Musical Blades

mermaids

Mermaid, in folklore, supernatural, sea-dwelling creature with the head and upper body of a beautiful woman and the lower body of a fish. The mermaid is frequently described as appearing above the surface of the water and combing her long hair with one hand while holding a mirror in the other. Mermaids, in the numerous tales told of them, often foretell the future, sometimes under compulsion; give supernatural powers to human beings; or fall in love with human beings and entice their mortal lovers to follow them beneath the sea. A similarity exists between the stories concerning mermaids and those told about the Sirens.

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In Greek mythology, Sirens were sea nymphs with the heads of women and the bodies of birds. Their singing lured sailors into crashing their ships on ocean rocks, causing destruction and death. The mermaids of folklore were similar marine creatures, with the heads and torsos of beautiful women and the tails of fish. Mermaids also used their beauty and singing voices to attract mariners, and they often led sailors to their death by pulling them down to the depths of the ocean. Sailors believed the sighting of a mermaid was an omen for an impending storm or shipwreck.

Like the myth of the Sirens, mermaid folklore suggests male ambivalence toward women. Men are drawn to the mermaid's beauty, but they are usually destroyed if they act on the attraction.

A factual basis for the mermaid myth is believed to be the physical similarity, at a far distance, between mermaids and sea mammals such as the dugong, whose scientific classification is the order Sirenia.