Part 4
It is somewhat strange that Cornelius Vanderdecken, the well-known if not popular commander of the _Flying Dutchman_, should never have used the seabird as a messenger to his wife and children in old Amsterdam. It is part and parcel of his unhappy destiny that he shall not be able to persuade sailors to carry a letter home for him, Jack very well knowing that, airy as may be one of these phantom missives, it has weight enough of fatality in it to sink his ship. It was an old custom among seamen on catching an albatross to secure a bundle of letters for wives and sweethearts under his wing and despatch him with a loud hurrah. Not impossibly his usefulness in this direction may have suggested that his presence signified good luck.
“At length did cross an albatross. Through the fog it came, As if it had been a Christian soul We hailed it in God’s name.”
So sings the Ancient Mariner, with this result:
“And a good south wind sprung up behind. The albatross did follow.”
The famous old buccaneering skipper Shelvocke writes, in his voyages, “We had not the sight of one fish of any kind since we were come to the south-west of the Straits of Le Maire, nor one sea-bird, except a disconsolate black albatross who accompanied us several days, hovering about us as if he had lost himself, until Sam Huntley, my second officer, observed in one of his melancholy fits that the bird was always hovering near us, and imagined from its colour that it might be an ill-omen, and, being encouraged in his impression by the continued season of contrary weather which had opposed us ever since we had got into these seas, he, after some fruitless attempts, shot the albatross.”
Who will question that in those olden times of marine superstitions the mariners of Shelvocke attributed the failure of their expedition to the shooting of that disconsolate fowl? But these birds do not appear to have inspired maritime fancy to any marked degree. The belief of old sailors that if an albatross be slaughtered it at once becomes necessary to keep one’s “weather eye lifting” for squalls, but that no harm follows if the bird be caught with a piece of fat pork, and is allowed to die a “natural” death on deck, about sums up the traditionary apprehensions in respect of the bird. Yet this meagreness of forecastle imagination is strange, for assuredly the albatross is the pinioned monarch of the deep, the majestic and beautiful eagle of the liquid, foam-capped crags and steeps of the ocean, and will for days so haunt the wakes of ships as to impart just that element of the familiar into the wild and desolate freedom of the cold grey skies and snow-swept billows of dominion which especially fertilizes the fancy of the mariner, who needs something of the prosaic to hold on by just in the same way that he swings by a rope high aloft in the middle air.
Nevertheless it is true that there are scores of comparatively insignificant sea and land birds whose feathers are supposed to cover larger powers for good or evil than even the spacious-winged albatross.
The common house-sparrow: here surely is a strange little fowl of the air to parallel, nay to surpass the wizard powers of the shrieking monarch of the Horn and the Southern Ocean; and yet it is gravely asserted that should sparrows be blown away to sea and alight upon a ship they are not to be taken or even chased, for in proportion as the birds are molested must sail be shortened to provide against the storm that will certainly come. In the interests of humanity nothing could be better than such superstitions. The harmless and beautiful gull, whose lovely sweepings and curvings through the air, whose exquisite self-balancing capacity in the teeth of a living gale, whose bright eyes, salt, shrewd voice, and webbed feet folded in bosom of ermine, it is impossible to sufficiently admire, though there be unhappily no lack of sea-side Nathaniel Winkles who regard this pretty creature as a mark set up by Nature for cockneys to shoot at, has a commercial virtue that sets it high in the long shoreman’s catalogue of things to be approved; for when this bird appears in great numbers then is its presence accepted as an infallible sign of the neighbourhood of herring shoals.
Herman Melville has somewhere said that in his time it was reckoned a bad omen for ravens to perch on the mast of a ship, at the Cape of Good Hope. We know that the raven himself was hoarse that croaked the fatal entrance of Duncan, and there is no reason, no forecastle reason at least, why the Storm-Fiend should not have ravens harnessed to his chariot after the manner of the doves of Venus, though why these plumed steeds are peculiarly obnoxious to mariners at or off the Cape of Good Hope is not certainly known.
It was an old superstition that the rotten timbers of foundered ships generated birds.[9] “When,” says a very Early English naturalist, “this old wrack of ships falls in the sea, it is rotted and corrupted by the sea, and from this decay breeds birds, hanging by the beaks to the wood; and when they are all covered with plumage and are large and fat, then they fall into the sea; and then God, in his grace, restores them to their natural life.” It will thus be seen how intimate is the association between sailors and birds, particularly the kind of bird produced by rotten and sunken timber, and styled by the above very Early English naturalist “crabans,” or “cravans,” though “barnacles,” perhaps, is the term to best fit the prodigy. Even a dead bird may prove a soothsayer, according to Jack, for, says he, if a kingfisher be suspended to the mast by its beak it will swing its breast in the direction of the coming wind. Easier even than whistling for a breeze, and as a weathercock worth the lordliest and more flashing of ecclesiastical vanes, which will only tell how the wind is actually blowing. This is a vulgar error in Sir Thomas Browne’s list, but not exploded by that eloquent worthy. Nay, he rather explains it by remarking “that a kingfisher hanged by the bill showeth what quarter the wind is by an occult and secret property converting the breast to that part of the horizon from whence the wind doth blow. This is a received opinion, and very strange, introducing natural weathercocks and extending magnetical positions as far as animal natures—a conceit supported chiefly by present practice, yet not made out by reason nor experience.” But neither reason nor experience is desirable in superstition—that is to say if superstition is to flourish. It was long believed that gulls were never to be seen bleeding, and that the shooting stars were the half-digested food of these birds.[10] Why fancy should ever trouble itself with the blood of gulls is not clear; as to shooting stars it was reasonable that the method by which they were produced should be accurately stated and settled once for all. Some of the superstitions in connection with birds and their influence over things maritime are very curious and romantic. Anciently, swallows were deemed unlucky at sea, and we read that Cleopatra abandoned a voyage on observing a swallow at the masthead of the ship.
Footnote 9:
I advert to this singular article of marine superstition in another chapter.
“Swallows have built In Cleopatra’s sails their nests; the augurers Say they know not, they cannot tell, look grimly, And dare not speak their knowledge.”
Footnote 10:
Both the Rev. John Ray and Dr. Edward Browne (son of the famous Norwich Knight) speak of this queer belief in their “Travels.”
On the other hand, it was agreed that if a kite perched on a mast the omen was a favourable one. A crow lighting on a ship is accepted by the Chinese as a sure sign of prosperous gales, and they feed the bird with crumbs of bread by way of coaxing it to remain. The magpie is another evil bird. A sailor said to Sir Walter Scott, “All the world agrees that one magpie bodes ill-luck, two are not bad, but three are the very devil itself. I never saw three magpies but twice, and once I nearly lost my vessel, and afterwards I fell off my horse and was hurt.”
It is said that fishermen in the English Channel attribute the east wind to the flight of curlew on dark nights. It is possible that such a superstition may exist, nor could a far wilder fancy be held ill-founded by one who, in midnight darkness upon the sea-shore, has heard the dismal wailings and cryings of invisible birds speeding through the blackness in detachments, and making their weird noises sound as though they were uttered by one set of fowl wheeling round and round again. But, spite of Coleridge’s marvellous poem, the stately albatross, taking all the sea birds round, stands lowest in the catalogue of the feathered tribe, accredited with special necromancy in good or bad directions.[11] The little Mother Carey’s chicken, the stormy petrel, the tiny swallow of the deep, is distinctly ahead of the huge creature with its span of thirteen feet, and a score of superstitions crowd about it, such as its power of evoking storms, its being the soul of a dead sailor, and so forth. The albatross is beaten out of the field, too, by the common seagull, whose familiar presence is no doubt the cause of its rich legendary and traditional endowment. But for all that the albatross remains the sovereign of the seas, and unless the average duration of its life is already positively known, the discovery made in 1886 of the bird with the compass at its neck having been alive so long ago as 1848, will be received with interest by all admirers of the lovely and noble creature.[12]
Footnote 11:
“About this time a beautiful white bird, web-footed, and not unlike a dove in size and plumage, hovered over the masthead of the cutter, and, notwithstanding the pitching of the boat, frequently attempted to perch on it, and continued to flutter there till dark. Trifling as this circumstance may appear, it was considered by us all as a propitious omen.” This passage occurs in the account of the loss of the _Lady Hobart_ in the _Mariner’s Chronicle_. What sort of bird this was, unless a gull, I cannot imagine.
Footnote 12:
An old legend states these birds to be the disembodied spirits of captains who have been wrecked off the Cape, and who are condemned to wear the feathers for seven years by order of the demon of the deep. An author writes fifty years ago: “Caught a splendid albatross; measured nineteen feet from the tip of each wing. He had been following the ship for many hours; but I was surprised to see what an insignificant figure he cut when dissected. He turned out all feathers.” He was no doubt a captain!
A boatman told me that once whilst fishing off the coast in forty feet of water, the tide a quarter ebb, and the sea a dark clear green, he and his mate were hanging over the boat’s side with lines in their hands when they saw a mermaid floating past under the surface by about the depth a man’s arm would penetrate. I asked him what the mermaid was like, and he replied that she was of a chocolate colour, with short black hair and very large intensely black eyes. Her figure to the waist was that of a woman; the rest of her was fish-shaped. Altogether he reckoned her to have been of the size of a thirty-pound salmon, only that she was longer than a fish of that weight would be. Her face and figure—as much of it as was human—were as small as those of a child two years old. She was an unmistakable mermaid—he’d warrant that. Might he never airn another shilling in this world if he wor telling a lie. She floated by at an oar’s length; had the sight of her left him and his mate their wits they would have secured her; but some minutes passed before they recovered from their amazement, and though they got their anchor and pulled in the direction of the creature they saw no more of her. I was glad to hear that there was, at all events, one mermaid still in existence, for I had been given to understand that the last of these ocean Mohicans had been gorged by the sea-serpent a little before the date on which her Majesty’s ship _Bacchante_ sighted the _Flying Dutchman_.
It is customary to look into antiquity for the origin of mermaids, to trace these daughters of the deep to the Nereids and Naiads, with some reference to the Syrens and to Circe and to Hylas and the Argonautic voyages. Would it not be easier to take Jack’s word for it? There is the sea-serpent; nobody would care to say positively that the mighty snake is a myth. It is like a ghost; one would rather reserve one’s opinion on the matter. So, in spite of the Barnumisms of the aquarium, who has courage enough in the face of the testimonies of many scores of mahogany-cheeked eye-witnesses to assert with all cocksureness that there is not and never was such a thing as a mermaid?
At all events, Simon Wilkin, F.L.S., who edited an edition of the works of Sir Thomas Browne, has stated such a case for the mermaid as merits something better than a smile. It is the business of the learned Norwich Knight to explode the sea-nymph as a vulgar error, and he certainly bears hard upon popular faith by denying the syren to be the mermaid’s original, as “containing no fishy composure,” and, by tracing her to Dagon, of whose stump “the fishy part only remained when the hands and upper part fell before the ark.” But what writes Mr. Simon Wilkin in a note to this passage? He takes the same view that Johnson took of disembodied spirits, and says that he cannot admit the probability of a belief in mermaids having lasted from remote antiquity without some foundation in truth. He examines Sir Humphry Davy’s arguments against the likelihood of the existence of such an object as a mermaid, and agrees with that distinguished philosopher’s view that a human head, human hands, and human mammæ are wholly inconsistent with a fish’s tail, because—and the logic is good—the head, hands, and mammæ of any creature furnished also with a tail could not be human; and so, conversely, adds he, “the tail of such a creature could not be a fish’s tail.” The philosopher was personally interested in the subject, for if Mr. Simon Wilkin is to be credited, Sir Humphry, whilst swimming, was himself mistaken by some ladies of Caithness for a mermaid. Surely no scientific gentleman ever received a higher compliment. Mr. Wilkin quotes from the Evangelical Magazine of September, 1822. In that publication was printed a letter from the Rev. Dr. Philip, dated at Cape Town. The doctor said he had just seen a mermaid that was then being exhibited. The head was the size of a baboon’s, thinly covered with black hair, and there were a few hairs on the upper lip. The ears, nose, lips, chin, breasts, fingers, and nails resembled the human subject. Of the teeth there were eight incisors, four canine, and eight molars. This creature was about three feet long, and covered with scales. It was caught by a Chinese fisherman, and sold to one Captain Eades, at Batavia. Sir Humphry pronounced this mermaid to be the head and bust from two apes, fastened to the tail of the kipper salmon; but this Mr. Simon Wilkin would not hear of. Sir Thomas Browne’s editor is well backed. Has not Alexandre Dumas described the mermaid of the Royal Museum at the Hague? It was not a thing to be disputed about. “If after all this,” says the author of _Monte Cristo_, “there shall be found those who disbelieve the existence of such creatures as mermaids, let them please themselves. I shall give myself no more trouble about them.”
If Sir Humphry Davy were the mermaid that was seen at Caithness in January, 1809, it would be interesting to know what he thought of the description of him that was sent to the public journals of that date by two witnesses, one of whom was Miss Mackay, daughter of the Rev. David Mackay, minister of Reay. That Sir Humphry should have been bathing in the sea in the month of January will seem strange to persons whose blood flows languidly. But there is more to wonder at in the following particulars: Whilst Miss Mackay and another lady were walking by the shore they perceived three people who were on a rock at some distance showing signs of astonishment and terror. On approaching the ladies saw that the object of their wonder was a face resembling the human countenance, floating on the waves. The sea ran high, and as the waves advanced the mermaid gently sank under them, and afterwards reappeared. The face was plump and round, the nose small, the eyes a light grey, the head long, the hair thick, the throat slender, smooth and white. The hands and fingers were not webbed. “It sometimes laid its right hand under its cheek, and in this position floated for some time.” Other witnesses declared that it disappeared on a boy crying out. It reappeared at a distance: the spectators followed it by walking along the shore, until it vanished for good.[13] Could this have been Sir Humphry Davy? The narrative was supplemented by a tale copied from an old History of the Netherlands. There was an inundation in 1403, and when the water retired a mermaid was found in the Dermet Mere, near Campear. A number of boats surrounded her; she tried to dive under them, and finding her way stopped, made a hideous deafening noise, and with her hands and tail sunk a boat or two. On being cleaned of the sea-moss and shells which covered her she was found a somewhat comely being, hair long and black, face human, figure—so far as it went—very good indeed. The rest was “a strong fish tail.” She was sent to the Haerlem magistrates, who ordered her to be taught to pray and to spin, but she never could be brought to speak; possibly she did not like the Dutch tongue. She also declined to wear any kind of clothing in summer. Part of her hair was plaited in the Dutch style, and the remainder hung down her. “She would leave her tail in the water, and accordingly had a tub of water under her chair, made on purpose for her; she eat milk, water, bread, butter, and fish. She lived thus out of her element (except her tail) fifteen or sixteen years.” That posterity might not doubt this prodigy ever flourished, her picture was painted and hung in the Town House of Haerlem, and her story written under it in letters of gold.
Footnote 13:
Annual Register, 1809.
But we must accept the existence of the mermaid on the mariner’s assurance. A fig for the dugong, and manatee, and sea-horse! Let them in certain postures look as human as they will, the ape is not more the brother of man than are those fish the originals of the wild-eyed, sweet-voiced, silver-shining, golden-haired beauties of the azure main, rising out of their palaces of pearl to ravish Jack’s gaze with a picture of girlish loveliness.
“Though all the splendour of the sea, Around thy faultless beauty shine, The heart that riots wild and free Can hold no sympathy with mine.”
So the love-sick Tarpaulin may sigh; but though the foam-white form slide into the glassy profound with virginal fear of his pursuing eyes, let us not vulgarly call the delicate shining shape dugong, or sea-horse! Does not John of Hesse, in his travels, tell us of a land where he saw a stony and smoking mountain, and heard mermaids singing—sirens who draw ships into danger by their songs? And how, if not by the witchery of their eyes and the clear melodies of their voices? And listen to the navigator, Hudson, “One of our men, looking overboard, saw a mermaid, and, calling up some of the company to see her, one more came up, and by that time she was come closely to the ship’s side, looking earnestly at the men. A little after, a sea came and overturned her. Her back and breasts were like a woman’s, as they said that saw her; her body as big as one of us, her skin very white, and long hair hanging down behind, of colour black. Seeing her go down, they saw her tail, which was like that of a porpoise, speckled like a mackerel.”
The mermaids must be left alone. They are Jack’s sweethearts, and no sacrilegious hand should be suffered to rob old ocean of those seductive spirits which sparkle in its depths or whiten with their forms and gild with their hair the weedy and shelley embroidery of the coast.
If an ill-word must be said of these creatures, let it be directed at the merman. _He_ is no beauty, and I believe has no claim to be considered even respectable. They are said to be drunkards, and have green hair, red eyes, and noses distinguished for a peculiar kind of growth termed in ships’ forecastles “grog-blossoms.” Francis Pirard says, in the account he gives of his shipwreck, that he saw a merman, when at anchor in St. Augustine’s Bay, in the Island of Madagascar. He calls it a strange phenomenon, and describes it as a monstrous fish with a head of a man and a long beard. “It plunged into the water on our approach, and we could only see part of its back, which was scaly.” I can well understand the alarm confessedly felt by persons at the sight of a merman. The mermaid is an engaging and often adorable creature, and fills the mind with the softest emotions; but the merman is so disgracefully ugly, and so depravedly and ironically human-like withal, that no spectacle is more shocking. The old Bishop of Norway tells of three sailors who saw something floating off the Danish coast. It proved to be an old merman. He had broad shoulders, a small head, a thin face of an abandoned and malignant cast of expression, and the usual fish-like termination. The bishop does not positively say that this merman was drunk, but he describes his postures as very uneasy—his attitudes being such as perhaps might be expected in a fish that was in liquor and that tried to balance itself on its tail—so that there is reason to suppose the worst. The same bishop tells of a parson who found a dead merman in his parish. The corpse was six feet long. It had a man’s face and arms, not unlike a human being’s, only that they were connected to its body by membranes. It is not impossible but that this apparent corpse was a merman overtaken in liquor.
I do not gather—at least from my studies in this direction—that these mermen are related to the mermaids. A literal-minded Swede has indeed feigned that the merman is the mermaid’s husband, but on no better ground than the circumstance of having seen a male and a female amicably swimming about together. I do not mean to say that the merman, being always found alone, is a proof that he is a bachelor, but it is hard to reconcile the terrestrial and even marine customs of Nature with the pairing of such a divinity as the mermaid with such a horrid, drunken object as the merman. No; if the mermen wive at all they go for their spouses to the dugongs. The mermaids seek elsewhere for lovers than amid the ranks of fishes’ tails merging into drunken old men. The sailors know her as a dainty creature that floats upwards to the surface like a beam of golden light.
“Upstarted the mermaid by the ship, Wi’ a glass and a kame in her hand, Says, ‘Reek about, reek about, my merry men; Ye are not very far from land.’”