In the Faroe Islands the Mermaid of popular belief merges insensibly into the Seal; and in Shetland it is believed, that, while they are distinct beings, they can only come to the surface of sea by entering the skin of some animal capable of existing in the water. This also is always the Seal. In this form they land on some rock and amuse themselves as they will. But they must take care of these skins, for without them they can never return.
One summer's eve, a Shetlander walked along the shore of a little inlet, By the moonlight he saw, at some distance before him, a number of these sea-people who had "left unsounded depths to dance on sands." Near them, on the ground, he saw several seal-skins.
As he approached, the disturbed dancers precipitately made to their garments, drew them on, and, in the form of seals, plunged into the sea. When he came up, he saw one seal-skin still there; he snatched it up, ran away, and secured it. He then returned. There he met upon the shore the fairest maiden that eye ever gazed upon. She was lamenting piteously the loss of her seal-skin robe, without which she could never rejoin her friends or reach her watery home. He endeavored to console her. She implored him to restore her dress; but her beauty had decided that. At last, as he continued inexorable, she consented to become his wife. They were married and had several children, who retained no mark of the watery strain, save a thin web between their fingers and a peculiar bend of the hand.
The Shetlander's love for his wife was unbounded, but she made a cold return. Often she stole out alone and hastened to the sea-shore, and at a given signal a seal of large size would appear, and they would hold converse for hours in an unknown language, when she would return home pensive and melancholy.
So years passed and her hopes vanished, when one day the children, playing behind a stack of corn, found a seal-skin. Delighted, they ran to show the prize to their mother. She was no less delighted, for she saw in it the lost home and friends beneath the water. Yet she loved her children. That proved but a slight pang, and with many embraces she fled to the sea.
The husband came in almost immediately, and hearing what had happened ran out only to see her plunge into the sea, where she was joined by the seal. She looked back and saw his misery, "Farewell!" she said. "I loved you well while I was with you, but I always loved my first husband better."
"Near the coast," says Sir James Forbes, "we saw many sorts of fish, but did not meet with many of the Mermaids so often mentioned in these seas especially by Mr. Matcham, a gentleman of great respectability, and at that time superintendent of the Company's Marine at Bombay. I have heard him declare, that, when in command of a trading vessel at Mozambique, Mombaz, and Melinda, three of the principal seaports on the east coast of Africa, he frequently saw these extraordinary animals from six to twelve feet long; the head resembling the human, except about the nose and mouth, which were rather more like a hog's snout; the skin fair and smooth; the head covered with dark, glossy hair of considerable length; the neck, breasts, and body of the female as low as the hips, appeared like a well-formed woman; from thence to the extremity of the tail they were perfect fish. The shoulders and arms were in good proportion, but from the elbow tapered to a fin, like the turtle or penguin."
The very curious reader should examine Cuvier's account of the Manatee, or Manatus, (called from its hands,) and of the Halicore, or Dugong, "from its mammæ, called the Mermaid." Concerning this latter Hartwig has the following sentence:—"When they raise themselves with the front part of their body out of the water, a lively fancy might easily be led to imagine that a human shape, though certainly none of the most beautiful, was surging from the deep."
This is the testimony, and our deduction is short and simple.
We see, first, in the East, two hieroglyphs: one, the fishy man-monster, expressive of a joint dominion over land and sea; the other, a woman and fish conjoined, and expressive of relationship between the moon and the sea; and thus form of the Mermaid grew; and as that which had in its mythology the latter of the figures was a maritime nation, the figure was spread abroad and perpetuated. Next, in the North we see the imagination that placed a colony of trolls under every hill, a tiny creature under every "cowslip's bell," and a separate spirit in every little stream, peopling also the outer ocean with its creatures; and here the perfect idea of the Mermaid, with its various beneficent or mischievous qualities, appears.