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didanawisgi · 7 years

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John William Waterhouse, A Mermaid

A mermaid is a legendary aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish.[1] Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including the Near East, Europe, Africa and Asia. The first stories appeared in ancient Assyria, in which the goddess Atargatis transformed herself into a mermaid out of shame for accidentally killing her human lover. Mermaids are sometimes associated with perilous events such as floods, storms, shipwrecks and drownings. In other folk traditions (or sometimes within the same tradition), they can be benevolent or beneficent, bestowing boons or falling in love with humans.

The male equivalent of the mermaid is the merman, also a familiar figure in folklore and heraldry. Although traditions about and sightings of mermen are less common than those of mermaids, they are generally assumed to co-exist with their female counterparts.

Some of the attributes of mermaids may have been influenced by the Sirens of Greek mythology. Historical accounts of mermaids, such as those reported by Christopher Columbus during his exploration of the Caribbean, may have been inspired by manatees and similar aquatic mammals. While there is no evidence that mermaids exist outside of folklore, reports of mermaid sightings continue to the present day, including 21st century examples from Israel and Zimbabwe.

Mermaids have been a popular subject of art and literature in recent centuries, such as in Hans Christian Andersen's well-known fairy tale "The Little Mermaid" (1836). They have subsequently been depicted in operas, paintings, books, films and comics.

Etymology and related terms

The word mermaid is a compound of the Old English mere (sea), and maid (a girl or young woman).[1] The equivalent term in Old English was merewif.[2] They are conventionally depicted as beautiful with long flowing hair.[1] As cited above, they are sometimes equated with the sirens of Greek mythology (especially the Odyssey), half-bird femmes fatales whose enchanting voices would lure soon-to-be-shipwrecked sailors to nearby rocks, sandbars or shoals.[3]

Sirenia

Sirenia is an order of fully aquatic, herbivorous mammals that inhabit rivers, estuaries, coastal marine waters, swamps and marine wetlands. Sirenians, including manatees and dugongs, possess major aquatic adaptations: arms used for steering, a paddle used for propulsion, and remnants of hind limbs (legs) in the form of two small bones floating deep in the muscle. They look ponderous and clumsy but are actually fusiform, hydrodynamic and highly muscular, and mariners before the mid-nineteenth century referred to them as mermaids.[4]

Sirenomelia

Sirenomelia, also called "mermaid syndrome", is a rare congenital disorder in which a child is born with his or her legs fused together and small genitalia. This condition is about as rare as conjoined twins, affecting one out of every 100,000 live births[5] and is usually fatal within a day or two of birth because of kidney and bladder complications. Four survivors were known as of July 2003.[6]

Folklore

As the anthropologist A. Asbjørn Jøn noted: "these 'marine beasts' have featured in folk tradition for many centuries now, and until relatively recently they have maintained a reasonably standard set of characteristics. Many folklorists and mythographers deem that the origin of the mythic mermaid is the dugong, posing a theory that mythicised tales have been constructed around early sightings of dugongs by sailors." [7]

Near East, Ancient Greece

The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria c. 1000 BC. The goddess Atargatis, mother of Assyrian queen Semiramis, loved a mortal (a shepherd) and unintentionally killed him. Ashamed, she jumped into a lake and took the form of a fish, but the waters would not conceal her divine beauty. Thereafter, she took the form of a mermaid — human above the waist, fish below — although the earliest representations of Atargatis showed her as a fish with a human head and arm, similar to the Babylonian god Ea. The Greeks recognized Atargatis under the name Derketo. Sometime before 546 BC, Milesian philosopher Anaximander postulated that mankind had sprung from an aquatic animal species. He thought that humans, who begin life with prolonged infancy, could not have survived otherwise.

A popular Greek legend turned Alexander the Great's sister, Thessalonike, into a mermaid after her death,[8] living in the Aegean. She would ask the sailors on any ship she would encounter only one question: "Is King Alexander alive?" (Greek: "Ζει ο Βασιλεύς Αλέξανδρος;"), to which the correct answer was: "He lives and reigns and conquers the world" (Greek: "Ζει και βασιλεύει και τον κόσμον κυριεύει"). This answer would please her, and she would accordingly calm the waters and bid the ship farewell. Any other answer would enrage her, and she would stir up a terrible storm, dooming the ship and every sailor on board.[9][10]

Lucian of Samosata in Syria (2nd century A.D.), in De Dea Syria (About the Syrian Goddess) wrote of the Syrian temples he had visited:

"Among them – Now that is the traditional story among them concerning the temple. But other men swear that Semiramis of Babylonia, whose deeds are many in Asia, also founded this site, and not for Hera but for her own mother, whose name was Derketo.""I saw Derketo's likeness in Phoenicia, a strange marvel. It is woman for half its length; but the other half, from thighs to feet, stretched out in a fish's tail. But the image in the Holy City is entirely a woman, and the grounds for their account are not very clear. They consider fish to be sacred, and they never eat them; and though they eat all other fowls they do not eat the dove, for they believe it is holy. And these things are done, they believe, because of Derketo and Semiramis, the first because Derketo has the shape of a fish, and the other because ultimately Semiramis turned into a dove. Well, I may grant that the temple was a work of Semiramis perhaps; but that it belongs to Derketo I do not believe in any way. For among the Egyptians some people do not eat fish, and that is not done to honor Derketo."[11]

In his Natural History 9.4.9-11, Pliny the Elder describes numerous sightings of mermaids off the coast of Gaul, noting that their bodies were covered all over in scales and that their corpses frequently washed up on shore. He comments that the governor of Gaul even wrote a letter to Emperor Augustus to inform him.[12]

One Thousand and One Nights

The One Thousand and One Nights collection includes several tales featuring "sea people", such as "Djullanar the Sea-girl".[13] Unlike depictions of mermaids in other mythologies, these are anatomically identical to land-bound humans, differing only in their ability to breathe and live underwater. They can (and do) interbreed with land humans, and the children of such unions have the ability to live underwater. In the tale "Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman", the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land. The underwater society follows a form of primitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist. In "The Adventures of Bulukiya", the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality leads him to explore the seas, where he encounters societies of mermaids.[13]

Due to their vaguely anthropomorphic shape, dried skates have long been described as mermaids. Often their appearance is deliberately modified to make them look even more human. In Europe, dried skates, sometimes called devil fish, (not to be confused with devil fish or devil rays, two species of ray native to the north Atlantic) were displayed as mermaids, angels, demons, or basilisks. In Britain they are known as Jenny Hanivers, perhaps in reference to Antwerp, where they were made by sailors. Dried skates are also known in Mexico, where they are believed to have magical powers, and are used in healing rituals.[14]

British Isles

The Norman chapel in Durham Castle, built around 1078 by Saxon stonemasons, has what is probably the earliest surviving artistic depiction of a mermaid in England.[15] It can be seen on a south-facing capital above one of the original Norman stone pillars.[16]

Mermaids appear in British folklore as unlucky omens, both foretelling disaster and provoking it.[17] Several variants of the ballad Sir Patrick Spensdepict a mermaid speaking to the doomed ships. In some versions, she tells them they will never see land again; in others, she claims they are near shore, which they are wise enough to know means the same thing. Mermaids can also be a sign of approaching rough weather,[18] and some have been described as monstrous in size, up to 2,000 feet (610 m).[17]

Mermaids have also been described as able to swim up rivers to freshwater lakes. In one story, the Laird of Lorntie went to aid a woman he thought was drowning in a lake near his house; a servant of his pulled him back, warning that it was a mermaid, and the mermaid screamed at them that she would have killed him if it were not for his servant.[19] But mermaids could occasionally be more beneficent; e.g., teaching humans cures for certain diseases.[20] Mermen have been described as wilder and uglier than mermaids, with little interest in humans.[21]

According to legend, a mermaid came to the Cornish village of Zennor where she used to listen to the singing of a chorister, Matthew Trewhella. The two fell in love, and Matthew went with the mermaid to her home at Pendour Cove. On summer nights, the lovers can be heard singing together. At the Church of Saint Senara in Zennor, there is a famous chair decorated by a mermaid carving which is probably six hundred years old.[22]

Some tales raised the question of whether mermaids had immortal souls, answering in the negative.[23] The figure of Lí Ban appears as a sanctified mermaid, but she was a human being transformed into a mermaid. After three centuries, when Christianity had come to Ireland, she was baptized.[24]The Irish mermaid is called merrow in tales such as "Lady of Gollerus" published in the 19th century. In Scottish mythology, a ceasg is a fresh-water mermaid, though little beside the term has been preserved in folklore.[25]

Mermaids from the Isle of Man, known as ben-varrey, are considered more favorable toward humans than those of other regions,[26] with various accounts of assistance, gifts and rewards. One story tells of a fisherman who carried a stranded mermaid back into the sea and was rewarded with the location of treasure. Another recounts the tale of a baby mermaid who stole a doll from a human little girl, but was rebuked by her mother and sent back to the girl with a gift of a pearl necklace to atone for the theft. A third story tells of a fishing family that made regular gifts of apples to a mermaid and was rewarded with prosperity.[26]

Western Europe

A freshwater mermaid-like creature from European folklore is Melusine. She is sometimes depicted with two fish tails, or with the lower body of a serpent.[27]

The best-known example of mermaids in literature is probably Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, The Little Mermaid, first published in 1837. In the original story, a young mermaid falls in love with a human prince whom she saves from drowning when his ship is wrecked in a storm. Although her grandmother tells her not to envy humans, who live much shorter lives than mermaids, and whose only consolation is an immortal soul, the mermaid chooses to risk her life in order to be with the prince. She trades her tongue and her beautiful voice to the sea-witch in exchange for a draught that will make her human and allow her to live on land. She will have to rely on her beauty and charm to win the prince's love, as she will be entirely mute.

The sea-witch warns the mermaid that, although she will be graceful, each step will feel as though she is stepping on knives; and that if she does not earn the prince's love, she will die of a broken heart after he weds another. The spell is worked, and the mermaid is found by the prince, who sees the resemblance between her and the one who rescued him from drowning, although he does not realize that they are the same person. Although the prince cares deeply for the mermaid, he is betrothed to the daughter of a neighboring king, and the mermaid cannot prevent their marriage.

The mermaid's sisters trade their beautiful hair to the sea-witch for a knife that the mermaid can use to break the spell and return to the sea. She must kill the prince before dawn on the day after his wedding. But the mermaid still loves the prince and cannot harm him. She flings the knife into the sea and jumps in after it, then begins to dissolve into foam. Then she is transformed into one of the daughters of the air, ethereal beings who strive to earn an immortal soul by doing good deeds in the world of men.[28]

A world-famous statue of the Little Mermaid, based on Andersen's fairy tale, has been in Copenhagen, Denmark since August 1913, with copies in 13 other locations around the world – almost half of them in North America.[29][30][31]

In 1989, Walt Disney Studios released a full-length animated film based on the Andersen fairy tale. Featuring an Academy Award-winning soundtrack with songs by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman,[32] the film garnered glowing reviews, and was credited with revitalizing both the studio and the concept of animated feature films.[33][34] Notable changes to the plot of Andersen's story include the elimination of the grandmother character and the religious aspects of the fairy tale, including the mermaid's quest to obtain an immortal soul. The sea-witch herself replaces the princess to whom the prince becomes engaged, using the mermaid's voice to prevent her from obtaining the prince's love. However, on their wedding day the plot is revealed, and the sea-witch is vanquished. The knife motif is not used in the film, which ends with the mermaid and the prince marrying.[35] Among other things, the film was praised for portraying the mermaid as an independent and even rebellious young woman, rather than a passive actor content to let others determine her destiny.[36]

Eastern Europe

Rusalkas are the Slavic counterpart of the Greek sirens and naiads.[37] The nature of rusalkas varies among folk traditions, but according to ethnologist D.K. Zelenin they all share a common element: they are the restless spirits of the unclean dead.[37] They are usually the ghosts of young women who died a violent or untimely death, perhaps by murder or suicide, before their wedding and especially by drowning. Rusalkas are said to inhabit lakes and rivers. They appear as beautiful young women with long pale green hair and pale skin, suggesting a connection with floating weeds and days spent underwater in faint sunlight. They can be seen after dark, dancing together under the moon and calling out to young men by name, luring them to the water and drowning them. The characterization of rusalkas as both desirable and treacherous is prevalent in southern Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus, and was emphasized by 19th-century Russian authors.[38][39][40] The best-known of the great Czech nationalist composer Antonín Dvořák's operas is Rusalka.

In Sadko (Russian: Садко), a Russian medieval epic, the title character—an adventurer, merchant and gusli musician from Novgorod—lives for some time in the underwater court of the "Sea Tsar" and marries his daughter before finally returning home. The tale inspired such works as the poem "Sadko"[41] by Alexei Tolstoy (1817–75), the opera Sadko composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and the painting by Ilya Repin.

China

Mermaids are included in the Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) compilation of Chinese geography and mythology, dating from the 4th century BC. A 15th-century compilation of quotations from Chinese literature tells of a mermaid who "wept tears which became pearls".[42] An early 19th-century book entitled Jottings on the South of China contains two stories about mermaids. In the first, a man captures a mermaid on the shore of Namtao island. She looks human in every respect except that her body is covered with fine hair of many colors. She can't talk, but he takes her home and marries her. After his death, the mermaid returns to the sea where she was found. In the second story, a man sees a woman lying on the beach while his ship was anchored offshore. On closer inspection, her feet and hands appear to be webbed. She is carried to the water, and expresses her gratitude toward the sailors before swimming away.[43]

Hinduism

Suvannamaccha (lit. golden mermaid) is a daughter of Ravana that appears in the Cambodian and Thai versions of the Ramayana. She is a mermaid princess who tries to spoil Hanuman's plans to build a bridge to Lanka but falls in love with him instead. She is a popular figure of Thai folklore.[44]

Africa

Mami Water (Lit. "Mother of the Water") are water spirits venerated in west, central and southern Africa, and in the African diaspora in the Caribbean and parts of North and South America. They are usually female, but are sometimes male. They are regarded as diabolical beings, and are often femme fatale, luring men to their deaths.[45] The Persian word "برایم بمان" or "maneli" means "mermaid".[46]

Other

The Neo-Taíno nations of the Caribbean identify a mermaid called Aycayia[47][48] with attributes of the goddess Jagua and the hibiscus flower of the majagua tree Hibiscus tiliaceus.[49] In modern Caribbean culture, there is a mermaid recognized as a Haitian vodou loa called La Sirene (lit. "the mermaid"), representing wealth, beauty and the orisha Yemaya.

Examples from other cultures are the jengu of Cameroon, the iara of Brazil and the Greek oceanids, nereids and naiads. The ningyo is a fishlike creature from Japanese folklore, and consuming its flesh bestows amazing longevity. Mermaids and mermen are also characters of Philippine folklore, where they are locally known as sirena and siyokoy respectively.[50] The Javanese people believe that the southern beach in Java is a home of Javanese mermaid queen Nyi Roro Kidul.[51] The myth of "Pania of the Reef", a well known tale of Māori mythology, has many parallels with stories of sea-people in other parts of the world.

According to Dorothy Dinnerstein's book The Mermaid and the Minotaur, human-animal hybrids such as mermaids and minotaurs convey the emergent understanding of the ancients that human beings were both one with and different from animals:

[Human] nature is internally inconsistent, that our continuities with, and our differences from, the earth's other animals are mysterious and profound; and in these continuities, and these differences, lie both a sense of strangeness on earth and the possible key to a way of feeling at home here."[52]

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mermaid

#mermaid #mythology #Greek Mythology #assyrian mythology #atargatis #derketo #sirens #mythology campaign

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diagraphermtg · 7 years

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I’ve tried to find out the lore behind various Arabian Nights cards, and this is what I’ve been able to find so far:

Dandan:

In the story of Abdullah the fisherman and Abdullah the merman, dandans are a type of enormous fish which are feared by merfolk as deadly predators and can capsize boats, but which die if they hear the voice or taste the flesh of a human. The low toughness is presumably supposed to represent this latter frailty, so it might make sense in Flavor Judged MTG to treat the dandan as a 4/4 unless some of the damage is from a human.

Fishliver Oil:

In the story of Abdullah the fisherman and Abdullah the merman, the fisherman anoints himself with dandan liver oil given to him by the merman so as to travel with him under the sea.

Oubliette:

Oubliettes were cells accessible only through grills in the ceilings in which prisoners were left to die.

Rukh Egg:

In the story of Sinbad the Sailor, Rukhs are enormous birds, so large they swoop on and catch elephants. Sinbad accidentally destroys a Rukh egg, angering the mother.

Metamorphosis:

People are magically transformed into animals on a number of occasions in the Nights.

City of Brass:

In the story of the City of Brass, the characters go on an expedition to a beautiful, opulent brass city whose peoples’ impiety offended God, and which is therefore now inhabited only by evil spirits and full of inscriptions telling of its fate. I’m think the ability is meant to represent benefiting from the glorious city at the expense of divine displeasure?

Diamond Valley:

In the story of Sinbad the Sailor, there is a valley full of diamonds and deadly snakes, and from which huge eagles scavenge. Anyone who sets foot in the valley is bitten and dies, but people collect the diamonds by throwing sheep into the valley; the diamonds stick in the wool, the eagles swoop down and carry the sheep away, and then people collect the diamonds from the corpse once the eagles are done with it. Here summoned creatures take the place of sheep and the diamonds provide life, in an instance of Arabian Nights’ recurring life/money correspondence.

Library of Alexandria:

The Library of Alexandria in Egypt contained extensive scientific writings from the Roman Empire. The non-mana ability presumably represents learning spells from Dominia’s version of this library.

Abu Jafar:

In the story of Abu Jafar the leper, the titular character, as well as being a leper, was rewarded for his extraordinary piety with all manner of miraculous blessing. I have no idea what the ability is meant to represent.

King Suleiman:

A legend present in all three major Abrahamic religions holds that the third king of Israel, Solomon, was blessed by God with both extraordinary wisdom and the power to command spirits. In the Nights, this power took the form of a seal with which he could imprison djinn who disobeyed him in bottles. The ability presumably represents this power.

Repentant Blacksmith:

In the story of the Blacksmith who could handle fire without being hurt, a blacksmith who had been in the habit of mistreating beggars realizes the error of his ways and by way of atonement invited an especially pious-seeming beggar to eat as much of his food as she wanted. The beggar was so grateful she entreated God to miraculously bless him, and God was so impressed with her piety that he did so, and granted the blacksmith invulnerability to heat, which he then used to work his metal with his bare hands.

Shahrazad:

In the story of the Thousand and One Nights, a king daily executed his wife then married another woman, generally against her will. To escape this fate, Shahrazad told the king an elaborate series of stories-within-stories, ending each night on a cliffhanger so he would let her live another day to continue it. This spell presumably represents telling the story represented by the subgame.

Sinbad:

In the story of Sinbad the Sailor, Sinbad is a sailor who explores various fantastic lands. This card’s ability presumably represents such exploration.

Old Man of the Sea:

In the story of Sinbad the Sailor, the Old Man of the Sea is a djinn in the form of an extraordinarily strong old man who asks Sinbad to carry him across a stream on his shoulders, then grasps onto Sinbad’s neck with his legs and will not be removed, forcing Sinbad to work himself to exhaustion day after day as the Old Man’s slave.

Island Fish Jasconius:

In the story of Sinbad the Sailor, Jasconius is an enormous fish which has slept at the surface of the ocean so long that trees have grown on his back and Sinbad mistakes him for and island, only to accidentally wake him by lighting a fire there.

Ali Baba:

In the story of Ali Baba and the fourty thieves, Ali Baba discovers the password with which a band of thieves open the hidden magical door behind which they stored their ill-gotten gains. The ability presumably represents opening a door in one of the opponent’s walls with a similar stolen password.

Aladdin:

In the story of Aladdin, a sorcerer recruits Aladdin to retrieve a magic lamp from a perilous magical cave, but Aladdin takes the lamp for himself.

Ali from Cairo:

I’m not sure whether this card represents Ma’ruf’s friend Ali or Quicksilver Ali.

In the story of Ma’ruf, Ali is a Cairo-born con-man who takes pity on the destitute protagonist and teaches him the methods by which he has been persuading rich people to keep giving him enormous loans year after year despite never paying them off. Given the set’s use of life to represent money on cards such as Diamond Valley, the card’s ability could represent Ali helping the planeswalker live indefinitely on such loans no matter how much debt they would otherwise be in. In the story of Quicksilver Ali, the titular character is a thief who earned that moniker through his extraordinary skill at escaping from the police. In this case, the card’s ability might represent Ali sharing his skills with the planeswalker to help them escape their enemies.

Drop of Honey:

In the story of the Drop of Honey: flies feed on a drop of honey spilled by an oilman a birds lands to catch flies the oilman’s cat jumps from a table to catch a bird a merchant’s dog attacks and kills the cat when it jumps down the oilman kills the dog in anger the merchant kills the oilman in revenge this starts a vendetta between the tribes of the two men.

This card is meant to produce a similar sequence of escalating death. In flavor judged magic, it should probably be an aura which causes the enchanted creature to fight the smallest thing that can kill it.

Jeweled Bird:

In the story of the Ebony Horse, three artisans offer a king marvels in exchange for his daughters’ hands in marriage. One of the marvels is a really pretty jeweled clock in the shape of a bird, and noticeably less practically useful than the other two marvels.

City in a Bottle:

In Sandman by Neil Gaiman, the characters from the Thousand and One Nights are sealed in a city in a bottle. This represents a similar prison.

Ebony Horse:

In the story of the Ebony Horse, the titular statue is a magical flying machine. The ability represents a summoned creature using the device to take to the air and fly out of reach of their enemies at the last minute as the story’s protagonist does at one point.

Flying Carpet:

The story of the Three Princes and the princess Nouronnihar features a magic flying carpet.

Bottle of Suleiman:

At several points in the Arabian Nights, characters find and open bottles in which King Solomon imprisoned Djinn. Some of these Djinn are grateful for their release and offer their rescuers service, while others take out their anger over their long confinements by attacking their unfortunate rescuers. Others just fly away, but I guess adding a third possibility would have been too much mechanical complexity for too little gameplay benefit.

Ring of Ma’ruf:

in the story of Ma’ruf, the titular character finds a magic ring which grants wishes.

Pyramids:

The Caliph Al-Ma’mun had a passage cut into one of the pyramids in order to rob it. A folktale sometimes included in the Nights tells that Al-Ma’mun attempted to raze the pyramids in order to steal treasures he knew to be stored in extensive chambers beneath them, but that despite expending much of the wealth of the Caliphate on the effort was unable to do so. This card is a reference to that story.

Aladdin’s Ring:

In the story of Aladdin, a sorcerer gives Aladdin a ring to which a genie is bound when he sends him to fetch a lamp to which a more powerful genie is bound. The genie bound to the ring mostly just transports Aladdin places; not sure why Garfield decided to represent his powers with direct damage.

If anyone knows the lore behind other cards in that expansion, I’d be interested to hear.

#magic the gathering #magic: the gathering

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