MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: SOME NOTES ON THE MERMAID PART ONE

These notes are taken from an old book The Broad Broad Ocean by someone I only know as `W. Jones` and they concern even older notes (from 1566 onwards) concerning the mermaid as being in reality the Dugong or a related animal:

But first I will mention the Stellerus (Stellers Sea Cow?):

“Only one species of the Stellerus – of the same genus as the two I have mentioned – has been known, about twenty-five feet in length, a native of the Polar seas, and never observed since the middle of the last (i.e 18th) century,so that it is supposed to be extinct. The characteristic features of this animal would lead one to suppose,also,that it may have contributed to the misconceptions about the mermaid.

Mr Rimbault, in “Notes and Queries”,remarks that the exhibition of strange fishes appears to have been at its height in the reign of Elizabeth. Shakespeare twice alludes to it: once in the “Winter`s Tale” ( Act IV .,Scene 3) ,where Autolycus says: “Here`s another ballad of a fish that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday, the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathoms above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts of maids. It was thought she was a woman, and was turned into a cold fish, for she would no exchange flesh with one that loved her. The ballad is very pitiful and true.” And again in “the Tempest” (Act II Scene 2) A printed notice, dated 1566, has for its title “The Description of a Rare or rather Most Monstrous Fishe, taken on the East Coast of Holland, the 17th November, Anno 1566, with a woodcut of the fish, and underneath the following lines:

“The workes of God,how great and strange they be!
A picture plaine,behold, heare you may see.” (1)

To be continued….


1. W. Jones The Broad, Broad Ocean (date?) pp 265-266

Bob Dylan Idiot Wind

Someone`s got it in for me,they`re planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they`d cut it out quick but when they will I can only guess
They said I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me
I can`t help it if I`m lucky…