures. Throughout the Middle Ages, credible witnesses claimed to have seen them. This phenomenon has continued until modern times.

1809 65438+ 10/2, two women in Cassini, northeast Scotland, saw a woman's face-"full of pink light" on the sea of Sandside. That creature goes in and out of the sea. Those two women can even see it with full human breasts. From time to time, it exposes its slender white arms on the waves and leaves a long green hair behind it.

When one of the women published a report about the mermaid, William Monroe wrote to the London Times on September 8 of the same year, recalling his experience of seeing the mermaid. 12 years ago, when he was walking on the shore of Sandside Bay, he suddenly found "a naked woman sitting on a rock by the sea, as if combing her hair. Her hair is shoulder-length and light brown. "

Monroe reported that the creature had "a round forehead, a plump face, rosy cheeks, blue eyes and a normal mouth and lips". "Its breasts, abdomen, arms and hands are all like a fully developed woman." The creature didn't find Monroe looking at it, and Yuko continued to comb her hair. "Its hair is long and dense, and it looks very proud." A few minutes later, the mermaid slipped into the sea.

It seems that this creature was particularly active on the Scottish coast during this period. After a series of investigations, the London Mirror published a statement made by young John McAseco under oath on June 1822+0 16 10/6.

He said that he saw a strange animal on "a black rock by the sea" in June1810. He noticed that "its upper body is white, like a human body" (but its arms are shorter than people's), while its lower body is covered with shiny scales, ranging in color from red gray to red green. The animal is about four or five feet long, and its tail is like a fan.

Like Monroe's mermaid, the animals Mike Essek saw liked to stroke its long hair. After lying on the rock for two hours, the animal that Mike Esco saw began to "clumsily roll into the sea", which made him "see the features of its face, almost like a human face." At this time, because the animal was already semi-submerged in the water and "constantly stroking and cleaning the breasts with both hands", Mike Esco could not tell whether it was a female or a male. Finally, the animal disappeared into the blue waves.

Five days later, another witness testified under oath at the same police chief who recorded Michael Esco's testimony. Catherine Roynap said that on the afternoon of June 10, the same day that Mike Eseko saw the mermaid, when she was grazing at the seaside, she saw a creature sliding into the sea from a rock and then sticking its head out of the sea 6 yards away. It has long black hair, fair skin in the upper body and dark brown like a fish in the lower body. When it swam near the coast, Catherine clearly saw its face-as white and small as a child's face. Like other eyewitness reports, the animal "kept stroking or cleaning its breasts". Soon it swam away.

At first, Catherine didn't believe what she saw. She told herself that a little boy must have fallen into the sea from the boat and was struggling desperately. Her father later recalled that when Catherine ran home, she told him that there was a strange boy swimming on the shore. Then when her parents went with her to find the boy, they found nothing.

18 14 In the summer, a series of sightings occurred on the west coast of Scotland. One of the witnesses of the incident was a group of children. At first, they thought they saw a woman who fell into the water. According to a letter published in the York Chronicle in September 1 Sunday, the children later observed it closely and found that it was a mermaid: its upper body was like a beautiful woman with rosy cheeks and long hair (but arms and hands were as small as children's), while its lower body was "like a big fish in color and shape". The children called the farmers nearby, and one of them wanted to kill the creature with a rifle. But everyone else stopped him, so he whistled to the mermaid. Hearing the whistle, the mermaid turned to look at him.

The York Chronicle wrote: "It has been in people's sight for two hours, and it sounds like a goose from time to time." Later, someone saw this creature twice, "both in the early morning when the sea was calm."

On August 15 of the same year, two fishermen saw a mermaid in the sea a quarter of a mile from the shore of Gordon Harbor. According to the Scottish Mercury, it has a black face, a flat nose, a big mouth and small eyes, and long arms. Soon after, its partner swam over. I think so because the second creature that fishermen see has long hair, delicate skin and bulging breasts. Frightened by the strange sight, the two fishermen rowed the boat to the shore, while the two creatures kept staring at them.

/kloc-in 0/830, residents of Benbakula Island near the northwest coast of Scotland once saw a small creature half fish and half woman rolling in the sea on the shore. Some people tried to catch it, but failed. The last boy hit it on the back with a stone, and it disappeared at once. A few days later, its body was washed up on the beach two miles away.

Local sheriff Duncan Shaw examined its body carefully. He later reported: "The upper body of this creature is like a well-developed child of three or four years old, but its breasts are extremely plump. Its hair is long, black and shiny; The skin is fair, soft and delicate. Its lower body is like salmon, but it has no scales. " In front of many islanders, this creature was buried in Nathan's graveyard. Folklore expert MacDonald Robertson said in 196 1: "The tomb is still there, and I have seen it with my own eyes."

Second, the most famous mermaid observer is obviously Christopher Columbus. On his voyage to discover the West Indies, he saw "three mermaids jumping on the sea in the distance" and found that they were "not as beautiful as people described". Judging from the movements of those animals, it is more likely that he saw three kinds of marine mammals dugong.

After Columbus, other mermaids appeared in America. When the explorer John Smith was sailing in the West Indies, he saw a woman in the water. She was so charming that Smith "felt the pain of love" for the first time. He didn't die until he saw "that woman is full of fish from the waist down" One day four years ago, while driving a small boat into a port in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, Captain Whitburn saw a strange creature like a woman swimming towards him. He backed up quickly and dodged. So the creature turned a corner and prepared to board another ship. That ship belongs to William Hockridge. He hit that guy on the head! And then disappeared into the sea.

Compared with a mermaid in Casco Bay near the southern coast of Maine in the17th century, the mermaid above is lucky. It is said that it was trying to board the "Mr. Mitt" and its owner cut off its arms. The creature immediately sank into the sea and "died in the sea dyed purple by blood."

Shortly thereafter, on the sea near Nova Scotia, the crew of three French ships saw another mermaid. They chased the mermaid and tried to catch it with a rope, but failed. The captain of one of the ships recorded: "He brushed off the moss-like hair that covered his eyes, and his body seemed to be covered by it."

Henry hudson, an explorer who has been to the New World, is a very reliable witness. The Hudson River is named after him. He also recorded an experience of witnessing a mermaid. On the night of June 16 10, two of his crew members saw a mermaid. She has fair skin and long black hair. "Her back and breasts are like women's"; She also has a "tail like a dolphin". The crew can see her clearly because she "swam to the side of the boat and observed the human beings carefully".

/kloc-Phillip Goss, a naturalist in the 20th century, commented on this discovery: "For these sailors sailing in the polar regions, they are as familiar with seals and walruses as milkmaids are with cows. Unless the whole story is a lie carefully fabricated by two crew members, an outstanding navigator (Hudson) should know his character, and he himself should be objective and rational, so they must have seen something we don't know. "

From 65438 to 0797, Dr. chisholm visited the small island of Bobis in the Caribbean. Von Batamborough, the governor there, and others told him that the locals had seen strange creatures in the rivers on the island many times, and the Indians called them "the mother of water". In the book "Malignant Fever in West India" published by 180 1, Dr. Chisholm wrote: "Its upper body is like a human body ... its lower body is like a fish ... but unlike dolphins ... people usually see them sitting in the water, but they can't see their lower body unless they are frightened ... They often comb their hair, or ...

One explanation for witnessing mermaids is that they are actually manatees or dugongs. In the words of scientist Richard carrington, "these manatees were turned into mermaids by sailors full of expectation and superstition." According to a survey conducted by Gwen Benwell and Arthur Waugh, authors of "The Banshee at Sea" published in 1965, three-quarters of such sightings occurred in places where manatees and dugongs were not thought to haunt. Secondly, the images of manatees and dugong are quite different from those of the legendary mermaid.

But the possibility of manatees cannot be ruled out in all cases. For example, residents of Papua New Guinea often report seeing something similar to a mermaid: a creature that looks like a human being above the waist, without legs and forks below the waist, but with fins at the end. They call this creature "the sun". When Roy Wagner, an anthropologist, visited the island in the late 1970s, people on the island told him that "Japan" looked like a mermaid symbol on a canned tuna. Understandably, Wagner is very interested in this. After witnessing this creature with his own eyes, Wagner affirmed that this creature is not a dugong.

But in February 1985, an American scientist expedition took an underwater photo of the "sun", which is undoubtedly a dugong. The mystery was partially solved. But Thomas Williams, a member of the expedition, still wondered, "When it is a dugong, how can so many people produce it and insist that it is a mermaid?"

Two authors in Nature put forward a second explanation for the mermaid sighting.

After studying the report of the Norwegian mermaid, they came to a conclusion: atmospheric change or atmospheric disorder will lead to strange optical effects, which will distort the scene on the sea. So killer whales, walruses and even rocks on the water may be mistaken for mermaids by sailors. These atmospheric disorders are also the reasons why storms often occur after seeing mermaids. After reading their research report, behaviorist David Huynh Ford thinks this explanation is very valuable.

Michel Moje, a French folklorist and expert on exotic underwater animals, believes that it is useless to explain mermaids from a biological point of view. He believes that witnessing mermaid is an "illusion experience", which is just a superstitious and vivid illusion.

Another theory claims that the mermaid is a new species that has not yet been discovered. Bernard Hufmans, the founder of "Unknown Zoologist", wrote in a newspaper 1986: "Only saying that it is a close relative of an unrecorded manatee or unknown marine life can explain why there have been so many mermaid sightings in some sea areas since ancient times."

Both Benwill and Waugh agree with this conclusion. But many people are dismissive of this, because this creature, which is usually found not far from the coast, has never left any remains for people to carry out scientific research.