Mermay day 3: Bizarre And Cool Variations
If you’ve ever thought to yourself “is there more than just fish mermaids? Are there different kinds of fish mermaids?” Well theb congratulations. You prove that people have always been people, because we’ve been coming up with different varieties of merpeople since at least 400 BCE.
From what I can tell, Greece was the first to make more interesting variations. They created the Telchines and Ichthyocentaurs. Telchines have several descriptions but among them are dog like and mermaid like hybrids. It was said they had the heads of dogs and tails like a fish. Sometimes both and sometimes only one. They were said to know magic and were eventually cursed by the gods for using foul and evil magic. Ichthyocentaurs are so interesting to me because they are centars with a fish tail instead of hindlegs or tritons with two horse legs on their tail.
Ichthyocentaurs spawned several other similar looking mermen designs including tritons with clawed forefins on their tails, wings, and in roman times lobster and crab claws on their tails. This then spawned a crayfish triton and sonewhere in between we get two tailed tritons and tritonesses.
Inuit cultures in the far north of Canada and Greenland had a sea goddess named Sedna. Who by some accounts had a seal, orca, or whale tail. It’s hard to pinpoint when belief in Sedna began and exactly when Sedna developed mermaid iconography but she has always been closely linked with sea mammals and sea life.
In Chilé tales of the Millalobo and his merchildren who had sea lion tails were prevalent. Said to be gods and had golden hair. Pincoy was Millalobos son and his sister wife Sirena Chilota who had golden scales not too dissimilar from Suvanamaccha who was a golden tailed mermaid.
The yawkyawk of Aboriginal myth was said to have seaweed for hair. A similar aesthetic to tritons who were often described with blue skin and green hair.
One of my personal favorites is the Sazae Oni who could shapeshift into a human form. And in its demon form it had the lower half of a mollusk. Making it a very rare mermaid like creature with a shelled lower half. It has a rather wellknown story of stealing pirates balls in exchange for gold. It was also known to travel to inns and devour the innkeeper at night.
Avatea from cook islands myth was half fish on the left side as opposed to from the waist down.
Interestingly enough there doesn’t seem to be any octopus hybrids in mythology. You could maybe argue Scylla was the first tentacled hybrid but she wasn’t really depicted as half octopus and was more similar to the hydra or a dragon. Cecaelian creatures seem to be a unique creation of Disney’s little mermaid.
