A sad day for mermaids...

A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown. 
(W B Yeats)

I've never met a mermaid. And sadly it looks like this isn't now going to happen - the US government has abolished them:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has clarified and confirmed that no evidence of existence of mermaids has ever been found.

"No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found. Why, then, do they occupy the collective unconscious of nearly all seafaring peoples? That's a question best left to historians, philosophers, and anthropologists," NOAA said in a statement denying the existence of half-female, half-fish creatures of the sea.

So why is it that, since the dawn of time, there have been stories and legends about mermaids? Is it the delusional sexual fantasies of sailors? Or is it a desire to populate empty places with beauty and intelligence?

Like all magic creatures, the mermaid serves a purpose. And that means it is sufficient for us to believe they exist for that purpose to be served. Mermaids are the good spirits of the sea - a glint of hope and pleasure in an otherwise entirely terrifying and foreign place.

But like all these creatures of magic, for all their beauty and intelligence, they are not to be trusted;

"Kisses", she said, "are as true at sea as they are false on land. You men kiss the earth-born maidens to betray them. The kiss of a sea-child is the seal of constancy. You are mine till death."

...

Myth...

We make a great deal of myth and myth-making. But only in condemnation, in the denial of myth.

Yet myth is more important than we think. It guides us more than we ever admit. And, it is that thing making us human, fallible and wrong:

I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.

We dismiss myth at our peril, for there is truth in it. A deeper truth about ourselves maybe, a truth of longing, of desperation for something finer, but still a truth. By all means stir the air with contending facts, argue away about percentages of this and ratios of that. I will join you knowing, as you know too, that beneath it all lie our culture’s myths – the myths of trade, the legends of business and the stories of England.

To lose all this in some fit of argued rationality would be to lose something grand. It would be to lose the myths that define us, that tell us who we are:

He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-pattened; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.

The sense of wonderment that Tolkein captures here is intended -absolutely - as a defence of myth-making. Its says that without myth, our exploration ceases, the "truth" is settled and man dies.

So let's hear it for myth...

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