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Siren to mermaid, from bird to fish

Bird siren and fish-tailed sirens, or a proto-mermaid. Queen Mary Psalter. 1310-1320. The British Library.

If you read about about mermaid imagery, you’ve probably read theories about where mermaids came from— and a lot of authors like to try to give mermaids ancient origins. Dagan, the Syrian god, or Atargatis. While it’s interesting to look at other fish-tailed beings in art, it also drives me a little crazy. Not everyone with a fish tail is automatically a mermaid. Think of it this way: both Batman and Dracula wear capes, but it’d be a wild stretch to say they must be related somehow. Still, it's an interesting question: where did mermaids come from, exactly, and how much of their imagery is from the Homeric sirens?

This is a random pic of Dagon from a seal. This is not a mermaid.

So today we’re going to look at the most likely origins of the mermaid from European folklore. She likely developed out of ideas about Homer’s sirens, and the fish tail was a gradual part of mermaid imagery. An easy way to think about the siren shift from half bird to half fish is in terms of evolution. Like the biological process, the change was very gradual. There are even a few “missing link” sirens, female creatures who have a mixture of bird tails and fish fins.

To start, sirens from antiquity weren’t described by Homer at all, but artists imagined them as bird women:

Containers shaped like sirens; siren paintings on a bowl. My photos.

In ancient art, Triton, the Greek god of the sea, was the one usually shown with a fish tail:

Triton vases, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. My photos.

There were a handful of women with fish tails in ancient art, but they were almost always shown as counterparts to fish tailed men:

Scylla, the vengeful monster from the Odyssey, is also shown with a fish tail... and dog heads around her waist. But it'd take an extremely desperate sailor to call her a mermaid:

Scylla on red-figure vases, from the Louvre and pic by Sailko.

To me, one possibility of the fish-tail origin is from Coptic art. Nereids, the water nymphs who lived in salt water, were sometimes shown not as human looking women, but as women with fish tails:

Birth of Venus, with fish-tailed nereids in attendance. Herakleopolis Magna, Egypt. Limestone relief. 395 - 641 CE. Byzantine. Louvre.

Aphrodite Anadyomene, tapestry. 395 - 641 CE, Byzantine period. Findspot: Antinoé (?) Louvre.

However, a more likely source is where artists got their ideas from. An important source of inspiration for church artists in the middle ages were bestiaries. Bestiaries, which are illustrated books of creatures, both real and imaginary—such as unicorns, manticores, and lions—were very popular in the middle ages. Over time, Christian morals were added to the animals’ original stories. All the bestiaries were based on the above-mentioned book called the Physiologus, first published in the second century CE. To quote academic William Travis on the Physiologus: “Schoolboys learned its contents, priests used it in sermons, and monks put it in hymns.” As time went on, the morals got more and more stringent—and they almost always included entries about the sirens. Its popularity ensured that everyone, from laypeople to clergy, were familiar with the sirens and their story.

In the various translations and editions of these books, however, some errors cropped up. The seventh century Book of Monsters (or Liber monstrorum) described the sirens as creatures of the sea: “Sirens are sea-girls, who deceive sailors with the outstanding beauty of their appearance and the sweetness of their song, and are most like human beings from the head to the navel, with the body of a maiden, but have scaly fishes’ tails, with which they always lurk in the sea.”

Oops. Maybe the writer wasn’t that familiar with the old Greek stories. And when we look at Scylla’s entry in this book, there's another possibility to explain how sirens' got fish fails: blurring with Scylla. This passage from the Liber Monstorum emphasizes reads:

...Scylla has been the monster most hostile to sailors in that channel which washes between Italy and Sicily, having indeed the head and chest of a maiden (like the sirens) but the belly of a wolf and the tails of dolphins. And what distinguishes the nature of sirens from Scylla is that they deceive seamen by their deadly song, whilst she with the strength of her force, girt about with sea-dogs, is said to have mangled the wrecks of the unfortunate.

Now the siren/Scylla confusion becomes obvious, as this book makes them sound very similar. They’re compared in the above entry twice. And when church artists were making their carvings, they were likely going from memory, not referencing a copy of the Liber as they worked.

In addition to pictures, there could have been an issue with the words itself, by someone re-copying these texts over again. In Greek, there is one word for “wing” and “fin”: pterughion. In Latin, the difference in wing and fin is also small, with one letter separating them: pennis and pinnis. As one modern scholar noted, when writing about the sirens in the Liber monstrorum: “they thus resemble Scylla except in relying on deceit where she employs brute force...” Isidore of Seville, the Christian writer and thinker, also listed his siren and Scylla descriptions back to back. This blurring of the two characters is echoed in other books. In the University Library Bestiary, Scylla’s entry is right before the sirens—and the image for Scylla is missing.

The shift from bird to fish is finalized in an illustrated version of the Physiologus from the ninth century. The siren’s entry describes a bird woman—but the picture is of a fish lady, in the company of a centaur, the half-man, half-horse of Greek mythology:

Siren and centaur, ninth century. Bern Physiologus, Bern. Folio 13. Photo: Bern, Burgerbibliothek.

She was the first fish tailed woman described as a siren, but the image had been cropping up in other texts, like the Visigoth manuscript from the 800s:

Mermaid in the margins, Sacramentarium of Gellone, Visigoth manuscript, about 780 A.D. Image from National Library of France.

While this woman does have a fish tail, the text doesn’t describe who she is, making it hard to determine where she fits in with the sirens’ evolution.

There’s also the fish-tailed critters from the margins in the Book of Kells, about CA 800. I’ve written about the two-tailed Book of Kells mer-critter, but there’s also one with a single tail:

213v. Book of Kells via Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin.

The medieval fish-tailed sirens developed new traits for the same way real animals do—to ensure their survival. “They choose deliberately to show her as a beautiful, alluring woman, with a graceful fishtail, since a bird-body is hardly seductive in appearance,” remarked the authors of Sea Enchantress, a comprehensive study of mermaids in art and literature. Another writer noticed this when describing the siren’s evolution: “...feathers receded to make way for a greater expanse of (female) human flesh...”

Bird sirens. Bestiary (Dicta Chrysostomi) ca. 1140–50 Austria, Göttweig. mm MS M.832. The Morgan Library & Museum.

The middle ages has sirens aplenty: with bird wings, clawed bird feet, snake’s tails, fish fins, and all combinations in between. Different versions of bestiaries list sirens with the birds, sometimes with the fish. Let's take a look at these "missing link" mermaids:

Worksop bestiary, about 1185. MS M.81, fols. 16v–17r. The Morgan Library and Museum.

The next ones have webbed feet, like a duck, and hold their fish-like tails:

Sirens, about 1250–1260 CE, illuminated Manuscript, England. Ms. 100 (2007.16), fol. 14 Alternate Titles: Northumberland Bestiary (Group Title) Getty Museum. I’m pretty sure the middle one is a merman, as he has a beard and no breasts.

Writing in the late eleventh century, the Vatican Mythographers said that the sirens ate the men who listened to their song. Sirens devoured their victims when they were sexually unsatisfied—so said Bartholomew the Englishman, a member of the Franciscan order in the thirteenth century. This is graphically illustrated in an image from the Queen Mary Psalter, where one of the sirens leans over a man in a ship with an open mouth, ready to tear at his flesh— and one siren is half bird, one half fish.

Queen Mary Psalter. 1310-1320. The British Library.

Some of the "missing link" sirens are just a little weird.

MS. GKS 1633 4° Bestiarius. From the Royal Library in Denmark.

Harley 3244 f. 55, B.L.

Kongelige Bibliotek, Gl. kgl. S. 3466 8o, Folio 37r .

BnF. Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. Bestiaire de Pierre de Beauvais. Ms-3516. French. 1285.

MS. Douce 88, fol. 021v. Bodelian Library.

Image of three sirens from Brunetto Latini "Li livres dou tresor" playing a citole, a harp and a shawm. About 1300.

The English language has two different words to distinguish these mythical women— siren and mermaid— but not all languages do, particularly Romance languages like French and Spanish. The word in Old English was sirina meremenin, a combination of both, until Chaucer coined the term “mermaydens” in the mid 1300s. Sirene or Sirena has become the standard word for mermaid in Romance languages and are used interchangeably with the English word mermaid.

But for women whose appearance wasn’t actually described in ancient stories, does it matter that much? After all, the Odyssey itself never said they were bird women, fish women, or anything else. That siren’s bodies continue to be re-imagined by artists is just part of who they are. Interestingly, some medieval writers and poets, such as Gautier de Metz, tried to explain the ever-changing fashion of medieval sirens: “Others there are with heads and bodies of maidens as far as the breasts, below as fish, and with the wings of birds; and their song is very sweet and beautiful.”

See also: Hassig 1995, pages 105-108.

For general siren evolution from bird to fish, see pages 166-169: McCulloch, Florence. Mediaevel Latin and French Bestiaries. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1960.

For a scholarly overview of the bird to fish transformation, see Rachewiltz 1987, the section titled “The Birth of the Mermaid: Some Notes on Medieval Siren-Iconography” pages 86-106.

For the thirteenth century poem: Druce 1915, page 176.

For another writer who noticed the many forms of the siren: Guillaume le Clerc wrote in 1211 AD: “Of the siren we shall tell you... Fashioned in the form of a woman. The other part is shaped like a fish or bird.” Sachs 1978, pages 6-7.

#mermaid versus siren #fish tailed mermaid #mermaid evolution #mermaid art #siren versus mermaid #mermaydens #bestiary #medeival mermaids

I’ve been thinking about mermaids recently—for no particular reason—and I was thinking, as one does, about the biology and evolutionary pressures that would cause mermaids to evolve. And I was watching something on ray-finned fish a couple weeks ago and thought, “hmmm, what if mermaids were ray-finned fish?” Which led me down the rabbit hole of a type of fish native to the Nile, bichirs (Polypterus), they are what one might call a “living fossil”. They have “primitive” lungs, and they can “walk” with their strong pectoral fins. So I thought maybe this air breathing, land crawling fish could be a good candidate for what mermaids could evolve from. Anyway, here’s a bichir mermaid.

#digital art #mermaid #mermaid art #quick art #primitive lugs #bichirs (Polypterus)#bichirs #Polypterus #my art #ray finned fish #mermaid evolution

Mermaid Evolution

Mermaids are completely unrelated to humans, rather they are fish with adaptions in mimicry. The ancestor was a large, ancient fish that preyed on wayward sailors with disorienting shrieks.

As time went on, they rearranged their bodies and minds to more closely resemble humans. Their gills detached from their skull and created a resonating cavity that turned their shrieks to song. Their fins changed to resemble appendages, including splitting the base in two and creating a pouch that could be filled with water, resembling a human chest when displaying.

Be careful when sailing, and when you hear a song that sounds too beautiful for human lungs, it is. Alter your course, and pray it doesn’t follow.

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#mermaid #mermay #mermaid evolution #creature design #fantasy #mermaids #fantasy evolution #shire draws #worldbuilding

“Sirens in the Temples of Pleasure:” sirens in Christianity

Two sirens, one about to strike a sailor with her instrument. From: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, fr. 1444b, Folio 245v

Sirens are originally mythical women of Greek myth and poetry. However, in the middle ages, they show up frequently on churches and in Christian writing. How did a pre-Christian symbol wind up on a church? They seem like a very odd thing to decorate a house of worship with. The sirens aren’t Christian, and they certainly don’t represent anything very Christian-like. How did this woman fly her way into early Christian thought?

To begin, we need to figure out how sirens got into the Bible. (Yes, there are sirens in the Bible.) The Bible is a book that’s been translated countless times throughout the centuries, and it was the Greek Septuagint that first brought sirens into scripture, around 250 BCE. It does seem fitting that the Greeks put the sirens in the Bible, and it has five references to sirens in all. All of those verses are about destruction, and two of them mention mourning, like classical Greek sirens. This passage is from Esaias (Isaiah) describing Babylon:

But wild animals will rest there,

and the houses will be filled with noise;

there sirens will rest,

and there demons will dance.

Donkey—centaurs will dwell there,

and hedgehogs will build nests in their houses... (13:21-22)

Linking the sirens with Babylon is a way to show they are inherently evil. Later translations of Isaiah make the sirens sound even worse. When the verse was translated into Latin in the fourth century CE in the Vulgate, St. Jerome gives the passage as follows:

But wild beasts shall rest there,

and their houses shall be filled with serpents,

and ostriches shall dwell there,

and the hairy ones shall dance there,

and owls shall answer one another there in the houses thereof,

and sirens in the temples of pleasure. (13:21-22)

In this passage, sirens are exchanged for ostriches, and this translation shows a shift in how sirens are viewed. In the Septuagint, they simply live in Babylon, but in the Vulgate version they’re frolicking in temples. It’s a subtle shift, but a clear one: these temptresses are changing from mysterious to evil.

Sirens tear a man to bits while a centaurs looks on. Brussels, Bibliotheque Royale, MS lat. 10074 (Brussels Physiologus), fol. 146v: siren and onocentaur (photo: Brussels, Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique).

Sirens didn’t just appear in the Bible in Christian writing. When early Christian writers, the founders of modern Christianity, were looking for ways to make their new religion understandable to the masses, they took Greek myths and put a new spin on them. The sirens’ song became the lure of worldly pleasures, hearsay and temptation that good Christians must resist. Odysseus’ mast became the cross, as he became a man trying to resist temptation and find salvation. Modern scholar Hugo Rahner, who wrote about how Greek myths shaped early Christianity, called his chapter about the Odyssey “The Mast that is the Cross.” In particular, one of the Greek fathers of modern Christianity, Clement of Alexandria, used Greek mythology to help explain the Bible’s teachings. Writing between 150 and 210 CE, he called sirens “pretty little whores” and compared their isle to the world, and the sirens’ call as the secular lure that must be resisted. In Protrepticus, the first book in his influential trilogy, he uses the sirens as metaphor, advising: “Sail past lust! Sail away from the songs...”The full quote uses many elements of the sirens symbolism, even incorporating the siren’s original words from the Odyssey, while adding Scylla’s traits to the mix:

Let us fly away from old habits like from the Sirens, of which legend tells! She strangles man, distracts him from the truth, takes his life. She is a trap, an abyss, a pit, a devouring monster. She is an island of destruction, heaped with bones and corpses. On hersits an attractive wench, Lust, and delights with her worldly music: ‘Come hither, honored Odysseus, glory of the Achaians, steer your ship to the beach, so that you may hear our divine voice.’ She praises you, sailor, calls you honored, but let her feed upon the dead! A wind from heaven comes to your aid, sail past pleasure, sail past the song, it causes death.

This transformation is sad but understandable: the sirens’ song is based on temptation. Their story is about women who are tempting men with wisdom and a man who is questing for more knowledge. The siren’s two main attributes—seduction and knowledge—are the very things the Bible warns against. Worse, they conjure up images of Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden. The issue with this interpretation is that the ancient Greek world of Odysseus and the sirens didn’t have a concept of “forbidden knowledge.” To quote scholar Siegfried de Rachewiltz about hidden knowledge: “it’s discovery [like the solving of riddles] is a feat and not a sin.” Sirens predate the concept of original sin, yet it was the idea of original sin that made sirens appear sinister.

Sirens are vilified in other ways. About 350 CE, St. Jerome, who considered them “treacherous prostitutes,” associates them with heretic in the Bible in the Book of Micah: “And they shall weep like the daughters of sirens, for sweet are the songs of the heretics, and with their pleasant voice they deceive the people. Nor can any pass by their singing, but he who has stopped his ear and as it were gone deaf.”

Sirens would continue to be linked to prostitution in Christian writing throughout the Middle Ages. While there was a small connection between Greek sirens and prostitutes in antiquity—the siren wearing a cap like a prostitute’s on an ancient vase painting, for example—the connection was much more concrete in the middle ages. In the University Library Bestiary, two sirens are wearing long-sleeved tunics, outfits that mark them as prostitutes. “In effect, these sirens look like medieval courtesans who happen to have tails and wings,” writes scholar Debra Hassig in “The Harlot: The Siren.”

Sirens dressed like prostitutes, tempting sailors. Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk.4.25, f. 77. About 1230. Photo: by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

Many of Christianity’s early fathers, like Clement, St. Ambrose, and Isidore, compared sirens with prostitutes. Isidore, Bishop of Seville, writing in the early seventh century, identifies sirens as “meretrices,” meretrix meaning “she who earns.” Isidore wrote in the seventh century, and his Etymologies were a widely used encyclopedic reference guide for writings of antiquity. He wrote that the sirens “were said to have had wings and talons because sexual desire both flies and wounds.” Sexual desire and its evils were a recurring theme with Christian writers, often showcasing the need to blame women for that desire. Hassig ends her discussion about medieval prostitution with a fantastically foul quote from Augustine, another early Christian thinker and writer: “The public woman [prostitute] is in society what bilge is in [a ship at] sea and the sewer pit in place. Remove this sewer and the entire palace will be contaminated.” This is a fascinating parallel between sirens and prostitutes: siren imagery is evil but necessary, and sex workers are evil but necessary. Rahner sums up this attitude nicely when he writes, “More than that—the Sirens become the very personification of that creature so virtuously shunned by monks—woman herself.”

Christian writing about sirens just gets worse over the centuries. They were “flute-playing whores who robbed travellers (sic) of their money” to Eustantius, an archbishop of Thessalonica, writing in the twelfth century CE. Another translation of the same passage describes them as “lyre playing harlots.” In the 1200s, Italian scholar Brunetto wrote that “they dwell in the water because lechery was made out of moisture,” a reference to a woman’s vaginal secretions. The very word “music” comes from the word moys, which comes from the word water.

Even their names have changed. Classic sirens had names that reflected their voices, such as Aglaope, “she of the glorious voice,” Legeia, “she of the bright voice” and Parthenope “virginal,” or “maiden voiced.” Some siren names did hint at their sexual nature, such as Peisinoe, “the seductive,” Thelxinoa, “enchantress,” and Himeropa, or “she whose voice awakens desire.” But now, their beauty has faded, and they are named after vice and sin.For example, a twelfth-century sermon introduces us to three sirens: one who sang, named Avaritia, or Greed; a pipe-player, Jactantia, or Vainglory and Pride; and finally, a lyre-player named Luxuria, or Lust and Lechery. In ancient times, they were praised for the singing; now, they are demonized for their song and sensuality. The sirens were also a way for the clergy to criticize female musicians and singers, particularly ones involved in making secular music. Given the clergy’s condemnation of female singers, it puts the music-making sirens, particularly the ones playing flutes with centaurs, in a whole new light.

A trio of sirens playing music while centaurs fight. 13th century bestiary. Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 602 fol. 10r Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ Image via Artstor. Note the emaciated bodies of the sirens along with the pendulous breasts.

Several scholars notice that the sirens go from tempting men with knowledge to just tempting them with sex. It’s an easy way to make the sirens harmless. The original classic sirens were so irresistible, no one even needed to know what they looked like. No longer coy fortune tellers, who intrigued the minds of Plato and Cicero, this new flock of sirens are crass and vulgar. As Greek historian Jane Harrison wrote: “...the Siren has fallen in mediaeval days to a mere image of sense temptations; she no longer allures men by the bait of knowledge; or shall we rather say the men of later times had sunk, and only sense—knowledge no longer—could entice them?”

When the siren/sex connection is finalized in early Christian thought, it’s done to cheapen the sirens and make them seem tawdry. Their new song isn’t one that tempts both body and mind—it is crude, just appealing to men’s base instincts. However, it’s interesting to note that in vilifying the siren, the church only succeeded in making her popular. She was a favorite of church masons across Europe, and the classical siren would become blurred with aquatic women of folklore.

Soon, the sirens were not just heretics or prostitutes—they were killers. By 600 CE, according to “medieval bestseller” the Physiologus, a Latin book illustrating a variety of fantastic beasts, the sirens are described as killing men with their song. They lulled men to sleep with their voices, then “they attack and tear their flesh apart.” While sirens were supposed to kill men—Circe said their island had bones on it—no one ever explained just how the ancient sirens killed people. Did men drown in the waves, or starve to death at the sirens’ feet? Did the sirens themselves kill the men, stabbing them with their harp’s pecturns? Even Odysseus himself doesn’t mention any bones on their isle when he sails past. Also, the alleged skeletons are extremely rare in ancient art—the only one is a Roman fresco from Pompeii, where a few skeletons can be seen in the lower right-hand corner.

Ancient writers may have thought the sirens were dangerous—but they did not think that sirens were evil. While sirens may not have been respectable women in Greece, they weren’t devils, either. This shift reflects a change in morality, shown graphically in an illustration from the Brussels Physiologus that has an image with murderous sirens tearing a man apart while a centaur looks on. Writing in the late eleventh century, the Vatican Mythographers said that the sirens ate the men who listened to their song. Sirens devoured their victims when they were sexually unsatisfied—so said Bartholomew the Englishman, a member of the Franciscan order in the thirteenth century. This is graphically illustrated in an image from the Queen Mary Psalter, where one of the sirens leans over a man in a ship with an open mouth, ready to tear at his flesh.

Detail of two sirens attacking a ship, from the Queen Mary Psalter, England. From the British Library. Early 1300s.

See also: Rachewiltz 1987, page 55.

See also: For Parthenope as “maiden-voiced,” see Holford-Strevens 2006, page 20.

For the siren’s names associated with sin, see: Travis 2002, page 40. The writer’s name is Honorius Augustodunensis. He’s also mentioned in Dale 2001, page 420.

For the instruments they play, see page 141: Rowland, Beryl. Animals with Human Faces: A Guide to Animal Symbolism. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1973.

For the observation about the clergy criticizing female musicians, see page 191: Leach, Elizabeth Eva. ""The Little Pipe Sings Sweetly While the Fowler Deceives the Bird': Sirens in the Later Middle Ages." Music & Letters 87 (2006): 187-211.

Meri Lao also notes that the sirens are rendered “innocuous” through their sex appeal. See page 99 in: Lao, Meri. Seduction and the Secret Power of Women: The Lure of Sirens and Mermaids. Translated by John Oliphant. 2nd ed. Rochester: Park Street Press, 2007.

For the observation about the church making the siren popular, see page 135:Berman, Ruth. "Mermaids; Sirens." In Mythical and Fabulous Creatures: A Source Book and Research Guide, edited by Malcolm South, 133-45; 47-53. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987.

For the quote, see page 172:Harrison, Jane Ellen. Myths of the Odyssey in Art and Literature. London: Rivingtons, 1882.

For the Latin Physiologus quote, see Holford-Strevens 2006, page 27.

And I’m really resisting the urge to make a “snu-snu” comment here: ravished to death!

For the Roman fresco: See Image 1, Cohen, Beth. The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer's Odyssey. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Distaff Side: image #1, Roman wall painting, from Pompeii; 3rd quarter of the first century A.D. in the British Museum.

For the sirens tearing a man to pieces image: Travis 2002, picture #25.

The sirens lulling sailors to sleep could be a nod to Virgil’s Aenied— when approaching the siren’s cliffs, one of his sailors, Palinurus, became “steeped in the drowsy might of Styx” and fell overboard.

Virgil. "Works. English & Latin: Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I-Vi." Trans. Fairclough, H. Rushton. 1999. Page 531.

Sirens devoured their victims when they were sexually unsatisfied—so said Bartholomew the Englishman, a member of the Franciscan order in the thirteenth century.

For the Vatican mythographers, see: Holford-Strevens 2006, page 27.

For Barthlolemew and the ravenous sexual sirens, see Leach 2006, page 192.

For the image in the Queen Mary Psalter, page 177: Hassig, Debra. "Marginal Bestiaries." In Animals and the Symbolic in Mediaeval Art and Literature, edited by L. A. J. R. Houwen. Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1997.

#sirens #mermaids #mermaid evolution #sirens in the bible #medieval art #bestiary

Sirens versus mermaids

I make a distinction between sirens from Homer's Odyssey and mermaids from European folklore in my research about the two-tailed siren, and here's the posts exploring why.

First, single-tailed "tritonesses" are very rare in ancient art, and it's very, very rare that sirens are shown with fishtails in ancient art. Nereids and naiads are typically shown as regular women in ancient art and Coptic art, riding hippocampi, and no fish tails.

Mermaids evolved gradually in medieval art, slowly transforming from the bird-bodied sirens of Homer to women with a fish tail— a single fish tail. In addition, while medieval mermaids are commonly shown holding a mirror and comb, likely inspired by Venus, two-tailed mermaids are rarely shown holding them— and never in earlier medieval art, like Romanesque church art. I look at sirens in Christian thought here.

Naiads and nereids with fish tails from the 1500s to the 1700s are explored here.

I look at imagery of mermaids with children here.

Images of single-tailed mermaids and two-tailed sirens together: Top: The Nile Couple, 1577.

Middle: Buch der Natur by Konrad von Megenberg, 1460.

Bottom: Konrad von Megenberg: Das Buch der Natur; Augsburg 1478.

#mermaid evolution #siren versus mermaid #two tailed siren #are sirens and mermaids different #I think yes

Did the sirens get fish tails from Scylla?

Mermaids first show up in medieval art and folklore, and I will die on this hill. Having said that, let’s look at the examples I’ve seen about how people might’ve mixed the sirens and Scylla up, and why I think that’s silly.

For reference, here's two depictions of the sirens and Scylla encountering Odysseus in ancient art:

You're much braver than I if you'd try to sleep with the woman on the right.

Both of these mythical women have a few things in common: they were made famous by Homer’s Odyssey, they’re dangerous to men who encounter them, and they both make their homes in or near the ocean. While Homer’s sirens didn’t live in the sea, but on an island, there’s something else that links them to the water. Many sea deities have the gift of fortune telling, as their knowledge is not just limited to what happens on land. The Greek sea gods Proteus and Nereus both have prophetic knowledge that they’ll tell, if someone, such Hercules is able to catch them. Since the sirens are fortune tellers, it’s understandable why they were gradually thought of as sea beings.

However, in ancient art, Scylla and the sirens are very separate. There’s only two times that they might have been mixed up— that is, Odysseus was pictured with a fish-tailed woman who didn’t have dogs around her waist. Let’s look at them.

On a bowl from Megora, made in the second century BCE, a siren with a fish tail swims past Odysseus as he is bound to the mast. The drawing helps to see the fish-tailed sirens.

Another fish-tailed siren tries to lure Odysseus on a Roman lamp from the second century CE, pictured here. Since neither of these fish-tailed sirens are attacking Odysseus, it’s safe to assume they’re not Scylla.

I want to emphasise: these two images are the exception, not the norm. Museums are full of bird-bodied sirens and pissed-off Scyllas that are clearly not trying to sleep with anyone. But I spent a long time researching this, and I’m going to wrap it up with a final thing I found.

There’s an ancient story where Scylla is transformed into a bird, making her resemble the sirens, the above-mentioned poem “Ciris.” In this Virgilian poem, written in Virgil’s style but probably not by him, Scylla is the pursuer and not the pursued—and the object of her affection is a man named Minos. Hoping to win his love, she cuts off a lock of hair of King Nisus, her father, the one that protected him from death. Instead of being impressed by her sacrifice, Minos is turned off. He tosses her into the ocean to die, but the gods step in. Scylla doesn’t drown, but is turned into a bird by the sea goddess Amphitrite.

Since ancient sirens are part bird, maybe...? maybe...? Probably not, but interesting to think about.

Siren and Scylla connections

Sea creatures have the gift of prophecy, pages 190-191: Vermeule, Emily. Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry: University of California Press, 1981.

See also, pages 130 and 137: O'Nolan, K. "The Proteus Legend." Hermes 88, no. 2 (1960): 129-38.

For the bowl, see page 19: Rotroff, Susan I. . "Hellenistic Pottery: Athenian and Imported Moldmade Bowls." American School of Classical Studies at Athens 22 (1982): 1-136.

See also pages 160-61: Thompson, Homer A. "The Excavation of the Athenian Agora Twelfth Season: 1947." Hersperia 17, no. 3 (1948): 149-96.

For the lamp, Harrison, Jane Ellen. Myths of the Odyssey in Art and Literature. London: Rivingtons, 1882. pages 170-171.

For both examples: Rachewiltz, Siegfried de. De Sirenibus: An Inquiry into Sirens from Homer to Shakespeare. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987. pages 90-91.

[68] The poem in which Scylla is turned into a bird, “Ciris,” Virgil(?). "Ciris." Trans. Fairclough, H. Rushton. Aeneid Vii-Xii: Appendix Vergiliana. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. 442-83. pages 479-481 in particular.

#sirens #scylla #mermaid evolution

what the fuck did humanity do to make one whole half of a species evolve to get away from them? (p.s I'm talking about dark waters in case that didn't make sense <3)

Oh you know, the usual stupid shit like hunting down animals for sport and invading more and more of the ocean because naturally humanity owns the planet, it’s not like a whole bunch of shit existed before humans did.

Most importantly, unless you are immortal, you don’t own anything. If you’ll lose it one day, it isn’t yours. No one owns the planet. No one owns other people. We all die, we can’t take it with us, therefore we own nothing.

No one told these bastards that, though, and they’re intent on owning it all.

#fic: dark waters #mermaid evolution