Blessed Virgin help me,” shouted she, “if he has not made a
Coomara’s Calling
181
real beast of himself! Well, well, I’ve often heard of a man
making a beast of himself with drink! Oh hone, oh hone!—
Jack, honey, what will I do with you, or what will I do with
-
out you? How can any decent woman ever think of living
with a beast?”
With such like lamentations Biddy rushed out of the
house, and was going she knew not where, when she heard
the well-known voice of Jack singing a merry tune. Glad
enough was Biddy to find him safe and sound, and not
turned into a thing that was like neither fish nor flesh. Jack
was obliged to tell her all, and Biddy, though she had half a
mind to be angry with him for not telling her before, owned
that he had done a great service to the poor souls. Back they
both went most lovingly to the house, and Jack wakened up
Coomara; and, perceiving the old fellow to be rather dull, he
bid him not to be cast down, for ’twas many a good man’s
case; said it all came of his not being used to the
poteen
, and
recommended him, by way of cure, to swallow a hair of the
dog that bit him. Coo, however, seemed to think he had had
quite enough. He got up, quite out of sorts, and without
Among the Mermaids
182
having the manners to say one word in the way of civility, he
sneaked off to cool himself by a jaunt through the salt water.
Coomara never missed the souls. He and Jack contin-
ued the best friends in the world, and no one, perhaps, ever
equalled Jack for freeing souls from purgatory; for he con-
trived fifty excuses for getting into the house below the sea,
unknown to the old fellow, and then turning up the pots and
letting out the souls. It vexed him, to be sure, that he could
never see them; but as he knew the thing to be impossible, he
was obliged to be satisfied.
Their intercourse continued for several years. However,
one morning, on Jack’s throwing in a stone as usual, he got no
answer. He flung another, and another, still there was no re-
ply. He went away, and returned the following morning, but
it was to no purpose. As he was without the hat, he could not
go down to see what had become of old Coo, but his belief
was, that the old man, or the old fish, or whatever he was, had
either died, or had removed from that part of the country.
Coomara’s Calling
183
A Mer a Day Keeps Tomorrow Away
♦ Mermen are often described in Irish folklore as ugly
and scaled with the face of a pig and pointed teeth.
Merrow, on the other hand, are more like the beau-
tiful sirens of many other tales, often taking mortal
men as their lovers.
♦ Many Irish families claim to be descended from the
merrow, including the O’Flaherty and O’Sullivan
families of Kerry and the MacNamaras of Clare.
♦ Irish myth has it that merrow have cloaks or hats
that allow them to live underwater. Often, mer-
row coupling with land-dwellers would have their
cloaks stolen or lost and live as mortal wives. But
upon finding their magical swimwear, the creatures
would be overwhelmed by an unbearable desire to
return to the sea and desert their families ashore.
The Merrow
by W.B. Yeats
The Merrow, or, if you write it in the Irish,
Moruadh
or
Murúghach
, from
muir
, sea, and
oigh
, a maid, is not uncom-
Among the Mermaids
184
mon, they say, on the wilder coasts. The fishermen do not
like to see them, for it always means coming gales. The
male
Merrows
(if you can use such a phrase—I have never
heard the masculine of Merrow) have green teeth, green hair,
pig’s eyes, and red noses; but their women are beautiful, for
all their fish tails and the little duck-like scale between their
fingers. Sometimes they prefer, small blame to them, good-
looking fishermen to their sea lovers.
Near Bantry, in the last century, there is said to have
been a woman covered all over with scales like a fish, who
was descended from such a marriage. Sometimes they come
out of the sea, and wander about the shore in the shape of
little hornless cows. They have, when in their own shape, a
red cap, called
acohullen druith
, usually covered with feathers.
If this is stolen, they cannot again go down under the waves.
In his book
A Wizard’s Bestiary,
Oberon Zell-Raven-
hart reminds us that not all mer-folk are attractive:
“Tritons are Mermen of Greek lore, but not nearly
as attractive as some of their kin in other parts of the
world. Children of the Greek god of the sea, Poseidon
(Roman, Neptune), they have forked fishtails and a
mouth full of sharp teeth as well as green hair, gills,
and pointy ears.”
185
I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin’s back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid’s music.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Not a piece of fiction or folklore, the following is a very
intriguing description of a “newly built” aquarium circa
1873. Written by Juliana Horatia Ewing as a contribution
for a monthly children’s publication,
Aunt Judy’s Magazine
,
“Among the Merrow: A Sketch of a Great Aquarium” makes
reference to both William Butler Yeats’ writing (see the
CHAPTER
9
A
UNT
J
UDY’S
A
QUARIUM
Among the Mermaids
186
previous chapter’s entry called “The Merrow”) as well as T.
Crofton Croker’s “The Soul Cages
,
” both of which appear in
the previous chapter of this book. I think it makes a wonder-
ful addition to this collection.
Juliana Horatia Ewing was a children’s author who lived
a relatively brief life—she was born in 1841 and died in
1885. One of ten children, Juliana was homeschooled by her
mother (and her Reverend father) and it is no wonder that
Aunt Judy’s Aquarium
187
her works generally carry a “delightful and educational” ele-
ment to them. Juliana’s poor health (which brought on her
untimely death at the age of 44) meant that much of her
later years were spent near the sea where it was thought the
air would do her good. No doubt that was where her imagi-
nation worked best.
Among the Merrows: A Sketch of a
Great Aquarium
&
nbsp; by Juliana Horatia Ewing
“Among the Merrows” has not been republished since it came
out in
Aunt Judy’s Magazine
, November 1872. At that time
the Crystal Palace Aquarium was a novelty, and the Zoo-
logical Station at Naples not fully formed—but, though the
paper is behind the times in statistics, it is worth retaining
for other reasons.
—HORATIA K. F. EDEN
OCTOBER 1895
I remember the time when I, and a brother who was with
me, devoutly believed in a being whom we supposed to live
among certain black, water-rotted, weed-grown stakes by
the sea. These old wooden ruins were, I fancy, the remains
Among the Mermaids
188
of some rude pier, and amid them, when the tide was low, we
used to play, and to pay fancy visits to our fancy friend.
We called her Shriny—why, I know no more than when
I first read Croker’s delightful story of “The Soul Cages” I
knew why the Merrow whom Jack went to see below the
waves was called Coomara.
My remembrance of even what we fancied about Shriny
is very dim now; and as my brother was only four years old
(I was eight), his is not more distinct. I know we thought of
her, and talked of her, and were always eager
to visit her supposed abode, and
wander together amongst its rot-
ten pillars (which, as we were so
small, seemed lofty enough in our eyes),
where the mussels and limpets held tightly on,
and the slimy, olive-green fucus hung loosely down—a sea-
ivy covering ruins made by the waves.
I have never been to the place since those days. If Shriny’s
palace is there now at all, I dare say I should find the stakes
to be stumps, and all the vastness and mystery about them
gone for ever. And yet we used to pretend to feast with her
there. We served up the seed-vessels of the fucus as fish. I
do not think we really ate them, we only sucked out the salt
water, and tried to fancy we were enjoying the repast. Once
Aunt Judy’s Aquarium
189
we
began
to eat a limpet!—beyond that point my memory
is dumb.
I wonder how we should have felt if Shriny had really
appeared to us, as Coomara appeared to Jack Dogherty, and
taken us down below the waves, or kept us among the stakes
of her palace till the tide flooded them, and perhaps filled it
with wonderful creatures and beautiful things, and floated
out the dank, dripping fucus into a veil of lace above our
heads; as our mother used to float out little dirty lumps of
seaweed into beautiful web-like pictures when she was pre-
serving them for her collection.
Shriny never did come, though Mr. Croker says Coo-
mara came to Jack.
Perhaps, young readers, some of you have never read the
story of the Soul Cages. It is a long one, and I am not going
Among the Mermaids
190
to repeat it here, only to say a word or two about it, for which
I have a reason.
Jack Dogherty—so the story goes—had always longed
to see a Merrow. Merrow is the Irish name for seafolk; in-
deed, it properly means a mermaid. And Jack, you know,
lived in a fairy tale, and not in lodgings at a watering-place
on the south coast; so he saw his Merrow, though we never
saw Shriny.
I do not think any of the after-history of the Merrow is
equal to Mr. Croker’s account of his first appearance to Jack:
afterwards “Old Coo” becomes more like a tipsy old fisher-
man than the man-fish that he was.
The first appearance was on the coast to the northward,
when “just as Jack was turning a point, he saw something,
like to nothing he had ever seen before, perched upon a rock
at a little distance out to sea; it looked green in the body, as
Aunt Judy’s Aquarium
191
well as he could discern at that distance, and he would have
sworn, only the thing was impossible, that it had a cocked-
hat in its hand. Jack stood for a good half-hour, straining his
eyes and wondering at it, and all the time the thing did not
stir hand or foot. At last Jack’s patience was quite worn out,
and he gave a loud whistle and a hail, when the Merrow (for
such it was) started up, put the cocked-hat on its head, and
dived down, head foremost, from the rocks.”
For a long time Jack could get no nearer view of “the sea-
gentleman with the cocked-hat,” but at last, one stormy day,
when he had taken refuge in one of the caves along the coast,
“he saw, sitting before him, a thing with green hair, long green
teeth, a red nose, and pig’s eyes. It had a fish’s tail, legs with
scales on them, and short arms like fins. It wore no clothes,
but had the cocked-hat under its arm, and seemed engaged
thinking very seriously about something.”
As I copy these words—
It wore no clothes, but had the
cocked-hat under its arm, and seemed engaged thinking very
seriously about something
—it seems to me that the portrait
is strangely like something that I have seen. And the more
I think of it, the more I am convinced that the type is fa-
miliar to me, and that, though I do not live in a fairy story,
I have been among the Merrows. And further still that any
one who pleases may go and see Coomara’s cousins any day.
Among the Mermaids
192
There can be no doubt of it! I have seen a Merrow—sev-
eral Merrows. That unclothed, over-harnessed form is before
me now; sitting motionless on a rock, “engaged thinking very
seriously,” till in some sudden impulse it rises, turns up its
red nose, makes some sharp angular movements with head
and elbows, and plunges down, with about as much grace as
if some stif, red-nosed old admiral, dressed in nothing but
cocked-hat, spectacles, telescope, and a sword between his
legs, were to take a header from the quarter-deck into the sea.
I do not want to make a mystery about nothing. I should
have resented it thoroughly myself when I was young. I
make no pretence to have had any glimpses of fairyland. I
could not see Shriny when I was eight years old, and I never
shall now. Besides, no one sees fairies now-a-days. The “path
to bonnie Elfland” has long been overgrown, and few and far
between are the Princes who press through and wake the
Beauties that sleep beyond. For compensation, the paths to
Mother Nature’s Wonderland are made broader, easier, and
more attractive to the feet of all men, day by day. And it is
Mother Nature’s Merrows that I have seen—in the Crystal
Palace Aquarium.
How Mr. Croker drew that picture of Coomara the
Merrow, when he probably never saw a sea crayfish, a lobster,
or even a prawn at home, I cannot account for, except by
the divining and prophetic instincts of genius. And when I
Aun
t Judy’s Aquarium
193
speak of his seeing a crayfish, a lobster, or a prawn at home,
I mean at their home, and not at Mr. Croker’s. Two very dif-
ferent things for our friends the “sea-gentlemen,” as to colour
as well as in other ways. In his own home, for instance, a lob-
ster is of various beautiful shades of blue and purple. In Mr.
Croker’s home he would be bright scarlet—from boiling! So
would the prawn, and as solid as you please; who in his own
home is colourless and transparent as any ghost.
Strangely beautiful those prawns are when
you see them at home. And that one seems to do in
the Great Aquarium; though, I suppose, it is much
like seeing land beasts and birds in
the Zoological Gardens—a
poor imitation of their
free life in their natural
condition. Still, there is
no other way in which
you can see and come to know
these wonderful “sea gentlemen” so well, unless you
could go, like Jack Dogherty, to visit them at the
bottom of the sea. And whilst I heartily recom-
mend every one who has not seen the Aquarium
to visit it as soon as possible, let me describe it for
the benefit of those who cannot do so at present. It
may also be of some little use to them hereafter to
Among the Mermaids
194
know what is most worth seeing there, and where to look
for it.
No sooner have you paid your sixpence at the turnstile
which admits you, than your eye is caught by what seems to
be a large window in the wall, near the man who has taken
your money. You look through the glass, and find yourself
looking into a deep sea-pool, with low stone-grey rocks
studded with sea-anemones in full bloom. There are twen-
ty-one different species of sea-anemones in the Aquarium;
but those to be seen in this particular pool are chosen from
about seven of the largest kinds. The very biggest, a
Tealia
crassicornis
, measures ten inches across when he spreads his
pearly fingers to their full extent. “In my young days” we
called him by the familiar name of Crassy; and found him so
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