The Myth of Mermaids

In my parents home, one can see a wooden and glass cabinet displaying beautiful gifts from friends and bits and pieces of memorabilias they collected during their travels. As a child, one of my pre-occupations was the arrangement and re-arrangement of all these little items.

One of my most favourite pieces from this collection is a little sculpture of a mermaid sitting on a rock measuring no more that half a foot in height. My sister and I used to admire this mermaid so very much, and many of our evenings were spent with us pretending to be mermaids combing our hair, wriggling around in our supposed tails, at the same time, wishing that we were indeed truly mermaids and not mere humans. I guess it was thanks to Hans Christian Andersen that we were imbued with this very romantic notion of this half human half sea creature. My poor parents must have had no easy time time answering our question of whether there really existed mermaids and mermans.

During those times, we watched television most nights. And once in a while, we would come across poignant love stories between men and mermaids which further fueled our already very wild imagination. I remember also watching this Thai film which depicted mermaids in a less favourable light, contrary to what we were used to imagining and "seeing". The mermaids were ugly, looking more like fish than humans. Then, there were newspapers reporting sightings of mermaids off the coast of the Philipines, and we were shown yet more "evidence" of these very ugly creatures of half fish half human. I think those incidents must have contributed no less to the imminent death of our childhood, just like how some of these Western children must have been so affected at their discovery of the myth of Santa Clause.



The older and wiser me of today have since learned that my favourite sculpture is a replica of the famous "Den Lille Havfrue" created by one Danish named Edvard Eriksen and is a cultural symbol of Denmark which can be sighted at the waterfront of Copenhagen. The older and wiser me of today also, although no longer believe in mermaids or Santa Clause, am still no less intrigued by the mythology of mermaids, fairies and angels...........