Mermaids.
“I’ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall.”
—Shakespeare.
“Thou rememb’rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song.”
—Shakespeare.
A belief in the existence of mermaids is not quite extinct, although no tales relating to them appear to have been preserved among the people. An old man, living in the parish of the Forest, of the name of Matthieu Tostevin, whose word might be implicitly relied on, affirmed to Mr. Denys Corbet, the master of the parochial school, that on one occasion, being on the cliffs over-looking Petit-Bôt Bay, he saw a company of six mermaids, or, as he termed them “seirênes,” disporting themselves on the sands below. He described them as usually depicted, half woman, half fish. He hastened down to the beach as fast as he could, to get a nearer sight of them, but, on his approaching them, they took to the sea, and were immediately out of sight.