The Truth About Mermaids

Hi all and welcome to Spirit’s Blog. It’s Monster Monday, so I figured I would discuss Mermaids. The myth of mermaid started centuries ago, with a tale of the goddess Atargatis of Assyria. She accidentally kills her human lover and out of shame turns herself into a mermaid. There are legends inspired by the ancient Greek folklore of sirens. These sirens were believed to lure innocent sailors to their doom by singing to them.

Christopher Columbus on his travels through the Caribbean claimed to have found mermaids. There are tales from Mesopotamia with Babylonian art that depicts mermaids as being a sign of protection. There was an ancient Greek theory that humans descended from mermaids. There are tales that Alexander the Great’s sister was turned into a mermaid, residing in the Aegean Sea. When sailors came in contact with her she would ask “Is King Alexander alive?” To which the sailors had to respond with the affirmative or she would doom them and their ship, summoning a storm that killed them all.

The most famous account of mermaids is the tale by Hans Christian Andersen, “The Little Mermaid”. This tale was the basis for the Disney movie by the same name. The only differences are of course that Disney added a happy ending. In the original tale the mermaid is supposed to kill the prince to break her spell. She cannot so therefore throws the magic blade in the ocean and…