On June 15, 1608, English Captain Henry Hudson wrote this in his logbook, after sailing off the northern coast of Russia: “This morning one of our crew saw a siren overboard. Sailors Thomas Hilles and Robert Raynar said that although the body was large like a man’s, it had a woman’s back and breasts, pale skin, long black hair and a dolphin tail speckled like a mackerel . “
Mermaids have been a part of mythology since ancient times. In Babylon, around 5,000 BC. C., there was a belief in Oannes, a fish-shaped goddess. Also in Syria the goddess of the Moon, Atargatis, was worshiped, very similar in image. During the 19th and 20th centuries, they were represented according to the romantic canon of the time, sitting on rocks and sensually combing their long golden hair.
But if there is a trait that defines this mythological being, that is, without a doubt, the great power of seduction that was attributed to his voice. The first to relate this terrible quality was Homer, in whose famous book The Odyssey , he describes them as beings that “enchant all men who approach them”, since he who hears their voice “will never be surrounded by their wife and tender children (…). Rather, they enchant him with their sonorous song, sitting in a meadow surrounded by a large pile of rotten human bones, covered with dry skin ”.
Those voices were what was known as the song of the sirens, a terrible threat to be avoided by ancient sailors during their navigations through the Mediterranean , but a marketing tool in the Middle Ages, when numerous taverns used the figure of the mermaid to adorn the posters of the inns, in the belief that this would attract more customers.
Also in the nineteenth century, some unscrupulous tried to do business with mermaids, sewing the upper part of a monkey with the lower half of a fish and exhibiting the result at fairs, after paying an amount to be able to witness this phenomenon.
Now it is thought that the belief in them could have arisen from the sighting of seals and manatees, also called sea cows, animals today well known but mysterious in those times.
