As mentioned last week, we will continue our preparation for surviving the wilds of folklore with another week of mermaids, given the breadth of mermaid lore to be found around the British Isles.
We have previously covered where might you find a mermaid, how would you identify one, and whether they are dangerous. Below you will find a case study of two and a half mermaid stories where mermaids have been helpful or kind - although not necessarily to humans.
How can you tell which mermaids might help you?
The short answer is, you can’t - all mermaids have the potential to be dangerous and should be treated as such. However, Scandinavian mermaids on the whole do seem to be gentler than those of the British Isles (particularly Scotland), and especially the Scandinavian mermen, with their green and black beards, who live on the cliffs and shore hills as well as in the sea. Edith has written a long and flowery description that focuses overmuch on the supposed good looks of these mermen; I have chosen not to insult your sensibilities by reproducing it here.
You are also more likely to find help from a mermaid if you have helped her, although this is not a given. Mermaids (and indeed, many women of the Folk associated with water such as the Lake Maidens and Selkies) are known to have a wealth of medical knowledge, including an almost bizarre knowledge of herbs for a creature that lives where they cannot grow. Mermaids have traded medical advice with their favourites, and bestowed it on those in desperate straights. Edith has come across as least two accounts of their advice around the use of mugwort and nettles to cure consumption (tuberculosis) in young women.
story time
I mentioned earlier three and a half stories. Lutey and the mermaid is a particularly well-known mermaid story, and The Old Man of Cury appears to be a variant on this rather than a unique story in its own right. However, I felt it worth including here as it is a surprisingly charming story and I particularly enjoyed the imagery of the old many carrying the mermaid on his back, which our illustrator has chosen to focus on this week.
Lutey and the mermaid
Lutey was a Cornish fisherman and wrecker who lived with his wife and children near Lizard Point at the southernmost tip of Britain. One day while combing the beach for jetsam, accompanied by his dog, Lutey came across a mermaid who had been stranded in a rockpool by the receding tide. She persuaded him to carry her down to the sea and she offered him three wishes in return.
Lutey was a good man, and so he chose wishes that would do good, rather than things for his own benefit: the power to break the spells of witchcraft, the power to compel familiar spirits for the good of others, and that these powers should continue in his family line. Because Lutey had wished for unselfish things, the mermaid gave him her comb, with which he could call her by combing the sea, and promised none of his family would come to harm.
However, as they reached the water, the other side of the mermaid’s nature took a stronger hold, and she tightened her grip on Lutey’s neck and tried to allure him to come with her into the ocean. So strong was her allurement that Lutey would have gone with her but for his faithful dog. It howled on the shore and when Lutey looked back at it, he saw on the cliff above the sea the cottage in which he lived with his wife and children, and this gave him the strength to tell the mermaid to let him go. But by this point they were almost waist-high in the water and she tried to draw him in by force. Lutey was able to flash his knife in her face, the cold iron repelling her. She plunged into the sea but as she went she called back to him ‘farewell my sweet, for nine long years, then I’ll come for thee my love.’
Sure enough, nine years to the day after he met the mermaid, Lutey was in his boat with one of his sons when the mermaid rose out of the sea and called to him. ‘My hour is come’, he said, and dove into the water never to be seen again. Indeed, so strong was the mermaid’s call, it is said that every nine years one of Lutey’s descendants was lost to the seas. But she also kept her promise and the powers Lutey had asked for continued in his line, with his descendants famous for their skill as healers.
The Old Man of Cury sometimes took the mermaid on his back to see the strange sights of the land people. Mermaids in medieval texts were sometimes drawn wearing human clothes - in this instance, it seems the old fisherman has lent her one of his jumpers to keep her warm.
the old many of cury
Once upon a time an old fisherman of Cury was walking on the beach at low tide when he saw a girl sitting on a rock up ahead. As he watched her, she seemed to fall off the rock into the pool below it. He hurried over to help her, but when he reached the pool he realised she was no human girl but a mermaid girl who had been cut off from the sea. She begged him to take her down to the sea, and the old man put her on his back and carried her across the long stretch of sand to the water.
In return for his help the mermaid offered him three wishes. The old man said he had no need of money but would like to be able to help others, and so at his request the mermaid agreed to give him the power to break spells, discover thefts, and cure illnesses.
But these are skills that must be taught, so the mermaid promised that if the old man would meet her by the rock where he had found her on nights with a high tide and a bright moon, she would teach him. She gave him the comb from her hair so that he could call her by combing the sea, then she slipped off his back, blew him a kiss, and vanished beneath the surface.
She was as good as her word, and the old man learnt many things from her that he put to good use. In return, sometimes he would carry her on his back to see the strange land people, although he never accepted her invitation to visit her under the waves*. The comb and some measure of skill stayed in the man’s family for some generations after his death.
*it should be noted that the mermaid took a considerable risk here, as we shall see in the next story, and must have felt very safe with the old man.
The mermaid and the selkie skin
In the Shetland Isles a seal hunter once stunned a seal and took its skin before throwing its body back into the water. But the seal was a selkie man and he regained consciousness in the water. Somehow, cold and in misery, he made his way deep under water until he found a cave in which lived a mermaid.
The mermaid could see no way to help the selkie but to get his skin back, and no way to do this but to let herself be caught and ask for it to be returned. She let herself be drawn up in the boat’s fishing nets, where she begged the hunters for the skin. The man who had thrown the seal back into the sea was full of remorse when he heard this story and pleaded with his friends to release her, but they were greedy and decided instead they would sell her on the land. Deaf to her pleas they set sail at once, leaving her tangled in the net, laid on the sealskin in the bottom of the boat.
Unlike most mermaids (and more like an Asrai, which we will discuss another week), she could not survive long in the upper air and she felt herself fading. All she could hope was that her death would release a storm that might sink the boat and wash the selkie skin back down to her cave - and so it happened. The boat sunk and the skin and the mermaid’s body were both washed down to the cave, where the selkie was able to draw on his skin again and to know the debt that he and his people owed to the mermaid.