Karl Banse: The Man Who Made the Case for Mermaids May 1, 2024
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Just a quick post as we move towards the summer. The podcast goes on with me and Chris recently talking about fairy artifacts, the Philip experiment (‘how to invent a ghost’) and this month ‘spectral evidence: the supernatural in court’. I, meanwhile, am diving into mermaid-lore, a love that started many years ago on this blog. How i used to enjoy mermaid Monday.
In my explorations I ran across this superb, superb academic article that deserves to be better known. In 1990 the prestigious marine biologist, Karl Banse published a piece ‘Mermaids – their biology, culture and demise’ in that esteemed periodical Limnology and Oceanography. I have a back run in one of my French chateaus, I think.
The article makes the case that… Well, let’s break it down.
There were three species of sea-mammals that correspond to the mythical mermaid: Siren sirena – Mediterranean-Lusitanian distribution; Siren indica – restricted to the Atlantic side of the Americas; Siren erythraea – the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the Indonesian archipelago.
There were sightings further to the north, particularly in the Atlantic and these were mermaids moving icewards to look for Arctic shells to use as currency in their warmer homes.
The reason that we have not found a real mermaid is that they were wiped out by a plague of jellyfish in the early modern period.
The bibliography is the most extraordinary mix of sobre marine biology and mermaid ficts including The Little Mermaid, naturally in the original Danish. I also liked this sentence: ‘In considering the culture of mermaids two facts of life in the marine realm the lack of fire (hence no pottery or metallurgy) and the absence of fibers suitable for baskertry, clothing, or ropes must be considered…’
Banse was having some fun – an extended version of the paper had been read at a symposium celebrating his sixtieth birthday. I would have loved to have heard the stunned silence. But as a wimpy humanities scholar I confess to wondering, on my first read through, whether KB had simply gone off the deep end and no one had had the courage to tell him so.
As far as real mermaids are concerned I’ve been gathering together all the sightings I can find for the home islands (Britain, Ireland). I have moments where I wonder if there is not something there. I’ve been particularly impressed at the arguments that manatee ended up on the wrong side of the Atlantic from time to time. If anyone knows a marine biologist who is up for some fun, I’d love to share the best eye-witness accounts. drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com
The Wood Diva February 5, 2024
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
***I’ve been absent for a couple of months because I was locked out of the account! Just to let you know that Chris and I continue to do our podcasts and there has been an episode on medieval x-files and now bird spirits. This is a fragment of an article on Fairy Census 2 I’ve […]
The Dancing Fairies of Sennen Cove: December 12, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
This month Chris and I have been enjoying, on the Boggart and Banshee podcast, a fascinating fairy encounter at Sennen Cove, a hamlet, in Cornwall. In 1888 two young women go out to the well at midnight, up on the hill behind their house. I’ve put on this Victorian OS map a red line for […]
The Modern Western Ghost and Its Zombie Origins November 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval, Modern
This month’s Boggart and Banshee podcast is on ghosts and shrouds (Shrouded in Mystery: The Origins of the Iconic Sheeted Ghost). As often with Chris’s choices I didn’t at first get the point: I can only get so excited about textiles… But my attention picked up as I realised (ever the slow learner) that the […]
Horse Spirits: Colt-Pixy or Pixy-Colt? October 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
The latest episode of Boggart and Banshee is on horse spirits and Chris and I disagree on, well, just about everything… There is also a fun accompanying book with seventeen different tales of horse spirits (UK, US). However, you can listen to the podcast for that. I’ve, instead, been caught up with one very simple […]
The When of Levitation in the West September 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Fun and games on the latest Boggart and Banshee podcast with almost an hour given over to questions of levitation and teleportation. As always when I talk to Chris there were revelations, things I’d not realised before. The point that really blew me away was the chronology of levitation. I had assumed that people had […]
The Fairy Census: End Game August 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite
In 2014 (inspired by Marjorie Johnson’s Seeing Fairies, which I had just edited) I started the Fairy Census. The aim was to gather together first-hand encounters with fairies; or unusual supernatural experiences that could be understood in fairy terms. It took me to 2017 to get to 500 encounters, which were then published freely online. […]
Immortals and Itinerants July 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
This month’s Boggart and Banshee Podcast concerns the immortals in our midst: the men and (in some rare cases) the women who are supposed to live for ever. I’ve long been interested in the most famous of these, the Wandering Jew: the individual cursed by Christ who traipsed from place-to-place imparting wisdom or (in some […]
Devil at the Wedding (Ritual) June 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Chris twisted my arm this month to do a podcast on wedding superstitions. I was rather pessimistic about how interesting this would be (dresses, jilting…), but after a couple of weeks of reading I’d changed my mind. As one folklorist explained things to me ‘it’s all about sex and death’. Here just to give you […]
The Voodoo Soldiers of Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh May 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
In 1836 some children discovered a hidden niche on the edge of Arthur’s Seat. In this niche were three shelves, two with eight and one with one miniature coffin and body. Each ‘unit’ had four elements: a coffin, a coffin lid, a doll and clothes. These coffins are the subject of this month’s Boggart and […]
Zombies and Shapechangers in Medieval Yorkshire April 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
There are twelve medieval supernatural tales in Byland collection, which I’ve just published in a booklet for Pwca press (UK, US)* and which Chris and I discuss on this month’s podcast. And there are four important questions to ask about their author and how they came to be written: the ‘Where’, ‘Who’, ‘When’, and ‘Why’ […]
Pitchforks and Witchcraft in Nineteenth-Century Warwickshire March 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
In this month’s podcast we are looking at the last of the American witches. We also talked a good deal though about their British cousins and particularly witch killings. Here is an especially nasty nineteenth-century witch attack where an individual took it upon himself to do away with a neighbour because she had overlooked his […]
Early New Fairy Wing Reference February 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Regular readers will know that I have long had an interest in fairy wings. There have been several posts and even an article in 2019. I have tried to defend a position that fairies get wings i) in Britain; and ii) that this happens in the late eighteenth century. Certainly, when I did my research […]
Do You Feel Lucky, Historian? January 1, 2023
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
I had the great pleasure to start the year with a podcast episode on luck and lucky charms (with Chris Woodyard and her extraordinary free source book). We spoke about the psychology of luck, Italy as the dinosaur valley of fortuna, corpse magic (golly), the Great War and talismans, burying St Joseph to sell your […]
The Fairy Witch of Carrick-on-Suir: A Nineteenth-Century Fairy Resurrectionist December 1, 2022
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
James Hayes in court 2 Sept 1864 : ‘It is not so extraordinary… for persons to be raised from the dead’. Introduction Mary Doheny (1820s-1870s?), the subject of our latest podcast, was a nineteenth-century Irish ‘fairy woman’. She began her career as a herbalist. But Mary had too much talent and too much personality to […]
