Mermaids, Witches and Amazons

Copyright @ 2007 William Bond

I wish to thank Pamela Suffield and Rasa Von Werder for encouraging and helping me produce this book.

Publishing history.

First published by Lulu publishing, as the E book, “The Secret World Of Mermaids”, January 2007

Published as a printed book by lulu publishing at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/wabond June 2008
Published at Amazon (.) com

 

(I have asked Penguin books permission to use these photos from the book, Hekara, The Diving Girl’s Island, as they had taken over the original publishers Hamish Hamilton.)

[Note: you may find that the fonts are not constant throughout this blog. This is because when I cut and paste from my book to this blog the fonts changed. I tried to clean it up as best I could but I don't know enough about html code to do this completely. So expect random changes in the font as you read this blog.]

 Contents

Chapter One The Mermaid Mystery
Chapter One (Pictures)
Chapter Two The True Nature of mermaids
Chapter Three Women Divers
Chapter Four The Aquatic Ape Theory
Chapter Five The Sexual Ape
Chapter Six Did Women Once Rule The World?
Chapter Seven The Ancient Sea People
Chapter Eight The First Ocean Voyagers
Chapter Nine The Amazons Of The Amazon River
Chapter Ten The True Nature of Early Humans
Chapter Eleven His-story and Her-story
Appendix
Bibliography
Miscellaneous

Black and White book version of "Mermaids, Witches and Amazons"
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/mermaids-witches-amazons/4175313

Colour book version of  "Mermaids, Witches and Amazons".
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/mermaids-witches-amazons/4175143

[Painting by John William Waterhouse,  (1849-1917), which shows a traditional mermaid theme of her luring sailors to their doom by her wonderful singing and harp playing. Except  that this mermaid doesn't have a traditional fish tail. These are themes  I will discuss more fully in my book.]

Introduction

For many people, what they know about mermaids is what they have seen in popular Walt Disney films like Splash and The Little Mermaid or read in fairy tales.  While the academic explanation is that mermaid myths and legends originated from ignorant or drunken sailors who in the past, have incorrectly thought that sea-cows were women with a fish tail.

Yet, sea cows only exist in tropical waters, while most mermaid sighting come from European waters where there are no sea-cows.  There is a better explanation for Mermaid myths, legends and sightings as I will explain in the following chapters.

3,000 year old bronze statue of a mermaid

Chapter One - The Mermaid Mystery

[This 19th century picture of a mermaid has legs, and her ‘tail’ doesn't seem to be attached to her body. Perhaps, the illustrator knows what Mermaid really are and is attempting to tell the reader the true nature of mermaids.]

The official explanation of mermaids is that sailors have mistaken the manatee for mermaids. Looking at a manatee or sea cow I have to say that a sailor would have to be very stupid, shortsighted or drunk to make a mistake like this. It also seems that even famous explorers like Christopher Columbus and Henry Hudson made this mistake because they also reported seeing mermaids.

The day before, when the Admiral was going to the Rio del Oro, he said he saw three mermaids who came quite high out of the water but were not as pretty as they are depicted, for somehow in the face they looked like men. He said that he saw some in Guinea on the coast of Manegueta.

And to quote from the logbook of Henry Hudson on 15 June, 1608 near the Novaya Zemlya islands.

This morning one of our companie looking over boord saw a mermaid, and called up some of the companie to see her, one come up, and by that time shee was close to the ship’s side, looking earnestly upon the men: a little after, a Sea came and overturned her: From Navill upwards, her back and breasts were like a woman’s her body as big as one of us; her skin very white; and long haire hanging downe they saw her tayle, which was like the tayle of a porposse and speckled like a Macrel.

The Novaya Zemyal islands are off the north coast of Russia in the Arctic ocean, so in no way could a sea-cow live in such waters. To explain this, it is assumed that Hudson and his crew only saw a walrus, in spite of the fact his crew saw it close to the side of the ship. If it were reported they saw a merman with a very bushy mustache, then this might make some sense, but it is incredible that experienced seamen should mistake a walrus for a mermaid. Are we to believe then, that even Columbus and Hudson and their crews were so foolish as to mistake a sea cow or walrus for a women with the tail of a fish? 

These men were experienced sailors and would be very well acquainted with marine life in the area. Other famous men have also claimed to have seen mermaids, like Captain John Smith who became the Governor of the Virginia Colony in the early 17th century. Like Columbus he also complained they did not look as pretty as depicted in pictures of mermaids. We are asked to believe these experienced sailors were incredibly naive or foolish; there is no other explanation for the mermaid myth.

To make sense of mermaid sightings some people have pointed out that the vagina of female sea cows is very similar to that of a human female. The suggestion is that sailors may have had sex with manatees, and perhaps to cover up this act of bestiality, they may have claimed they had intercourse with a mermaid. The difficulty with this explanation is that there are many more stories of shepherds who have sex with sheep who do seem to have the need to invent a mythical creature to cover up this act; they simply keep quiet about it.

Some reports of mermaids are definitely those of sea cows. In 1739, The Scots Magazine carried a report that the crew of the ship Halifax, in the East Indies, had caught and eaten several mermaids, because they were short on rations. When they returned to London, the sailors described how the creatures moaned "with great sensibility when caught". The flesh, they claimed, tasted like veal.

This sounds horrendous if they were real mermaids, but in their description they say they are large fish, weighing two to three hundredweight and with large heads, which sounds very much like a dugong; and other people have claimed that dugongs do taste like veal. It seems very unlikely that the crew of the Halifax would have thought these animals were mermaids. It is more likely the spin put on by the newspaper reporter or the papers editor, who followed the old newspaper adage: “you don’t allow facts to get in the way of a good story”. A story about the crew of the Halifax killing and eating dugongs would be so boring, that it would not be worth reporting, but the crew also reported that these dugongs had breasts like women. This would probably be the excuse the editor needed to claim they were mermaids. Thus creating a very sensational story that has survived until the present day.

Another explanation is that sailors on long sea voyages, without the company of women, become so sex-starved that anything that remotely resembles a woman in the sea becomes a mermaid to them. This does not explain why most mermaid stories come from European seas where there are no manatees or dugongs. Also many mermaid stories come from local fishermen who do not spend months or years at sea.

Mermaids are reported all over Europe. In Ireland they were known as Merrows or Murirruhgachs, in Cornwall they were called Merrymaids, in the Shetland Islands they were known as Sea-trows, while the Germans on the Rhine called them Meerfraus. The Scandinavians called them Navmands, while the Icelanders called them Marmennills.

One suggested explanation has been that sailors and fishermen in Europe have mistaken seals for mermaids. The seal is a fairly common sea mammal, so it would be absurd if experienced fishermen, who have been fishing all their lives, would mistake a seal for a mermaid. For instance if modern people were to spot a seal and claim it was a mermaid, we would think they were incredibly ignorant. Reports of mermaids have continued right up to the 19th century and even a few in the 20th century. This means mermaid reports continue through, “the age of reason” where no one believes in mythical beasts any more. So it seems we have to believe that people who report seeing mermaids are either drunk, mentally deficient, or liars. Or is there another explanation?

As we can see from the folk-tales about unicorns and dragons, they were names of real animals. People have attempted to explain the mermaid legends by looking for an animal similar to the description of them. This is why it has been assumed that the mermaid was either a manatee or dugong. Perhaps we need to look at the mermaid story from a different perspective. For instance, it seems that they are mostly women, while there are very few reports of mermen. Oddly, there are a number of reports of mermaids having two tails! Mermaids are also known for their wonderful singing voices and their ability to dance! Yet if we take these reports seriously, we may get an understanding of what is really going on. In many mermaid stories we find they come out of the sea and even marry. Which is a very clever trick, if you have a fish’s tail. Like this story from Zennor in Cornwall.

The people of Zennor had long wondered at the beauty of a richly dressed lady who attended divine service at the church. None knew whence she came, but when she fell in love with Matthew Trewella and lured him away, tongues began to wag. Neither was seen again for many years, until one Sunday morning the sailors on a ship anchored near Pendower Cove were surprised to see a mermaid rising from the water, and recognised her as none other than the mysterious visitor to Zennor Church. She asked the captain to raise his anchor, as it was barring the entrance to her house. Her likeness can be seen to this day carved on a pew-end in Zennor Church.

         If we take away the magical element of her living in a house below the sea, this story is very much like the French story of Melusine. Like Melusine she is a rich woman, and it is she who takes the initiative in pursuing Matthew Trewella, and they end up living in her house. This is the opposite of the conventions of the time, when women were supposed to be submissive, and everything she had, was owned either by her father or husband. Yet again we also have a mermaid that can magically create legs when she walks on land.

Let’s look at the famous statue of The Little mermaid, (above) sitting at Langelinie in Copenhagen, which is one of Denmark's biggest tourist attractions. The sculptor Edvard Eriksen created the sculpture in 1913. Yet if we look at it closely, we do not find a woman with a fishtail; she has legs. In fact, it is just a sculpture of a nude woman sitting on a rock, with only her calves and feet looking fishlike. So why did the sculptor make her like this? Why did he not make her the same as mermaid myths and put a fish’s tail on her? Could it be, that he knew the reality of what mermaids really were? Many mermaid reports are simply of nude women, which we can see from the following report. –

From The Times newspaper, 8th September 1809.

Dear Sir. About twelve years ago when I was Parochial Schoolmaster at Reay, in the course of my walking on the shore of Sandside Bay, being a fine warm day in summer, I was induced to extend my walk towards Sandside Head, when my attention was arrested by the appearance of a figure resembling an unclothed human female, sitting upon a rock extending into the sea, and apparently in the action of combing its hair, which flowed around its shoulders, and of a light brown colour. The resemblance which the figure bore to its prototype in all its visible parts was so striking, that had not the rock on which it was sitting been dangerous for bathing, I would have been constrained to have regarded it as really an human form, and to an eye unaccustomed to the situation, it must have undoubtedly appeared as such. The head was covered with hair of the colour above mentioned and shaded on the crown, the forehead round, the face plump. The cheeks ruddy, the eyes blue, the mouth and lips of a natural form, resembling those of a man; the teeth I could not discover, as the mouth was shut; the breasts and abdomen, the arms and fingers of the size in which the hands were employed, did not appear to be webbed, but as to this I am not positive. It remained on the rock three or four minutes after I observed it, and was exercised during that period in combing its hair, which was long and thick, and of which it appeared proud, and then dropped into the sea, which was level with the abdomen, from whence it did not reappear to me, I had a distinct view of its features, being at no great distance on an eminence above the rock on which it was sitting, and the sun brightly shining.

Immediately before its getting into its natural element it seemed to have observed me, as the eyes were directed towards the eminence on which I stood. It may be necessary to remark, that previous to the period I beheld the object, I had heard it frequently reported by several persons, and some of them person whose veracity I never heard disputed, that they had seen such a phenomenon as I have described, though then, like many others, I was not disposed to credit their testimony on this subject.I can say of a truth, that it was only by seeing the phenomenon, I was perfectly convinced of its existence.

If the above narrative can in any degree be subservient towards establishing the existence of a phenomenon hitherto almost incredible to naturalists, or to remove the scepticism of others, who are ready to dispute everything which they cannot fully comprehend, you are welcome to it from,

Your most obliged, and most humble servant,

WILLIAM MUNRO

William Munro was not the first to sight mermaids in Caithness, Scotland. In 1804 two girls also reported seeing mermaids in the same area, while Munro himself also claimed that mermaid sightings were commonplace in the area.

Now the School Master clearly states at first, that what he saw was a naked women and made no mention of a fishtail. It seems he only assumed she was a mermaid until he realized that the sea near where she sat was dangerous for swimmers. Another question he may have asked himself: what was a naked woman doing swimming in the sea, this was after all, 19^th century Scotland. Such behaviour may not be so unusual in the 21^st century on a nudist beach. But women in those times did not go in for athletic sports like swimming in dangerous waters, or parade themselves completely nude. He also claimed to see the mermaid combing her hair, (which is a common theme in many mermaid’s reports). Yet, looking after her hair would be the action of an ordinary woman, not a sea-creature.

Another mermaid sighting was reported in the Aberdeen Chronicle in 1688, which claimed that mermaids can be seen and heard singing hymns at the mouth of Scotland’s River Dee on May 1^st, 13^th and 29^th. At first sight this seems very strange because, how was it that mermaids know the words and music of hymns?That wouldn't make any sense if mermaids were sea dwellers, but it would make a lot of sense if they were ordinary women.

[Two medieval pictures of mermaids with two tails.]

Also there are many reports of mermaids having two tails, as we can see from the medieval images above. In French, the mermaid is called "la luxure", which means double-tailed. Also it is claimed that Melusine had two tails, which is a very strange concept but not so strange when we realize that the two tails could be two legs.

Reports of mermaids having legs are not that unusual. In Ireland they report that the mermaids lived on dry land below the sea. (Which sounds like a very Irish story.) In the Shetland Islands they report that mermaids wear animal skins to swim in the water and then take them off to walk on land. These islanders also report that they are descendants from mermaids. In the Orkney Islands they claim that mermaids don’t have fish’s tails, but instead they wear long petticoats that look like a fish’s tail when they swim in the sea. In fact, in many of the earlier reports of mermaids in the British Isles, a fish tail is not mentioned at all; the concept of a fish tail is a later invention, in this part of the world.

Mermaid reports go right back to the Ancient Greeks who called them Nereids, sea-nymphs or sirens. (nymphs in Greek simply means, ‘young women’.). But in these reports they are not women with a fish’s tail, they are simply nude women swimming in the sea or lying on rocks, beaches or riverbanks. In Greek myths, sirens are supposed to be half woman and half bird, because of their amazing singing voices.But in Spain, sirens are just another name for mermaids.

In many mermaid stories they are seen playing musical instruments or using a hand mirror and combs.  In no way could a sea-creature make something like this; they would have to be made on land. As previously pointed out; looking after their hair, and playing musical instruments, is the behaviour of ordinary women.

A famous mermaid sighting was in Newark Bay in Deerness, Orkney. This mermaid was seen hundreds of times, by visitors, over a few summers in the 1890s. From documented reports, it appears that the mermaid stayed some distance from the shore, so exact details are vague.

To quote one account of this sighting. -

It is about six to seven feet in length, has a little black head, with neck, a snow-white body and two arms, and in swimming it just appears like a human being. At times it will appear to be siding on a sunken rock, and will wave and work its hands.

Again everyone assumed what they saw was a traditional mermaid that is half fish and half woman. But the description is of a normal woman swimming in the sea.

If that is the case, are we then looking for women with a fish’s tail? Or are mermaids simply ordinary women? This then begs the question: why would these women want to swim in the sea? After all, and as far as we know, in the past it was very unusual for people to swim in the sea in European waters. This practice only began in the 19^th century when bathing became fashionable, and wealthy women would go into the water, with the help of outlandish bathing machines.

There is also the problem of the temperature of the water. Stories of naked women swimming in the sea on the south coast of England or in the Mediterranean Sea are fairly reasonable. But we get reports of mermaids on islands north of Scotland like the Shetlands and Orkney Islands, and there are even reports from Finland, Iceland and Russia! In these Arctic waters a man in the sea would freeze to death within 20 minutes. So why would any woman in her right mind want to swim in these freezing seas? We can find an explanation for this in the following story:

Hendrik Hamel was a member of the crew of the Dutch ship Sperwer, with sixty-four men on board, which left Batavia on June 18^th, 1653. Then in the area between Japan and Korea the Sperwer sank in a storm and twenty-eight men perished. The remaining thirty-six survivors were extremely lucky and were driven ashore on the southern coast of the Korean island of Cheju.

This island’s name means in Korean “the district over there”. It was so isolated that, for hundreds of years, the Korean government sent criminals to the island, and out-of-favour officials banished from the mainland by the government usually ruled it.

The Sperwer survivors were all interned for ten months on the island before they were transported to Seoul. Then they were employed as bodyguards to a general for about three years. All the men desperately wanted to get home, but the Korean authorities refused to allow this. Korea at that time was unknown by the Europeans and feared conquest by them. If these men returned home and revealed their knowledge of Korea, they might return with a European navy. So most of the Sperwer survivors spent the rest of their lives living in Korea, but eight men managed to escape to China. Hendrick Hamel was one of them and he finally made it from China back to Holland. He then wrote down his experiences in a book called Hamel's Journal and a Description of the Kingdom of Korea 1653 - 1666.

This book is very important to scholars, because it was the first description of Korea by a European, and it is known to be a very accurate journal as Korean scholars support everything Hamel describes; but in one area, he seems to have let himself down, and that was by claiming that in Cheju, there were mermaids on the island. Yet scholars know that what he referred to as mermaids, were in fact, haenyo divers.

Haenyo in Korean means woman diver. It is known that divers have harvested the seabed off southern Korea and Japan for over 1,500 years. Male divers still exist in Japan and once were used in Korea, but the overwhelming majority are women. This is because the water temperature goes down to 8 degrees Celsius and women can withstand this very cold temperature because they have a higher percentage of subcutaneous fat than men, which insulates them from the cold water. (Some men, who are very fat, are also able to withstand these cold-water temperatures, but they are the exception. Women store a lot of their fat in their large breasts, big ass, fleshy hips and thighs, which men don't normally have ).

Haenyo Diver

mermaid

[Photograph of a real Mermaid by Fosco Maraini from the book, Hekara, The Diving Girl’s Island of Japanese ama diver foraging for shellfish and editable seaweed.]

In the 20th century several studies have been done on haenyo divers by scientists who have dubbed them; “the hardiest women of the world”. In a study by the scientists Suk Ki Hong and Herman Rahn in the late 60s, they found that they could dive to a depth of 20 feet unaided apart from a wet-suit and goggles and remain underwater for as long as 3 minutes.

Modern aids like wet suits and goggles are a great help, as in the past haenyo divers would suffer blindness from their eyes being constantly exposed to seawater. Wet-suits makes it less likely they suffer from hypothermia, though in Japan, where they also have ama divers, modern aids are banned, including wet suits in some areas. The word ama comes from; Amaterasu the Japanese Sun Goddess but today it simply means, ‘sea woman’. In other words, the Japanese word ama, and the English word mermaid, (sea-woman), both mean the same thing.

Female divers are a very controversial subject in Korea, because these women have become the main ‘breadwinners’. This means that while the women are out working, the men have to look after the home and children. In a male-dominated society like Korea this is shocking and an embarrassment, to the degree that these women are referred to as Amazons and their husbands are looked down upon for being too “feeble”. The women's economic and social independence from male control sharply contrasts with the enforced dependency on men observed in mainland Korean women. The Amas in Japan have a similar reputation. To quote D.P. Martinez in her paper, "Naked Divers: A case of Identity and dress in Japan."

The women were seen to be totally different from the ideal of modern womanhood: they were often described to me as loud, big, brash and bossy women.

Koreans in the past become so embarrassed by the status of the haenyo divers that all knowledge of them was strictly censored and their activities banned.This was enforced on the mainland but not on the remote islands of Mara, Udo and Cheju. To quote Prof Ko: “The Central Government forbade the women from diving, but the women just gave them some abalone to look away”. (Abalone are a marine mollusc that is considered a great delicacy by a number of Asian cultures. Because of this; high prices are paid for abalone meat).

This has changed since the 1960s, when Western tourists discovered women divers in Korea and Japan. Since then, haenyo divers have become a popular tourist attraction, and this has allowed women divers to, “Come out of the closet”.

Now it is of interest, that although both Korean and Western scholars accept that Hamel’s journal was accurate, we still have a mystery. Why did he make the mistake of thinking haenyo divers were mermaids? The assumption made by some commentators is that he was just an ignorant seaman, but the accuracy of his journal disproves this. The explanation could be that the way mermaids were seen back in the 17^th century, might be different to what we know about mermaids today. We now assume that a mermaid is a woman with the tail of a fish, but this might not always have been true. The concept of a creature that was half fish and half women was an embellishment during the middle ages. As previously pointed out, the Koreans found that haenyo divers to be such an embarrassment that all knowledge of them was heavily censored. So if the profession of female divers had died out in Korea, back in the 19^th century, we today, would not know anything about them, except the report from Hamel that there were mermaids on the island.

       The fact of women divers being an embarrassment in Korea may also be true of other parts of the world.Male chauvinism is not unique to Korea. It is claimed that the ban and censorship of women divers in Korea came through the influence of Confucianism, which is a Chinese doctrine. In China mermaids were called ‘dragon wives’ which presumably is because they were as assertive as the Amazon like women divers in Korea. So it does suggest there was once a similar ban in China of women divers and through censorship we now know nothing about them.

Female divers could also be an embarrassment in Europe. Hamel might have been fully aware that mermaids were female divers because he had seen them working in European waters. And he might have assumed that the 17th century readers of his book would also be aware of this fact. It could be that women divers were as commonplace in Europe as they were in Korea and Japan in the 17th century. 

      Then because of male chauvinism, the hostility of the Christian Church and changing economic conditions the work of female divers disappeared. In the 19^th century, food became more plentiful because of the beginnings of industrial farming, so the demand for shellfish and editable seaweed would not be so great. Therefore female divers wouldn’t be getting the same pay as before, and found it no longer worth risking the hostility of the authorities to continue to be mermaids.

        The profession died out in European countries and if they had censored the facts about women divers in the same way the Korea authorities had done, then the only knowledge that would survive about women divers would be mermaid legends. In Korea the practice of women diving was completely banned on the mainland. This is true in many Pacific islands today where there is a custom of banning women from fishing and diving. So this also could have happened in Europe.

This is confirmed by Captain John Saris who sailed to Japan in three ships, the Cloue, the Hector and the Thomas, in 1611. He witnessed ama divers working and later wrote:

Women divers, that lived with their household and family upon the water, as in Holland they do the like.

Suggesting that women divers where once commonplace in Holland in the 17^th century, the references about living on the water is what sea gypsies still do in South East Asia. They live on boats or on long stilt houses on the water. Could it be that people once did the same in Holland?

The concept that ama divers are mermaids is not a new idea. Francis Haar made the same point, in his book, Mermaids Of Japan, a book about ama divers. (Francis Haar wrote a number of books on Japanese life). If we assume that mermaids are in fact women divers, it means that the many sightings of mermaids indicate an earlier tradition of women divers throughout Europe, (as well as America and Africa before it was conquered by Europeans). Furthermore, this tradition must have continued into the 19^th century judging by the sightings of mermaids. Yet this fact was censored and we can see the hostility of chauvinistic men towards women divers, or mermaids, in reports of their relationship with the Church in medieval times.

In those times, there were bizarre stories of priests who, encountering mermaids on the seashore, would curse them as devils and threaten them with eternal damnation. The mermaids’ usual response was to burst into tears! (Which sounds like the response of ordinary women to verbal abuse). They also report that a mermaid from the Isle of Iona become so upset by these condemnations that she visited one priest daily to plead for her soul. So we see very aggressive attempts by priests to convert diver women into ordinary submissive women, and in some cases this succeeded.

In the 6^th century off the northwest coast of Ireland a mermaid was caught, baptised and educated and was called Saint Murgen. In 1403 a Carmelite monk, John Gerbrandus wrote, “a wyld woman” was washed through a broken dike in the Netherlands and was found by some milkmaids. Clothed and fed, she was taught to spin wool and eventually taken to Haarlem. She then learnt “to worship the cross” and remained in speechless piety for fifteen years.

In the book, De Propietatibus Rerum, by Bartholomew Angelicus, he warned that mermaids charmed seamen through sweet music. "But the truth is that they are strong whores," who will lead men "to poverty and to mischief." He also claimed that a mermaid will lull a sailor to sleep, and kidnap him, and take him to a dry place for sex, and if he refuses, "then she slayeth him and eateth his flesh." In other words, in calling mermaids, “strong whores” he is saying they are assertive women, like Amazon haenyo divers.

These stories only sound weird if we take the traditional view of a mermaid. If we assume that mermaids are women divers, then it gives an insight into the Christian Church’s hostility to these workingwomen. This is because Christianity in the past wanted to keep “women in their place”. So they must have seen the confidence and assertive diver women as a threat. The Church tried to convert these women divers into being ‘ordinary’ submissive women, and would curse and verbally attack them if they refused. It also seems that mermaids were associated with witches and we know what the Christian Church did to witches. The infamous witch hunts of the Middle Ages completely wiped out the profession of women healers and herbalists, allowing this vocation to be taken over by male doctors.

It must also be remembered that up until the 20^th century women were only allowed to do the lowest menial jobs. The experience from Japan and Korea shows that divers were well paid and this may be true of divers in Europe. Then the coming of anti-female religions like Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Confucianism brought about a change in attitude towards this ancient tradition. It is of interest that one of the foods banned by Judaism is shellfish. Was this because it was women who traditionally harvested this food? Another reason could be that shellfish was probably available through the Philistines, the enemies of the Jews in the Bible. The Philistines were part of the sea-peoples, which I will discuss, in a later chapter.

On the Orkneys there are the stories of the Finwives as reported on the web-site.- http://www.orkneyjar.com/folklore/finfolk/finwife.htm

The lore surrounding the Orkney Finwife has a distinctly disjointed feel. So much so that I believe the surviving tales are a mish-mash of various traditions and myth.

On first glance, the Finwife stories appear to be a combination of tales involving Orkney's "spae" wives - wise women or witches, huldrefolk and mermaid lore.

All these are conveniently merged with the tales of the Finmen.

But while the Finman actively shunned contact with mortals - unless absolutely necessary to his purpose - the Finwife was more involved with her human neighbours.

As a child of the Finfolk, the Finwife was said to begin her life as a mermaid - stereotypically beautiful with long, glistening fish tail.

If, however, the young mermaid married a Finman - a fate that awaited her if she did not acquire a mortal huband - she was doomed to become progressively uglier, eventually becoming a haggard Finwife.

Tradition dictates that these Finwives were often sent to shore to use her magic to earn precious silver for her husband. Once settled on land, she would often tell her neighbours she was of Caithness origin - in other words not Orcadian - and then "pretend to earn a living" by spinning and knitting.

The Finwife was renowned for her skill in curing diseases in men and cattle. Because of this is usually did not take long to become an invaluable member of the community. Once accepted she would begin to practice her "infernal arts", all the while sending the silver coins she earned back to her avaricious husband beneath the waves.

If the supply of "white metal" came sparingly or was delayed at any time, the unfortunate Finwife could expect a visit from her Finman husband, who, upon his arrival, would administer a sound beating that usually resulted in the witch being confined to bed for days.

A curious parallel to witch tales from other cultures is that the Finwife was said to keep a black cat.

The similarity ends here, however, as the Finwife's cat had the ability to transform into a fish so it could carry messages between its mistress and her relatives in Finfolkaheem.

(Finfolkaheem is mythical island which was the finfolk’s ancestral home.)

If we were to look at this story from the point of view of a mermaid, with a fish’s tail and who lives in the sea, it seems a wildly fanciful story. But if we see mermaids as women divers, it makes perfect sense.

The fishwife starts off being a mermaid; in other words a women diver. Then she gets married. The report says that after this she becomes ugly and haggard; but this would be true of all women, as they get older. Tradition dictates that Finwives use their magic to earn money. So she is still a career woman, and if she can no longer earn a living diving, she does so as an herbalist, spinner or knitting. In this way she is very similar to gypsy women and witches. The report then says that when she begins to earn money the finman husband would demand it from her and beat her up if she refused. This again is not that unusual; pimps do the same to prostitutes all the time. It seems that finmen are basically ‘kept men’, with the finwife as the breadwinner. This would make it unlikely that he would beat up his wife as she had the power to stop keeping him. So this could be something added to disguise the fact of finmen being kept men. It could be that the finmen were at home looking after the children while the finwifes went to work.

It is of interest, that in Elizabethan times, prostitutes were referred to as mermaids. This would make sense, as during the winter months when the water was too cold for diving, women divers being the main breadwinner of the family would need an alternative form of income. So any women divers, not skilled enough to be a spinner, or know enough to be a competent herbalist, might have to resort to prostitution to feed her family. It also could be the reflection on the sexual behaviour of mermaid communities that had a more free and easy attitude to sexuality than ordinary people at that time. Nymphs, the Greek word for mermaids had reputation of sexual license and freedom, as I will later discuss in other chapters these mermaid communities may have had a good reason to be like this.

The Finfolk also shunned contact with ordinary people. The same is true for the ama divers in Japan. The ama divers and their families live a life distinct from ordinary Japanese, who refer to them as sea-gypsies.

The connection between herbalists and women divers is also shown in another mermaid story. In this story an herbalist from Galloway tried to cure a beautiful girl named May of illness. He was also very much in love with her and hoped to marry her. But whatever he tried did not work and the girl remained ill. Then one evening as he sat in despondency on the sea-shore, a mermaid raised her head from the sea nearby and sang:

 Would you let bonnie May die in your hand. And let mugwort flowering in the land?

The herbalist took the hint and gathered the flowers of mugwort and made up a medicine and gave it to May, which restored her to health. In Wales there is the story of the lady of Llyn y Fan Fach, who imparted her herbal lore to her three sons, the Physicians of Mydfai. The Mermaid Dragon-wives of China were also famed for their knowledge of herbs and their skill in curing diseases.

These are positive mermaid stories and if we take away the magical mermaid myth and see the mermaid as an ordinary woman, we can see in the story from Galloway that the mermaid is part of the community, because she knows about May, her illness and the unsuccessful efforts of the herbalist to heal her. So she advises the herbalist when he is alone, on the seashore. We also cannot assume that the mermaid is young and inexperienced. In Japan and Korea women divers continue their trade into their 70s. So this mermaid could also have been an experienced middle-aged herbalist as well.

In the 12^th century there was a story from Wales that was also about a mermaid herbalist: A farmer’s son in Blaensawdc, near Llandcusant was with his cattle near the lake of Llyn y Fan Fach when he met a beautiful women combing her hair and using the clear water as a mirror. The youth fell instantly in love with her and after talking to her, proposed marriage. She accepted, but on the precondition that if he struck her three blows without cause, she would leave him. He willingly agreed to her terms.

After their marriage, the lady brought many cattle out of the lake, suggesting she was wealthy. They then lived on a farm, had three sons and were happy and prosperous. Yet three times, the husband did tap his wife: the first when she was reluctant to go to a christening; the second when she cried at a wedding; and the third when she laughed during a funeral. When she received the last blow or tap she cried to the husband: “The last blow has been struck, our marriage contract is broken, and at an end. Farewell!” She then left, taking her cattle with her. (It might seem strange having cattle in a lake, but the cattle might be a breed used to living in wetlands where there were lakes.)

The husband it seems was completely bewildered by this and claimed that they were hardly blows but just taps and did not think they were without cause. This story gives us an insight into the different status of women compared with the sea-people and land-people. It seems in those days; husbands hitting wives was ‘normal’ but certainly not tolerated in the sea people communities. This is probably why she made the proviso about being hit.

The story continued that one-day, when one of the sons, Rhiwallon, grew up, he was disconsolately wandering by the lake, mournful of the loss of his mother when she appeared out of the waters. She told him that she wanted him to be a benefactor, by healing people of their diseases. She gave him a bag containing herbs and instructions on how to use them.

Their meeting place is still known as Lmiady Madygon which means “The Physician’s Gate”. Her two other sons also met their mother at the lakeside and she gave them the same instructions, teaching them how to use many plants and herbs. Under her training, her three sons became celebrated physicians. She also instructed them so that their skill and knowledge was to be available to the very poor as well as the rich, and so they gave free treatment to people who would not normally be able to afford a physician. This also gives us another insight into the differences between the sea-people and ordinary people. In the past and even in places like the USA today, it was normal for doctors to refuse to treat people who could not afford their services. But the sea-people had different values, and never refused treatment for those unable to pay.

The caring nature of mermaids is also shown in the following report: In July 1881 The Richmond Dispatch reported a story of a woman in Cuba who, running for her life from attackers, jumped into the sea. She was rescued by mermaids, and then later on, they put on a ship headed for New Orleans. This story sounds really crazy if it was about sea-creatures, but if the mermaids were women divers, then being working women, they would be able to generously pay for the women’s passage to America.

Before the Caribbean was invaded by the Spanish, the original people, the Neo-Taino, called mermaids Aycayia who were renowned for their beautiful singing voices. They worshipped a Goddess called Jagua who was also a mermaid. In West Africa, mermaids were called Mami Wata, and in Cameroon they were called Jengu.

Many mermaid stories are about a mermaid who marries a fisherman and has children, but still has a yearning to return to the sea. In some tales she does this and leaves both her husband and children behind. This resembles the plight of modern day women who try to juggle a job while looking after a husband and children. A woman working as a diver full time would not have the time or energy to look after a husband and children as well. In Korea the man looking after the home and children solves this problem, but because of pressure by the Church, this after awhile, may not have been allowed in European countries. These mermaid stories may be about the dilemma faced by women divers concerning society’s rules that women should look after the home and children as her primary responsibility. So perhaps many women divers in Europe in the 18^th and 19^th centuries had to choose between working as a diver or becoming a wife and mother.

Female wool spinners before the industrial revolution had the same problem. Spinning wool by hand was a highly skilled job and women on average were far better at it than men. This gave these women a well-paying job and the more highly skilled even became very wealthy. So it is of interest that the word spinster comes from the word spinner. This indicates that even hundreds of years ago many women preferred the independence of a well paying job like wool spinning, rather than becoming a wife. Another point is that in some fairy stories, the wicked witch has a spinning wheel and uses it to perform magic. So we find a connection in witchcraft to both spinners and divers.

What comes across in all these stories is a form of discrimination against women similar to that suffered by black people in the southern states of the USA after slavery was made illegal. Successful or educated blacks were attacked and murdered by the Ku-Klu-Klan. Likewise, witch hunters probably threatened successful women healers, herbalists, spinners and divers. The only reason wool spinners escaped persecution was that they were unable to replace these skilled women with men, until the industrial revolution. There is evidence that woman divers were persecuted in the same way female herbalists were. As there are many mermaid stories where these women divers find themselves in conflict with Christian priests.

In the infamous witch-hunts witch-finders discovered a method to determine if a women was a witch. They did this by binding her hands and feet and throwing her into a pond or river. If she floated she was a witch, but if she drowned, she was not! This cruel logic can only make sense if witches and mermaids were the same people. An experience women diver, even if she was tied up, could probably save herself from drowning in the water. This would be very unlikely for a woman who had never swam before. This suggests that witch-finders saw all women divers as witches.

Mermaids have been discredited from the days of early Christianity in Britain. In the Arthurian legends, a legacy from the ancient Celts, it is Arthur’s sister, Morgan le Fay is made the main villain. In the Christianised versions of the King Arthur stories, she steals Excalibur, the sword that makes Arthur invincible. She then tricks him into having an incestuous relationship with her. This results in their son Mordred, who in the end leads an army to overthrow Arthur’s kingdom and mortally wounds Arthur. She also tricks and overcomes Merlin and places him in bondage, so he can no longer help Arthur. (Though in some versions it is Nimue who defeats Merlin). In some stories she sows the seeds of discontentment between Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. She also tricks and tries to seduce Sir Gawaine in his battle with the Green Knight.

It is remarkable that in the ancient Breton language, Morgens are called sea-women, water spirits or mermaids, and along with Vivienne and Nimue, she is also one of the Ladies of the Lake. These three women are also associated with the ancient Triple Goddesses, of Mother, Maid and Crone. It was the ladies of the lake who gave Arthur the Excalibur sword in the first place and took Arthur away when he was mortally wounded. Fay also means fairy, so she is also called a sea-fairy. She was also called, “The Great Queen”. In Scotland, the treacherous whirlpool in the Inner Hebrides, commonly known as the Corryveckan, was once known as “Morrigan’s Cauldron”. Some healing wells are also sacred to her in Britain - known as Morgan’s wells.

In the ancient Celtic stories, Morgens were clearly held in high regard, and were probably the leaders and shamwomen of the community. Then when the patriarchal Christians took over, they set about discrediting Morgens because they saw them as rivals in their quest to gain power over the people. This is why Morgan le Fay becomes a villain in the Christian Arthurian stories.