| The Merrow, or if
you write it in the Irish, Moruadh or Murrúghach, from muir,
sea, and oigh, a maid, is not uncommon, they say, on the wilder
coasts. The fishermen do not like to see them, for it always means coming
gales.
The male Merrows (if you can use such a
phrase -- I have never heard the masculine of Merrow) have green teeth,
green hair, pig's eyes, and red noses; duck-like scale between their
fingers.
Sometimes they prefer, small blame to
them, good-looking fishermen to their sea lovers. Near Bantry in the last
century, there is said to have been a woman covered all over with scales
like a fish, who was descended from such a marriage. Sometimes they come out
of the sea, and wander about the shore in the shape of little hornless cows.
They have, when in their own shape, a red
cap, called a cohullen druith, usually covered with feathers. If this
is stolen, they cannot again go down under the waves. Red is the color of
magic in every country, and has been so from the very earliest times. The
caps of fairies and magicians are well-nigh always red.
Notes:
-
Source: W. B.
Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888).
-
Compare Yeats's
etymology with the following words, all of which mean, respectively,
sea-woman (or maid) and sea-man:
-
Danish:
havfrue, havmand
-
English:
mermaid, merman.
-
German:
Meerfrau, Meermann.
Resource List - entries taken verbatim from:
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/water.html
|
