Merman
A merman, the male counterpart of the mythical female mermaid, is a legendary creature which is human from the waist up and fish-like from the waist down, but may assume normal human shape. Sometimes mermen are described as hideous and other times as handsome.
Antiquity
Perhaps the first recorded merman was the Assyrian-Babylonian sea-god Ea, linked to the figure known to the Greeks as Oannes. However, while some popular writers have equated Oannes of the Greek period to the god Ea, Oannes was rather one of the apkallu servants to Ea.The apkallu have been described as "fish-men" in cuneiform texts, and if Berossus is to be believed, Oannes was indeed a being possessed of a fish head and man's head beneath, and both a fish tail and manlike legs. But Berossus was writing much later during the era of Greek rule, engaging in the "construction" of the past. Thus even though figurines have been unearth to corroborate this fish-man iconography, these can be regarded as representing "human figures clad in fish cloaks", rather than a being with a fish head growing above the human head. And the god Ea is also seen as depicted wearing a fish cloak by modern scholars.
Greco-Roman mythology
of Greek mythology was depicted as a half-man, half-fish merman in ancient Greek art. Triton was the son of the sea-god Poseidon and sea-goddess Amphitrite. Neither Poseidon nor Amphitrite were merfolk, although both were able to live underwater as easily as on land.Tritons later became generic mermen, so that multiple numbers of them were depicted in art.
Tritons were also associated with using a conch shell in the later Hellenistic period. In the 16th century, Triton was referred to as the "trumpeter of Neptune " in Marius Nizolius's Thesaurus, and this phrase has been used in modern commentary. The Elizabethan period poet Edmund Spenser referred to Triton's "trompet" as well.
Another notable merman from Greek mythology was Glaucus. He was born a human and lived his early life as a fisherman. One day, while fishing, he saw that the fish he caught would jump from the grass and into the sea. He ate some of the grass, believing it to have magical properties, and felt an overwhelming desire to be in the sea. He jumped in the ocean and refused to go back on land. The sea gods nearby heard his prayers and transformed him into a sea god. Ovid describes the transformation of Glaucus in the Metamorphoses, describing him as a blue-green man with a fishy member where his legs had been.
Medieval period
Marmennill
A merman is called marmennill in Old Norse, attested in the Ladnámabók. An early settler in Iceland allegedly caught a merman while fishing, and the creature prophesied one thing: the man's son will gain possession of the piece of land where the mare Skálm chooses to "lie down under her load". In a subsequent fishing trip the man was drowned, survived by the boy who stayed behind.Hafstrambr
The hafstrambr is a merman, described as a counterpart to the hideous mermaid margýgr in the Konungs skuggsjá. He is said to generally match her anthropomorphic appearance on the top half, though his lower half is said to have been never been seen. In actuality, it may have been just a sea-mammal, or the phenomenon of some sea creature appearing magnified in size, caused by mid-range mirage.Medieval Norsemen may have regarded the hafstrambr as the largest sorts of mermen, which would explain why the word for marmennill would be given in the diminutive.
Other commentators treat the hafstrambr merely as an imaginary sea-monster.
Early cartography
A twin-tailed merman is depicted on the Bianco world map. A merman and a mermaid are shown on the Behaim globe.Renaissance period
Gesner's sea-satyr
in his chapter on Triton in Historia animalium IV gave the name of "sea-Pan" or "sea-satyr" to an artist's image he obtained, which he said was that of an "ichthyocentaur" or "sea-devil".Gesner's sea-devil has been described by a modern commentator as having "the lower body of a fish and the upper body of a man, the head an horns of a buck-goat or the devil, and the breasts of a woman", and lacks the horse-legs of a typical centaur. Gesner made reference to a passage where Aelian writes of satyrs that inhabit Taprobana's seas, counted among the fishes and cete.
This illustration was apparently ultimately based on a skeletal specimen and mummies. Gesner explained that such a creature was placed on exhibit in Rome on 3 November 1523. Elsewhere in Gesner's book it is stated the "sea monster " viewed on this same date was the size of a 5-year-old child. It has been remarked in connection to this by one ichthyologist that mermen created by joining the monkey's upper body with a fish's lower extremity have been manufactured in China for centuries; and such merchandise may have been imported into Europe by the likes of the Dutch East India Company by this time. Mummies were certainly being manufactured in Japan in some quantity by the 19th century or even earlier.
The "sea-satyr" appears in Edmund Spenser's poem The Faerie Queene, and glossed by Francis J. Child as a type of "ichthyocentaur", on the authority of Gesner.
Scandinavian folklore
Marbendill
ic folklore beliefs speak of sea-dwelling humans known as marbendlar, which is the later Norse, and modern Icelandic form of marmennill.Jón lærði Guðmundsson 's writings concerning elves includes the merman or marbendill as a "water-elf". This merman is described as seal-like from the waist down. Jón the Learned also wrote down a short tale or folktale concerning it, which has been translated under the titles "The Merman" and "Of Marbendill".
Jón Árnasson, building on this classification, divided the water-elves into two groups: the male marbendill vs. the female known variously as hafgýgur, haffrú, margýgur, or meyfiskur. But in current times, hafmey is the common designation of the mermaid. This gender classification however is not in alignment with the medieval source described above, which pairs the margýgr with the.
Havmand
According to Norwegian folklore dating back to the 18th century, takes the mermaid as wife, and the offspring or young they produce are called marmæler.Norwegian mermen were later ascribed the general characteristic that they are of "a dusky hue, with a long beard, black hair, and from the waist upwards resemble a man, but downwards are like a fish."
While the marmæler does literally mean 'sea-talker', the word is thought to be a corruption of marmenill, the aforementioned Old Norse term for merman.
Prophesying
An alleged marmennill prophesying to an early Icelandic settler has already been noted. In the story "The Merman", a captured marbendill laughs thrice, and when pressed, reveals to the peasant his insight on promise of release. The peasant finds wonderful gray milk-cows next to his property, which he presumes were the merman's gift; the unruly cows were made obedient by bursting the strange bladder or sac on their muzzle.Abductions
In Sweden, the superstition of the merman abducting a human girl to become his wife has been documented ; the merman's consort is said to be occasionally spotted sitting on a holme, laundering her linen or combing her hair.There is a Swedish ballad entitled "Hafsmannen" about a merman abducting a girl; the Danish ballad "Rosmer Havmand" is a cognate ballad based on the same legend.
"Agnete og Havmanden" is another Scandinavian ballad work with this theme, but it is of late composition. It tells of a merman who had been mated to a human woman named Agnete; the merman unsuccessfully pleaded with her to come back to him and their children in the sea.
File:Sjoekungen_by_John_Bauer_1911.jpg|thumb|The merman by John Bauer
English folklore
English folklorist Jacqueline Simpson surmises that as in Nordic countries, the original man-like water-dwellers of England probably lacked fish-like tails. A "wildman" caught in a fishnet, described by Ralph of Coggeshall was entirely man-like though he liked to eat raw fish and eventually returned to the sea. Katharine Mary Briggs opined that the mermen are "often uglier and rougher in the British Isles".Mermen, which seldom frequent American folklore, are supposedly depicted as less beautiful than mermaids.
Celtic folklore
The Irish fakelore story of "The Soul Cages" features a male merrow named Coomara, a hideous creature with green hair, teeth and skin, narrow eyes and a red nose. The tale was created by Thomas Keightley, who lifted the plot from one of the Grimms' collected tales.In Cornish folklore into early modern times, the Bucca, described as a lonely, mournful character with the skin of a conger eel and hair of seaweed, was still placated with votive offerings of fish left on the beach by fishermen. Similarly vengeful water spirits occur in Breton and Gaelic lore, which may relate to pre-Christian gods such as Nechtan.
China and Japan
In China and in Japan, there are various accounts of "human-fish", and these presumably occurred in male forms also.However, Chinese human-fish have been described as resembling a catfish, and not quite so human-like.
Illustrated depictions of male ningyo do exist from the Edo Period. One example is the picture of male human-fish hand-copied by the young lord of Hirosaki Domain. Another is the illustrated sheet of kawaraban newspaper carrying news of the "ningyo from Holland", bearing the face of an old man.
Hairen or kaijin
In China and Japan there are also accounts of the "sea human", some of these accounts are of European origin.A known description of the hairen occurs in a work in Chinese called Zhifang waiji, actually written by a European. Here Ai Rulüe stated that there are two kinds of hairen. The example of the first kind had a beard.
The second type of hairen described by Aleni was actually a female woman, identifiable as the captured in 1403, with drooping skin, as if she were dressed in .
Later, a Japanese source gave description of the kaijin encompassing features of both types: it had chin hair as well as a skin flap around the waist similar to a hakama. These trouser-like hakama was worn by men, as well as women in some cases.
An older account of hairen occurs in Shaozi or Shao Yong's work called Caomuzi, which describes the creature as having the shape of a priest, though diminutive in stature. It has been equated with the umibōzu yōkai of Japan.