Mythical creatures: merpeople

Merpeople

(also known as sirens, selkies or merrows)

'The oldest recorded merpeople were known as sirens (Greece) and it is in warmer waters that we find the beautiful mermaids so frequently depicted in Muggle literature and painting. The selkies of Scotland and the merrows of Ireland are less beautiful, but they share that love of music which is common to all merpeople.'
– Newt Scamander, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them™

The merpeople of Hogwarts™

Harry Potter™ saw a beautiful stained-glass window featuring a mermaid in the prefects' bathroom at Hogwarts in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire™.

When Harry later encountered merpeople in the black lake, he found that with their greyish skin, wild green hair and broken teeth, they looked nothing like the mermaid from the window.

'The merpeople had greyish skins and long, wild, dark green hair. Their eyes were yellow, as were their broken teeth, and they wore thick ropes of pebbles around their necks.'
– Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire™

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.

Mermaid hoaxes

This scarily convincing 'mummified mermaid' may once have held a mirror and a comb to brush her real human hair.

In the 1800s fake merpeople, sometimes known as monkey-fish, were brought home by sailors who kept them as lucky charms or exhibited them as curiosities.

X-rays and other scientific methods have revealed that this mermaid was made from a mixture of wood, bone, metal, dried fish and human hair.

A mermaid from Indonesia

Alongside illustrations of colourful and strange fishes, this book, Poissons, Ecrevisses et Crabes (Fishes, Crayfish and Crabs) contains an account from the early 1700s of 'a monster resembling a siren' caught in Indonesia.

The author, Louis Renard, lists several other sightings and states that the existence of mermaids is 'quite definitely affirmed'.

'A monster resembling a Siren, caught near the island of Borne [Borneo]... It lived on land, in a vat full of water, during four days seven hours. From time to time it uttered little cries like those of a mouse.'
– Louis Renard, 1718-1719

Nature's merpeople

Glimpses of floating manatees out at sea, and eerie whale song heard from ships, may have inspired myths of merpeople.

Manatees, also known as sea cows, are marine mammals. They sometimes perform 'tail stands' as they float in shallow water. Their forward-facing eyes give them a human-like appearance.

Columbus meets a mermaid

In 1493 explorer Christopher Columbus reported seeing three mermaids during his first journey to what we now call the Americas. He noted that they rose out of the sea and had human-like faces.

'[I] saw three mermaids, which rose well out of the sea; but they are not so beautiful as they are painted.'
– Christopher Columbus, 1493