“Thus, all to soothe the chieftain’s woe,
Far from the maid he loved so dear,
The song arose, so soft and slow,
He seem’d her parting sigh to hear.
*****
That sea-maid’s form of pearly light
Was whiter than the downy spray,
And round her bosom, heaving bright,
Her glossy, yellow ringlets play.
Borne on a foaming, crested wave,
She reached amain the bounding prow,
Then, clasping fast the chieftain brave,
She, plunging, sought the deep below.”
This tradition gave rise to a curious custom in the Isle of Man, which, in Waldron’s time, was observed on the 24th of December, though afterwards on St. Stephen’s Day. It is said that, once upon a time, a fairy of uncommon beauty exerted such undue influence over the male population that she induced, by the enchantment of her sweet voice, numbers to follow her footsteps, till, by degrees, she led them into the sea, where they perished. This barbarous exercise of power had continued for a great length of time, till it was apprehended that the island would be exhausted of its defenders. Fortunately, however, a knight-errant sprang up, who discovered a means of counteracting the charms used by this siren—even laying a plot for her destruction, which she only escaped by taking the form of a wren. Although she evaded instant annihilation, a spell was cast upon her, by which she was condemned, on every succeeding New Year’s Day, to reanimate the same form, with the definite sentence that she must ultimately perish by human hand. Hence, on the specified anniversary, every effort was made to extirpate the fairy; and the poor wrens were pursued, pelted, fired at, and destroyed without mercy, their feathers being preserved as a charm against shipwreck for one year. At the present day there is no particular time for pursuing the wren; it is captured by boys alone, who keep up the old custom chiefly for amusement. On St. Stephen’s Day, a band of boys go from door to door with a wren suspended by the legs, in the centre of two hoops crossing each other at right angles, decorated with evergreens and ribbons, singing lines called “Hunt the Wren.”[931]
In “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (ii. 1), Oberon speaks of hearing “a mermaid on a dolphin’s back;” and in “Hamlet,” the Queen, referring to Ophelia’s death, says (iv. 7):
“Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up.”
In two other passages Shakespeare alludes to this legendary creature. Thus, in “3 Henry VI.” (iii. 2) Gloster boasts that he will “drown more sailors than the mermaid shall,” and in “Antony and Cleopatra” (ii. 2), Enobarbus relates how
“Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i’ the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers.”
In all these cases Shakespeare,[932] as was his wont, made his characters say what they were likely to think, in their several positions and periods of life. It has been suggested,[933] however, that the idea of the mermaid, in some of the passages just quoted, seems more applicable to the siren, especially in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” where the “mermaid on a dolphin’s back” could not easily have been so placed, had she had a fish-like tail instead of legs.
Notices of mermaids are scattered abundantly in books of bygone times. Mermen and mermaids, men of the sea, and women of the sea, having been as “stoutly believed in as the great sea-serpent, and on very much the same kind of evidence.” Holinshed gives a detailed account of a merman caught at Orford, in Suffolk, in the reign of King John. He was kept alive on raw meal and fish for six months, but at last “gledde secretelye to the sea, and was neuer after seene nor heard off.” Even in modern times we are told how, every now and then, a mermaid has made her appearance. Thus, in the Gentleman’s Magazine (Jan., 1747), we read: “It is reported from the north of Scotland that some time this month a sea creature, known by the name of mermaid, which has the shape of a human body from the trunk upwards, but below is wholly fish, was carried some miles up the water of Dévron.” In 1824 a mermaid or merman made its appearance, when, as the papers of that day inform us, “upwards of 150 distinguished fashionables” went to see it.
The “Mermaid” was a famous tavern, situated in Bread Street.[934] As early as the fifteenth century, we are told it was one of the haunts of the pleasure-seeking Sir John Howard, whose trusty steward records, anno 1464: “Paid for wyn at the Mermayd in Bred Street, for my mastyr and Syr Nicholas Latimer, xd. ob.” In 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh established a Literary Club in this house, among its members being Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Selden, Carew, Martin, Donne, etc. It is often alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher.