Mermaids: Mythological Hybrid Creatures

A mermaid is a mythological hybrid creature that is half human, and half fish. In legends there are both mermaids, which are females, and mermen, which are males. Mermaids have the torso of a fish and the upper body is all human. Mermaids are often interchanged with water nymphs, fairies, as well as selkies and succubuses. Mermaids are usually reflected as beautiful and awfully attractive in looks, but in other tales, mermaids are known to have the lower body of a bird and are not attractive at all. No matter how a mermaid was portrayed, they all had the common instinct of attracting men into the ocean and sending them to their doom. The most common legend of mermaids would be about sailors spotting a mermaid and becoming attracted to them in an instant. …show more content…
The sailors’ desperate attempt to make contact with the mermaids would jump into the sea, but instead ended up drowning. Some cultures claim that their undying beauty would hypnotize them while other claim that it is their songs that hypnotize land people, more specifically men. Most legends warn that a mermaid is a creature of lust and destruction, but are also seen as soulless creatures and replace their emptiness with sexual attraction.
Mermaids are a representation of life as well as death. They emerge from oceans and the water is a source of purity as well as replenishes. In most tales, a mermaid must remain or be near water because it is an element, which maintains life, offers comfort, and give life. Water can also be seen in religious ceremonies such as baptisms. The legend of Thessalonike is a Greek legend that talks about a mermaid who lived in Aegon for hundreds of years. This story came to be when Alexander went on a quest to search for the Fountain of Immortality