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

Hello again!

Today I`m continuing my extracts from The Deep Deep Ocean concerning knowledge of animals thought to be related to the mermaid. Unless you are a believer in the mermaid, this gives a view of the distribution of seals and dugongs (?) or other similar animals around the British Isles several hundred years ago.

'Two years later [than 1556, see Part One of this blog] there is another printed notice of “a moste true and marvellous strange wonder, the lyke hathe seldom been seene, of xvii monstrous fishes, taken in Suffulke, at Downham Brydge, within a myle of Ipswiche, the xi daye of October,in the yeare of our Lorde God 1568 [I love this olde worlde language! Anyone for a Facebook Group? Let uss revivee olde worlde English?] Stow, in his “Annales,” gives a particular description of this “wondrous draught of fishes” some of them being “eight and twentie foote in length at least”.'

Woolfe, in 1586, printed a broadside containing an account of a monster fish found in the stomach of a horse! The registers of the Stationers` Company contain an entry in 1604 of 'a strange reporte of a monstrous fish that appeared in the form of a woman from the waist upwards, seene in the sea.'

Even in 1822 a so-called mermaid was publicly exhibited in London, and continued to be shown to the curious in these matters for many months. But the monster was found to have been constructed of the members of various animals, dexterously put together. Some amusing lines appeared at the period, which I will transcribe:

There then appear 5 verses, I will mention the first and last below:

'Come, mistress mermaid, tell us, for you`ve seen
The deeps and things proud Science pines to see;
Be kind, and say if you have ever been
In worlds the poets deck with imagery.
Say, as you floated on the green sea`s billow,
Didst e`er see Neptune`s car, or Amphitrite`s pillow?...

'Farewell, dumb thing! perhaps the next we find
So long a time may not require to woo,
`T will speak, perchance, and haply prove most kind,
And tell us all we`ve useless sought of you-
Rare information yielding on the morning
She`s clapped within the glass case you`re adorning.' (1)

1. W.Jones The Broad Broad Ocean p.266-267

Talking Heads Air

Air…Air
Hit me in the face
I run faster,
Faster into the air
(I say to myself)
What is happening to my skin?
Where is that protection that I needed?
Air can hurt you too
Air can hurt you too
Some people say not to worry about the air
Some people never had experience with….