Word Wenches

What did Regency Mermaids Get Up To?

C14 Book of Hours The comb and mirror are symbols of Venus

Joanna here, asking: What did Regency mermaids get up to?

You have doubtless spent a lot of time wondering about this.

They differed significantly from modern mermaids. Disney’s singing amphibians were not a gleam on the horizon. Even the source story of that movie – Hans  Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid, (Danish title Den Lille Havfrue) – wasn’t written till 1837 and not translated till 1845.

You ever notice how we don’t know the name of the mermaid in Andersen’s story? She’s like the heroine of Rebecca. This business of Fairy Tale protagonists having only a nickname or profession ... Is this Fraught With Significance?

So. What kinda mermaids were floating around n 1800?

–  You could pay your pence and go see an ugly, shriveled-up specimen on exhibition or

Does not look so much like yer traditional mermaid

spot one displayed as a curiosity in a coffee house or tavern. The tradition of fake mermaids dated to at least the Sixteenth Century.

And, frankly, the mermaids were probably just as convincing as the duckbilled platypus in the next case.

 

They had accounts of sightings from reliable sources.

 

A more ordinarty mermaid

 

Nor yet is the figure generally attributed to the nereids at all a fiction; only in them, the portion of the body that resembles the human figure is still rough all over with scales. For one of these creatures was seen upon the same shores, and as it died, its plaintive murmurs were heard even by the inhabitants at a distance.

The legatus of Gaul, too, wrote word to the late Emperor Augustus that a considerable number of nereids had been found dead upon the sea-shore.

     Pliny the Elder, The Natural History

and

On the previous day [8 Jan 1493], when the Admiral went to the Rio del Oro [on Haiti], he said he quite distinctly saw three mermaids, which rose well out of the sea; but they are not so beautiful as they are said to be, for their faces had some masculine traits. The Admiral says that he had seen some, at other times, on the coast of Guinea, where you find manequeta.
     Dominican Bartolomé de la Casas quoting Christopher Columbus’, Journal of the First Voyage

and

"All day and night cleere sunshine. The wind at east. The latitude at noone 75 degrees 7 minutes. We held westward by our account 13 leagues. In the afternoon, the sea was asswaged, and the wind being at east we set sayle, and stood south and by east, and south southeast as we could. This morning one of our companie looking over boord saw a mermaid, and calling up some of the companie to see her, one more came up and by that time shee was come close to the ships side, looking earnestly on the men. A little after a sea came and overturned her. From the navill upward her backe and breasts were like a womans, as they say that saw her, but her body as big as one of us. Her skin very white, and long haire hanging downe behinde of colour blacke. In her going downe they saw her tayle, which was like the tayle of a porposse, and speckled like a macrell. Their names that saw her were Thomas Hilles and Robert Rayner."
    Henry Hudson, Logbook, Second Voyage,  June 15, 1608

There continued to be a robust Regency sea folklore with sailors' eyewitness accounts. And rather more sailors repeating somebody else’s account

Here's a manatee.
You be the judge.

Many spoilsports suggested these were tall tales. Others posited drunken myopic sailors.And some folks offered manatees. Eighteenth Century Rationalists would have been perfectly happy with manatees, never having seen one.

Also, the stories of mermaids were of great antiquity which leant them an air of authority. I mean, who wants to argue with Pliny?

Deasura, about whom your average Regency buck knew nothing

The very oldest mermaids aren't so much relevant to the Regency. It’s unlikely your average Regency banker or barrister or baron knew much about Babylonian and Sumerian deities like Atargatis (aka Desura) the half fish/half human chief goddess of northern Syria, mother of Semiramis.

But with the loose change of all that Classical education in their pockets 1800 folks couldn’t help but trip over Greek and Roman mermaids, nereids, and other exciting marine mythical sorts. Lots of pastiche animals.

Sirens, making everybody unhappy

 

Odysseus’ encounter with the sirens probably had feathers involved. Homer doesn’t get down to taxonomic details, but the available images show sirens as birds.

By Medieval times sirens stopped being bird-ladies and became fish-ladies. When Geoffrey Chaucer translated Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, (1378-1381) he translated “sirenae” as “meremaydenes.”  

 

In keeping with the general weirdness of the Medieval, there are some images with BOTH wings and tail

There’s a story that goes with that.

In Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene book II (1590s), "mermayds . . . making false melodies" tempt the heroes. These mermaids, Spenser explained, were once "fair ladies" but arrogantly challenged the "Heliconian maides" (the Greek Muses) and were turned to fish below the waist as punishment. (This sort of ties in with Pausanias’ Description of Greece from around the 2nd century A. D., where the Sirens and Muses had a singing competition. The Sirens lost and the Muses plucked out their feathers to make into crowns.)
      Writing in the Margins, Fish or Fowl: How Did Sirens Become Mermaids?

 

 

 

Medieval mermaids differed from Disney’s Ariel in that they ate human flesh, sank ships, displayed sexually transgressive behavior, and lured men to their death.

Burne-Jones of whom I speak slightingly below

Medieval mermaids had fishy reputations.
(Okay. I didn’t say that.)

In short – they were not just pretty faces.
They were badass

...spekth of meermaides in the see,
How þat so inly mirie syngith shee
that the shipman therwith fallith asleepe,
And by hir aftir deuoured is he.
From al swich song is good men hem to keepe  
     Thomas Hoccleve, Male Regle, 1406 

We see lots of depictions of mermaids in Medieval bestiary, marginalia, and the odd Book of Hours. The combination of exotic sailor-killing sealife and nudity seems to have been irresistible.
They represented sexuality and tenptation. But respectable, y’know. It was natural history. Like painting zebras.

The split tailed mermaids -- in case you've every wondered -- showed up in the C7 onward. I find them a bit puzzling. Rude and earthy. Authentic, but odd. I suppose they made good sense in the cultural context.

Otano Cathedral 1088

Skipping nimbly past Shakespeare, who does not seem to have depicted mermaids as malevolent to any extent, we move into the Regency period.

Mermaids were trivialized.

The mermaids for supper provided such dishes
As suited the palates of Gods and of fishes ...  
     A. Taby, The Fishes’ Feast with A Mermaid’s Song. 1806

 

 Regency mermaid,  no longer boldly sexual

In 1800, our sophisticated Regency character stands at the cusp, as it were, in the matter of mermaids. Sailors' tales are not taken seriously. There's a whole world of exotic animals out there for the scientifically minded to theorize about. The educated are skeptical of mermaid reality, unconcerned with them as a danger to shipping, and no longer fascinated with this particular model of dangerous femininity, having doubtless found others.

Mermaids have dwindled to minor creatures of Classical myth, subject of naughty sea shanties, and not yet established in children’s tales.
Significanyly, the Regency had not yet embraced the Romantic mermaids of Burne-Jones.

An unsatisfactory time for mermaids, I suppose.
But at least they're not yet wearing scallop shells on their breasts.

So. What legends do you wish were real. Mermaids? Brownies? (House brownies is my own secret desire.)

Do you have a favored bit of folklore you’d really like to be true?

Treasure hunting!

Andrea here, Where I live in New England, the bright blaze of autumn colors are beginning to fade and give way to the more somber taupe and grey hues of Winter. The days are growing shorter too, the sunlight flickering out in late afternoon . . . which puts me in the mood for some bright, sparkly things.

And what can be more sparkly than a treasure trove of gold!

I’ve recently been looking at photos from my research travels (Oh, for the day when we can travels again!) and some pictures from my visit to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford caught me eye. Most of the shots I took related to Regency-era  research for my Wrexford and Sloane mystery series—lots of scientific instruments and early technology. But I also couldn’t resist stopping at the display of . . . buried treasure. Glittery gold—admit it—it sends some sort of primal thrill trilling down your spine to think of stumbling across such a discovery . . .

It’s called the Didcot Hoard (for the town in Oxfordshire, England near where it was discovered by Bill Darley, who was using a metal detector to explore) and it’s considered one of the most spectacular caches of Roman coins ever found in Britain.

What's on your Keeper Shelf?

By Evan Bench, Paris-httpscommons.wikimedia.org

Christina here. I’ve been reading a lot more than usual recently, not just on my Kindle but also trying to get through my TBR pile of physical books. It was getting ridiculous, although not quite as bad as the mess in this photo. Once I finish one, however, I have to find a space for it on my shelves and despite the fact that I have a LOT of bookshelves, this is getting increasingly difficult. That made me start thinking about what makes a book a keeper? This is probably a topic that’s been discussed before on Word Wenches, but I hope you don’t mind me reviving it?

I’ll confess that just about every book I read is a keeper for me because I find it a terrible wrench to part with any of them. I could probably Marie Kondo just about all my other possessions, but not the books. As long as I don’t actively dislike a novel (or even outright hate it!), I always hang onto it. And if my shelves become too full, the books get stacked sideways first as there always seems to be extra space at the top, or if necessary, double-stacked, although I really don’t like doing that. I want to be able to see at a glance what I’ve got.

Battle Babies!

Nicola here, talking about names. Back in July, Christina posted about names and saints’ days, and recently a previous Wench guest, Elizabeth Hawksley, wrote a fascinating piece on her own blog here about why the name Thomas fell out of popularity in 1532. It seems to me that whether we’re talking about about choosing names for characters in books or how we feel about our own names, it’s a perennially fascinating topic.

This time around, my interest was sparked by the BBC genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are, which returned to our screens in the UK last week with a new series. The first programme explored the family history of actress Jodie Whittaker. Among the family stories that emerged was one relating to her grandmother, who was called Greta Verdun Bedford. This was the moment I learned something completely new to me – that in the past, babies have been named after battles.

Magic Moments`

by Mary Jo

I'm getting into Deep Writing Mode to try to finish the current book, which is waaaay behind.  So instead of writing a new blog, I decided to exercise Wench privilege by pulling out an old blog and buffing it up.

This blog dates back to the earliest days of the Word Wenches and was inspired by a regular reader who asked me when I knew I was meant to be a writer and suggested that it was a question worth blogging.  I agreed that the question is an intriguing one, but I’ll bet that others have a much more interesting answer than I do.

The bald fact is that I knew I was a writer when I was offered a contract for my first book.  Boringly mundane, no?  Yet it’s the truth.  I was always a daydreamer, spinning stories in my head when sitting bored in classes.  (And I was bored a lot.)  I even thought that being a writer would be Totally Cool, but it never occurred to me that I could ever occupy one of those pedestals in the sky where writers live.  (Feel free to laugh. <g>)

But with my horrid handwriting and rather dysgraphic typing, becoming a writer never seemed even remotely possible.  I just couldn’t get the words down in a clean, clear fashion.  Writing was in the vague dream category, along with being tall, thin, or fashionably dressed.

All that changed when I got my first computer to do copywriting and invoicing for my graphic design business.  (Ah, my darling Leading Edge!  We remember our first computers much as Regency fans remember their first Georgette Heyer.)  Once I learned the basics of word processing, it occurred to me that I’d always wanted to write a book, so let’s give it a try.

I charged into that first book with no expectations at all—I just wanted to see what I could do.  I marked the floppy disk (5 ¼” yet!) with RR for Regency Romance, since I wasn’t ready to admit what I was doing even to myself.

One scene flowed into another, the story seemed to be working, I joined RWA, got the name of an agent from the friend of a friend, the agent marked up my 88 pages and sent them back with suggestions, and a few weeks later, I was offered a three book contract.

Yes, Virginia, that is the moment that I knew I was a writer.  Having no expectations made the process easy in a lot of ways.  I didn’t fear rejection since I didn’t expect acceptance.

Of course, selling my first book changed everything.  I went from no expectations to behaving like a crazed lemming determined to learn everything I could about writing and publishing.  I also developed my first and most determined writing goal: to support myself as a writer. It took a few years, but I made it.  (The book covers illustrating this blog were the first books when I undertook a new subgenre.)

I think the process is much harder for someone who early develops a passionate desire to be a writer.  Though actually, the problem is not so much writing, which can be a great creative high, but getting published, which is hard.  Usually very hard indeed.

So maybe the real answer to the original question is that one knows one is a writer when one begins to write.  I have a little Post-It note on my monitor that says, “Writers write.”  Sometimes, when publishing is making me nuts, I need to remind myself of that.  I became a writer on the Saturday I sat down and started The Diabolical Baron.  I realized that I was a writer on the day someone offered actual money for my daydreams.

You are a writer when you are sitting down and producing words.  (I once heard a writer say that one can be a writer in one’s mind.  Sorry, I don’t agree.  That’s daydreaming.  Real writing is not only imagination, it’s making the serious effort of getting words down in a form that can communicate to others even if you never show your work to anyone.

The publishing paradigm has changed dramatically since I first wrote this blog.  With indie publishing, anyone can be published if they're willing to put in the work, though finding an audience is still challenging. There are some writers who write only for their own creative satisfaction, and perhaps they are the happiest of us all. 

But there are other kinds of magic moments--those times when we have a sudden realization of a talent, a passion, a dream.

Was there a time when you decided, "I want to grow up and be a doctor?  Or a teacher. Or a rodeo barrel racer?"  

Or did you see a picture of a Celtic High Cross and think "I really, really want tol go to Ireland?"  

Or "I like growing things and must create a garden."  

Please share with us some of your magic moments!

Mary Jo, who always, always knew that I wanted to travel.

WRITING CLOWN SUITS

I’m working on the last book of my School of Magic series, currently under the title of Captivating the Countess (I’m hoping by writing this here I’ll finally commit to a title. Those of you who read my newsletter will note that I’ve been struggling with the previous title of The Duke’s Magic because the marquess is the hero). This book is basically an aristocratic house party in a house as large as Chatsworth—with ghosts. Unlike Christina Courtenay, I have no need to research house plans. I love making up my own, and I’ve visited enough old houses over the decades to have a fairly good knowledge of what goes where, if it absolutely must.  

The Writer's Lucky Charm

The Unnamed Bear

Joanna here, considering the delicate question of lucky objects for writers.

I have my own lucky object, a small brown Beanie Baby bear. It was sent to me by my first fiction editor after publication of my very first fiction book back in 1983.

He is ... unnamed. I think it’s because he is unique and therefore doesn’t need a name.

My bear sits on my desk and holds my glasses and is one of a half dozen object that have kept me company from desk to desk and country to country, over the years, waiting patiently while I wrote, or surfed the web, or read books on the computer, or tried to figure out if houses in 750 BCE Europe were covered with whitewashed wattle and daub or the relative cost of sweet oranges in London in 1800.

Is he lucky for me?
I think of him mostly as company,
But maybe he’s lucky.

Happy Historical Birthdays

The Birthday Cake, Pancraz Koerle, 1875, private collection

Susan here. I had a birthday this weekend, lovely fun, with cake and candles, cards, and visits from family and friends – which got me thinking about birthdays through history, and what do we do differently, or the same, now? 

A birth would naturally be something to mark and remember in any historical culture, particularly where calendars were kept or some acknowledgement of days and seasons existed. And birthdays are a perfect complement to the study of astrology, which has its own very long history.

While it’s a solid guess that even the earliest cultures noted significant dates, and so perhaps births, possibly the earliest references to birthdays are in the Bible. In Genesis, an Egyptian pharaoh is said to have celebrated his birthday by “lifting up the heads” of a baker and a few others (let’s assume that meant he liked their cakes and elevated their status, or allowed them to look up in his presence, rather than lopping off heads and lifting them high).

King Herod famously celebrated his birthday by watching the daughter of Herodias, Herod’s wife—
identified as Salomé—dance for him. In return, he rewarded her (thereby giving a gift on his birthday) by asking her what she wanted; she replied “the head of John the Baptist.”

It’s unknown whether these early birthday references were specifically natal days, or the “birth” of the king or the pharaoh on their coronation day. That’s harder for historians to determine.  The ancient Persians, according to Herodotus, loved birthdays best of all holidays, and rich and poor celebrated with feasts piled high on their tables, the groaning boards of the wealthy piled higher than modest ones, but both apparently featured lots of meats.   

The Greeks celebrated birthdays by associating them with the goddess Artemis, celebrating her feast on the same day each month, 12 times a year, with mooncakes, or small honeyed cakes, with a candle, as an offering to the goddess. Romans took note of birthdays with prayers and offerings to the gods, perhaps similar to Artemis and her mooncakes, as Roman writers note cakes of wheat and honey, along with cheese and wine—but only for guys. Roman women did not get much attention on their birthdays.   

Almost certainly, Roman astrologers were casting natal charts, particularly for significant families, along with horoscopes relevant to the plans of emperors and others in power. For instance, a second century Roman astrologer created a global map so that he could more accurately determine the relationship of the stars to a person’s specific birth place (and likely birth date and time as well). The emperor Augustus had an astrologer outline his claim to power, and Emperor Tiberius employed a court astrologer as well.

Meet Alison Stuart

Anne here, introducing Alison Stuart, a fellow Australian writer and a former President and lifetime member of RWAustralia.
After publishing a number of historicals in a variety of time periods and settings, Alison has recently branched into two new areas; Australian set historicals published by Harlequin Mira (Australia) and, as A.M. Stuart, two historical crime novels set in 1910 Singapore, published by Berkley USA.

Anne: Alison, after writing historical romance and historical novels, what drew you to writing historical crime?

Alison: Thank you so much for inviting me to join the wonderful Word Wenches, particularly as the answer to your question is one of your number. I will be eternally grateful to the wonderful Mary Jo Putney for sowing the seed… We were having a writerly chat over dinner and the topic of reading matter came up. Mary Jo asked me what I liked to read and my answer was ‘crime and mystery’… ‘So why don’t you write it?’ came the response. That got me thinking and I realized I had already been writing it in the guise of historical romance (both Lord Somerton’s Heir and Gather the Bones are probably as much mystery as romance) and it was fun so I should probably give it a proper go!

A Love Letter to Libraries

Andrea here, musing on libraries—brick and mortar libraries—and how much they have had an influence on my life. The pandemic has made me aware of many everyday pleasures that may be small ones, but are things I have missed very much during the lockdown we’ve all experienced over the past half a year.

Libraries visits are one of them. The access to digital books through my local library’s app and website has been a godsend during the isolation, but the recent progress in my town, allowing the physical libraries (we have three!) to to provide curbside pick-up—and also to open for two hours each day for very limited browsing of the new acquisitions—has made me happier than I expected. The sight of the shelves with all those glorious books, the scent of paper . . . they stir fond memories, going back to my childhood.