Scéal: Mermaids are a feature of several tragic Irish folk tales and have been a source of inspiration for many writers and poets
Conventional European fairytales usually have 'happy ever after' endings, but this is not always the case with Irish fairy and folk tales. One curious legend that has stayed with me since I first discovered it many years ago while researching my ancestors is that of the Mermaid Stones. Just outside Enniscrone, Co. Sligo is a field containing six large stones and an outlier. It is on private land so when I visited recently, I could only gaze over the wall at them, mostly obscured by vegetation.
The well-known local folk tale is told in the Schools' Folklore Collection as follows: "The O'Dowd [chieftain] was walking on the shore and he saw a beautiful mermaid asleep on the rocks. She had long golden hair and a red cloak beside her. O'Dowd took the red cloak and hid it in a stack of turf at the castle. She woke up but as she had not her mermaid cloak she was a mermaid no longer but was a woman. After this O'Dowd married her and they had seven sons."
Another version of the folk tale has their youngest child discovering the cloak and describing its beauty to his mother, who demands to know where it is. When she discovers it, she has an irresistible urge to return to the sea, and as she does so she turns her children into the stones "with a wave of her red cloak" and is never seen again.
It may be the only megalithic monument in Ireland connected to a mermaid
It is an odd, cruel tale that follows the convention for tragedy in Irish folk stories. Other better known examples, such as Oisín in Tir na nÓg, and the Children of Lir, end with the protagonists returning to their human form having have been enchanted, and dying of old age soon after.
But the O’Dowd tale has a link to a local family, and to a specific site, and contains a mermaid, a mythical creature common in European tradition. In European and Irish folklore, mermaids are female sea dwelling creatures with a human-like upper body and the tail of a fish. Known for combing their hair and singing sweetly, they are often thought of as a harbinger of dangerous occurrences such as storms, shipwrecks, or drownings.
In many stories they fall in love with humans. The Little Mermaid, the most famous mermaid tale, was written by Hans Christian Andersen in 1837 and has inspired countless adaptations ever since. His mermaid like all others is known for her beauty: ‘her skin was as clear and delicate as a rose leaf, and her eyes as blue as the deepest sea’. The story tells of a mermaid in love with a human prince willing to give up her mermaid form forever to become human. Unlike the Disney version, the original story featured the little mermaid’s tragic death and resurrection.
Known for combing their hair and singing sweetly, mermaids are often thought of as a harbinger of dangerous occurrences such as storms, shipwrecks, or drownings.
This mermaid becoming human, and falling in love with a human, is a recurring theme in the countless adaptations of the story ever since. In our culture, did mermaids derive from a longing for female company by sailors on long voyages? Or did they perhaps mistake shapes in the distance, such as seals, for human appearance?
Seals are another creature, albeit real, thought in Irish folklore to change to human form by removing or putting on their skin. Known as "selkies" in Scotland, they feature in folklore around the coasts of both countries. In Ireland some specific family names for example Conneelys (Ó Conghaile) are linked with them.
Mermaids in wider Irish folklore are also known as merrow maidens and can change to human form but require a magical cloak or cap to do so. There are tales of intermarriage between mermaids and humans which produced children with webbed hands and feet. Some old stories cast them as murderous and vengeful towards humans. St Brendan is said to have encountered a mermaid on his travels, and later there is the very curious tale of St Muirgen who is said to have started her life as a mermaid called Liban.
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill reads An Mhurúch san Ospidéal
According to the Annals of the Four Masters, Liban was caught in fishing nets on the River Larne, by monks in 558 AD. Years before, her home was flooded and her family wiped out, but she survived in a chamber under Lough Neagh. After a year, she magically became half-salmon so she could join other fish for company. Thus, she lived in the seas and in Lough Neagh for 300 years. When caught in fishing nets by monks, she forfeited her mermaid life in exchange for a Christian soul and baptism. She was baptised Muirgen (meaning 'born of the sea'), instantly died and became a saint.
In Irish literature, mermaids have inspired poets from William Butler Yeats to Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. The poem Maighdean Mara by Seamus Heaney takes a particularly cruel slant on an already tragic tale. No doubt inspired by the same Irish folktales of men forcing marriage on a mermaid by hiding her transformative garment,
He stole her garments as
She combed her hair: follow
Was all that she could do.
He hid it in the eaves
And charmed her there, four walls,
Warm floor, man-love nightly
In earshot of the waves
Heaney has the mermaid follow anyone with the garment, and she sleeps with the thatcher who discovers it hidden in the roof (‘follow / Was all that she could do.’) To escape the village scandal that erupts at this, she drowns herself in the sea. Heaney was likely inspired by the many variations of the Sligo story told earlier, with different family names and male protagonists, and different locations, which are known along the western coastal areas of Ireland and Scotland.
In the O’Dowd tale, the story is connected to an actual archaeological site, and it may be the only megalithic monument in Ireland connected to a mermaid. It features a bittersweet sting in the tale; the version I heard when growing up was that the stones weep in sadness when an O'Dowd dies, wherever they may be. This adds even more poignancy to a sad tale, implying that in the stones lurk trapped innocent spirits, eternally grieving their human family.
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