jump to navigation
  • Mermaid Monday: Mermaid Baby Found December 11, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Mermaid Monday: Mermaid Baby Found

    We are in Orkney 1898. The people of Staxigoe, a village about two miles from Wick, were much excited on Saturday when they discovered that a mermaid had been washed ashore. The head was wanting, but what remained left no doubt in the good folks’ minds that a genuine mermaid lay stretched before them. Body […]

    Mermaid Monday: A Mad Mermaid? December 4, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Mermaid Monday: A Mad Mermaid?

    Nice mermaid story from 1886 (anon). A young man comes across a mermaid in Aberdeen harbour. Interestingly the experience ended in a police court. The latest ‘mermaid’ story is a local one. It evolved itself in the Aberdeen Police Court on Monday this wise: About seven o’clock Sunday a young son of the sea who […]

    Mermaid Monday: Stoning Mermaids November 27, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Mermaid Monday: Stoning Mermaids

    This brief account was published in the press in 1827 (Anon). Within these last two or three days there have been several mermaids seen on the rocks at Trenance, in the parish of Mawgan. I will state the particulars at length, as I have been enabled to collect them, and which are from undoubted authority, […]

    Mermaid Monday: Eating Mermaids November 20, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Mermaid Monday: Eating Mermaids

    This interesting account appeared in the British press in 1827 (Anon). It describes excitement about mermaid bones, in Portsmouth and an unusual dinner. ‘Mombuss’ is Mombassa, which we have seen before connected to mermaids. Beach seems to hear Lieutenant Emory, two hundred years ago, leaning across the table and saying ‘capital meat, Captain!’ The skeleton of […]

    Mermaid Monday: Nude Scottish Mermaids November 13, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Mermaid Monday: Nude Scottish Mermaids

    Here is a Scottish account from 1833 (Anon) of what were apparently river mermaids. What is most interesting here is certainly the reaction of the community, though the resolution of the mystery has some entertainment value. Some time back, the inhabitants of some hamlets, situated near the Tay, a little below Dunkeld, had been kept in […]

    Mermaid Monday: St Valery-sur-Somme Mermaid November 6, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Mermaid Monday: St Valery-sur-Somme Mermaid

    In 1834 a British paper ran with this story (1834) in early August: A fisherman at St Valery-sur-Somme (France), a few days since, caught in his net a fish exactly resembling the description given of the Mermaid. The head and breast are of the human form, and, when half the body is out of the […]

    Mermaid Monday: Early Welsh Mermaid October 23, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
    Mermaid Monday: Early Welsh Mermaid

    Mermaid images from medieval Britain and not particularly common. There are quite a few medieval carvings, some explored in an interesting  2013 book Of Sirens and Centaurs by Alex Woodcock. But actual drawings or paintings are rare. This is why this fabulous doodle in a fourteenth-century Welsh manuscript is so exciting. The manuscript in question […]

    Monday Mermaid: Singing Florida Mermaids October 16, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Monday Mermaid: Singing Florida Mermaids

    This was published in The Orchestra in 1870. It is a curious account of singing fish in the US… It is very tempting to connect these phenomenon and others like them to the mermaid tradition: in the same way as that the rhino is presumably somewhere behind the unicorn. ‘One day as I was returning […]

    Mermaid Monday: Mermaid in Berlin October 9, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Mermaid Monday: Mermaid in Berlin

    Bit of a melancholy mermaid story this week that has, sorry, little to do with mermaids and nothing to do with the sea. The following story has been published at Berlin under quasi-official sanction [those Prussians!]: ‘On the 15th, the wife of a painter in Old Schonhaus Street, brought into the world a most wonderful […]

    Mermaid Monday: Mermaids Off Islay October 2, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Mermaid Monday: Mermaids Off Islay

    Here is a mermaid story from the Scottish islands 1857 (Anon 1857). The declaration of two fishermen on the Argyleshire coast appears in the Shipping Gazette. They say: ‘We the undersigned, do declare that on Thursday last, the 4th June 1857, when on our way to the fishing station, Lochindaal, in a boat, and when […]

    Mermaid Monday: Ulster Mermaid 1814 September 25, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Mermaid Monday: Ulster Mermaid 1814

    It is Mermaid Monday and here is an Ulster mermaid from the early nineteenth century. Sir, l beg leave to inform you, for the benefit of the curious, that I am happy that have it in my power to set the public mind at rest, respecting the existence of this wonderful animal, having been so […]

    Mermaid Monday: Connomara Siren September 18, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Mermaid Monday: Connomara Siren

    Mermaid Monday continues with this gem from western Ireland Galway. The earliest record found so far dates to 22 Sep 1819, Saunder’s Newsletter, 2-3 with the title ‘Mermaid’. However, the originally allegedly (non vidi) appeared in the Galway Advertiser 19 Sep. Naturalists have hitherto doubted of the existence of mermaids and mermen; we have it […]

    Mermaid Monday: Creepy Mermaid Writes September 11, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    Mermaid Monday: Creepy Mermaid Writes

    It is the single most important mermaid sighting of them all, because it is the Babylonian creation myth (or part of the same). Our source is Berossus, a Chaldean historian, writing in the Greek tradition of history: a Herodotus wannabe, in the third century B.C. In one of the surviving fragments of his book (which […]

    Mermaid Monday: Mermaids at Mombasa September 4, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Mermaid Monday: Mermaids at Mombasa

    African mermaids from 1825. It is one of those bulletins from ‘foreign climes’ that provided British newspapers with so much of their copy in the 1700s and through much of the nineteenth century. Note how the mermaids are just slipped in, like the silly item at the end of the news. Aug. 1. The Espiegle, 18, […]

    Mermaid Monday: Red Hair Off Mull August 28, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Mermaid Monday: Red Hair Off Mull

    Mermaid Monday again and this week we have a marvel from Mull, a Scottish island in the Inner Hebrides. Note that the Ross of Mull is the neck of land stretching towards Iona and that Beach’s rudimentary Gaelic show two islands with the name Eilean Dubh, the Black Island: one at the centre of the […]