Miracle Mermaids History

Should reports of mermaids be classified as folklore expressing aspects of the human condition or is the mythical element around their existence merely our attempt to explain the origin and existence of something very real? Many people theorize humans created mermaids to try to understand their existence as both an animal and something entirely different.

Mermaids have a mixed reputation. Some reported their unearthly beauty, others feared them as a sign of bad luck.
Many sailors believed mermaids were either prove they would never see land again or out to kill and loot them. Other stories describe Mermaids helping sailors, even healing people from illness.

Assyrians wrote about mermaids in records dating to around 1000 BCE. They believed the first mermaid was a goddess who took a human shepherd as a lover and eventually killed him. Feeling bad about murdering her boyfriend, she went to hide in a lake, but it could not encompass the power of her beauty and so turned half of her into a fish. Now if this doesn’t sound like a society trying to make sense out of mermaids in their midst through some origins folklore, what does?

The Greeks also believed in mermaids they called Derketo. Supposedly Alexander the Great’s sister was transformed to a Mermaid after her death, and she still lives in the seas in the Aegean. If you run into her, she will ask you is King Alexander alive? You better answer, he lives and reigns and conquers the world (but in ancient Greek, so, good luck with that).

Lucian of Samosata while in Syria (2nd century CE) recounted the Syrian temples he had visited in  De Dea Syria (Concerning the Syrian Goddess)

Among them – Now that is the traditional story among them concerning the temple. But other men swear that Semiramis of Babylonia, whose deeds are many in Asia, also founded this site, and not for Hera Atargatis but for her own Mother, whose name was Derketo

I saw the likeness of Derketo in Phoenicia, a strange marvel. It is woman for half its length, but the other half, from thighs to feet, stretched out in a fish’s tail. But the image in the Holy City is entirely a woman, and the grounds for their account are not very clear. They consider fish to be sacred, and they never eat them; and though they eat all other fowls, they do not eat the dove, for she is holy so they believe. And these things are done, they believe, because of Derketo and Semiramis, the first because Derketo has the shape of a fish, and the other because ultimately Semiramis turned into a dove. Well, I may grant that the temple was a work of Semiramis perhaps; but that it belongs to Derketo I do not believe in any way. For among the Egyptians, some people do not eat fish, and that is not done to honor Derketo.

In China, mermaids are believed to be childish water nymphs with colored tails, which smelled of either happiness or sadness. Chinese people would try to find a mermaid to smell their tails. Apparently, if the mermaid had a purple tail their tale smelled of happiness, if they had a red tail it smelled of sorrow. I’m pretty sure dog tails smell of happiness, the whole smelling each other’s poop thing has got to be a cover.

Slavic stories tell of the rusalka, a mermaid demon who lives in waterways.  Usually the rusalka is A woman who has died a violent death, often from suicide or murder.  During Rusalka days in June, they come out of the water climb into trees and try to lure men to their deaths with their enticing singing. I would very much like to see this.