In my journey to understand why my childhood desire to transform into a mermaid failed so many years ago, I’ve come to familiarize myself with the scope of mermaids. Mermaid is a compound word coming from mere, meaning sea, and maid, derived from maiden, meaning unmarried women and virgins. Mermaid means sea maiden. Maiden of the sea. Mermaid has older derivatives in the English word Mermin, coming from męremęnen. Female slave of the sea. Half-fish, half-girl.
Other words include ceasg, renyu, rusalka, ningyo, njuzu, aycayia. From cultures around the globe, all referring to a person of the water. Any culture with any connection to the sea has its own mermaid legend. Greco-Roman myth greatly influences our interpretation of mermaids through their own monster—the siren. Originally half-bird, half-woman, sirens entrance sailors, luring them to a watery death. It is only after the influence of Christians that sirens begin appearing more fishlike in art. Sirens color the malicious nature of mermaids throughout Europe. Havfrue of Scandinavia, a powerful mermaid, is said to generate storms, drown evil sailors, and abduct land maidans.. Rusalka, of Slavic origin, are said to be the souls of young women who have died violent deaths at sea. Their souls are given beautiful immortal forms as long, graceful beings that sport beautiful tails, long shining hair and delicate skin. At dark, they sing and dance together, luring young men out to sea.
Mermaids are often the objects of affections of human men when mermaids aren’t drowning them. In Chinese folklore, the renyu 人鱼 are sea-people beautiful for their human-like faces, flowing long hair and human-like sexual reproductive organs. Men often kept them in their personal ponds, relieving stress whenever necessary. Stories of mermaids who are saved by a human man from a terrible fate go on to help the men navigate the seas safely. The Brazilian Iara and the African diaspora’s Mami Water are creatures of sin that lure men to their deaths using their feminine forms. Sometimes, mermaids are just creatures. Able to be harmed, able to be captured.
Mermaids and their world revolve very heavily around the existence of man. Whether they kill man or love man; whether they are defiled by man or born from man. The sea itself is at the mercy of man. Most of the ocean is still unexplored, unmapped. Even without understanding the scope of Mother Earth’s oceans, every inch of the ocean has been touched by man. This is what I find so frustrating about mermaid life despite my love and hopeless yearning for it. One may seek the life of a mermaid, but one would be under constant scrutiny of man. One would have countless worries about man taking their lives. One is reminded of man every time they sweep the ocean floor. Man’s tragic creations, man’s trash, man’s machinery. At times, the sea can feel like a prison with the land surrounding it, boxing the sea in. Living in the north part of a state that only has ocean down south, the sea is something I must bring to consciousness. Fish don’t leave their mark on land hundreds of miles from the nearest body of salt water unless you dig deep in your backyard. Remember this fun fact: “You’re more likely to die from a vending machine than a shark.”
Han Christen Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” showcases a mermaid society seemingly free from the influences of man at sea, as mermaid society, perfectly intact and thriving, exists in a place man and his creations can’t touch. The unprepared man will die at sea. However, it is the Little Mermaid herself, a royal princess with 5 sisters, who bridges the gap between humans and mermaids when she falls in love with a human prince. There is some instinctual mermaid desire to be perceived by a human whether it is through loving them or eating them. Humans and their fleeting lives have much control over the psychological state of a mermaid girl, which is something I never understood as a human myself. The Little Mermaid, hopelessly desiring the prince, yearns for a human soul of her own. The human soul is immortal, unlike the soulless body of a mermaid. Although she trades her tail for legs, and loses her voice in the process, perhaps being a mermaid is a sacrifice. Maybe being a mermaid means to perpetually desire more for your body, aching and yearning for the eternal despite already existing in perfection. To be mermaid is to desire. And I desired in my own way.
Man has a habit of bringing marine life to the land by filling up conveniently placed lowland. Of course, problems will arise with that, but human government will always choose to devastate the lives of the bottom 10%—that is the sacrifice they are so willing to make. As a girl, I was closest to realizing my mermaid powers at one of these manmade marine hotspots. I lived part of my life on a boat on lake water. To me, nothing existed that was more beautiful than that lake. My lake. I swam at areas with clear signs that said, “NO SWIMMING.” I begged my parents to allow me to experience the water without a life vest. Mermaids don’t need life vests. I don’t need the mermaids of the lake to think I’m uncool. I bought goggles with my savings and stared down into the water. The dark green hues streaked with rays of light disappearing into the depths. This always scared me slightly, as seeing my brown feet dangling helplessly over the green abyss did fill me with that human sense of dread. I, however, had the mermaidish ability to think twice. I fished too, usually off the dock where groups of blue gills piled up. Not to exert my human-like sense of dominance over the ecosystem, but as a way of paying tribute to aquatic life. I treated those bluegills I caught with care. I carefully smoothed over their sharp fins, getting a grasp on their cold, slippery bodies. I gently removed them from the hooks, said my hellos and took care to throw them back into the water with minimal splashing. It was important for me to make a good impression for the fish. I was the human that hooked them, but I was different. I was the human that would join them soon.
As a young girl, I had no idea that my lake was only formed a mere few decades ago, and that it wasn’t formed to be a part of God’s Earth. I didn’t know the circumstances of its creation, or the hundreds of deaths and disappearances linked to the lake after its creation. It was later in my teenage life that I saw a scuba diver’s footage of the lake. The green I once thought was forest-like, mysterious, reminded me of nuclear waste when looked at from the bottom of the lake. Building rubble littered the floor, along with petrified stumps, logs, and road signs. I once thought the bottom floor would have green plants jutting out from the sand, big and long enough for me to hide in, with enough of them to visibly sway with the moving water. I thought there would be more fish life, like schools of fish that gather at coral reefs. But this isn’t the ocean. This is Lake Lanier, and there is only sand, rubble, and dead trees. In the last 60 years of its existence, Lake Lanier’s death count is over 700. Maybe, the times I have swam and gazed through my goggles at the endless green below me, I didn’t see the hands reaching up to drag me to the bottom. If I was close to disappearing at any point, I couldn’t tell. Rusalka could exist there, born from the agony of the lake, and by proxy, the lake’s creators. Lake Lanier mermaids. The thought that excited me as a child.