STORIES OF MERMAIDS.
LESS than half a century ago, a pretended Mermaid was one of the sights of a London season; to see which credulous persons rushed to pay half-crowns and shillings with a readiness which seemed to rebuke the record—that the existence of a Mermaid is an exploded fallacy of two centuries since.
Mermaids have had a legendary existence from very early ages, for the Sirens of the ancients evidently belonged to the same remarkable family. Shakspeare uses the term Mermaid as synonymous with Siren:—
"O train me not, sweet Mermaid, with thy note,
To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears;
Sing, Syren, for thyself."—Comedy of Errors, iii. 2.
Elsewhere, Shakspeare's use of the term is more applicable to the Siren than to the common idea of a Mermaid; as in the "Midsummer Night's Dream," where the "Mermaid on a dolphin's back" could not easily have been so placed. A Merman, the male of this imaginary species, is mentioned by Taylor, the water-poet:—
"A thing turmoyling in the sea we spide,
Like to a Meareman."