mermaid
Mermaids and sea witches are water spirits in central to northern European folk lore.
About the name
The name comes from the Old High German nihhus , niccus or nichessa , which means "water spirit". Another etymological derivation leads it back to the Latin necare ("to kill").
Nixe is the female form, there is also the male Nix , which, depending on the dialect, is also known as Niss , Neck or Nöck and is more often referred to as Aquarius .
Essence
A characteristic feature of the mermaids is that they bring people danger , harm and death . They often beguile or seduce men and draw them to the bottom of rivers and lakes. But sometimes they also warn (in vain) of dangers. In this respect, the mermaid is to be distinguished in particular from
- Water women (aspect of motherliness or love)
- Mermaids (aspect of the need for salvation)
A clear assignment to one of the categories is not possible for numerous aquatic creatures (e.g. "The beautiful Lau " by Eduard Mörike ). In addition, the terms mentioned are often confused and used like synonyms, especially in recent times.
In the field of analytical psychology , the mermaid, like all female aquatic beings , is a form of the deep psychological mother archetype , an expression of the so-called anima (cf. Carl Gustav Jung ). In contrast to the protective water women in particular, the mermaid expresses the negative aspect of the destructive, devouring mother.
shape
In older sources, mermaids are usually described as beautiful, young women with pale or greenish skin, the hair can be shimmering green or entirely green, but the most frequently mentioned characteristic is a wet, dripping skirt hem. At least on land they go barefoot. Later, mermaids with a human upper body and a fishtail covered with scales appear increasingly , which is an approximation of the mermaid type.
Known mermaids
The earliest evidence of mermaids is provided by the sirens from Homer's epic The Odyssey , who tried to prevent Odysseus and his companions from returning to Ithaca with their deadly song .
Mermaids also appear in the Nibelungen saga. Two water spirits, on the one hand human-shaped, on the other hand bird-shaped, robbed of their clothes by Hagen, buy their return through a prophecy - only one will return from the trip to Etzel's farm: “It must be like this: None of you Degen will be home again see as the king's chaplain, that is well known to us, he comes home safe in King Gunther's country. ”( Karl Simrock , Das Nibelungenlied, verse 1587). Hagen, mocking fate, throws the chaplain into the waters of the Rhine on the crossing; However, the latter, unable to swim, happily reaches the shore and thus fulfills the prophecy. These mermaids have been known as Rhine daughters since Richard Wagner's strong reworking of the myths in the Ring of the Nibelung .
The famous Loreley , which pulls the Rhine ships into the depths with its singing, is also said to have been a mermaid. Another folk tale tells of a mermaid who is turned away as a beggar during a storm at the gates of a robber baron's castle, whereupon the castle sinks into a lake.
The bronze sculpture of the Minsener Seewiefken is in Minsen im Wangerland . According to a legend, the inhabitants of the sea caught the sea woman in order to extort a cure from her, and when she was able to escape it is said to have destroyed the place in revenge the next day when all the inhabitants were in the church to pray. This is where the saying goes : Dat geiht ut as dat Be'n to Minsen (“That goes like praying to Minsen!”).
More mermaids appear in the sagas Rusálka (Slavic area), The bridegroom on the water (Switzerland), The water witch (Swabia), The sea mermaid and the eels (England), The enchanted lake (Ireland), The water lily mermaid (Germany), The Mermaid with the golden lyre (Black Forest), The saga of the Elbjungfer (Magdeburg) and The Meermaid (Estonia). In Greek folklore, the Gorgon - originally a winged monster - has mutated into a mermaid.
In the fairy tale The Mermaid in the Pond , the title character lets himself be promised in return for wealth and happiness what was last born in his house, and so deceives his son. The mermaid from the fairy tale of the same name by the Brothers Grimm kidnaps two children into their realm and lets them spin flax and cut trees for themselves before escaping with a trick.
In Goethe's ballad The Fisherman , a mermaid lures the fisherman into her hidden realm with the much-quoted words “She half pulled him, half he sank”. It remains to be seen whether their delightful promises will come true.
The title character from Eduard Mörike's story, The History of the Beautiful Lau , who lives in the so-called Blautopf on the Swabian Alb near Ulm, lives in the so-called Blautopf , as she attracts a cheeky shepherd boy "faster than lightning and more poisonous than an otter" into the deep. At the same time, the fact that she is waiting for redemption from her childlessness brings her closer to a mermaid. Mörike's mermaids from Mummelsee are also known .
Pictorial representations of mermaids can be found in particular on frescoes in Romanesque churches , for example in the church of St. Martin in Zillis ( Graubünden ). They also appear in Hieronymus Bosch's apocalyptic painting The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1500), but also in Johannes Heyden's book On Nature, Kinds and Characteristics of Creatures or Creatures of God from 1565.
The mermaids from the manga Mermaid Saga by Rumiko Takahashi also have mermaid-like traits . According to the Japanese legend of the Yao Bikuni ( 八百 比丘尼 , literally: "eight hundred [ -year- old] nun "), the consumption of her flesh and blood gives immortality to those with a pure heart . Instead, those with corrupt hearts are driven into misery and madness and they turn into monsters.
Eroticism and death
Despite their seductive appearance, mermaids can bring death and ruin. In this context, the etymological derivation from Latin necare, already mentioned, should be seen.
In Indo-European mythology, the element of the mermaids - water - generally plays an important role in connection with death and the realm of the dead. The latter was thought of as being across a water or under water. The goddess Rán described in the Edda is z. B. Mistress of the souls of the drowned. Ultimately, the water spirits are probably the souls of the deceased.
The erotic component only appears to be in contradiction to this, because in traditional societies everything is in a cycle of becoming and passing, death and love or fertility and arising. These are not the beginning and end points of a life span, but endlessly repeating, mutually dependent principles. (For fertility rites in connection with water spirits, see above all Rusálka .)
The male forms are more difficult to explain, their relationship to the old European rulers of the underwater world (see sea god ), i. H. It is unclear whether there is an evolutionary relationship between the motifs or not. For this, z. B. the ability of some Nöcks to transform into horses, i.e. animals that are ascribed to Poseidon / Neptune in Greek / Roman mythology and which are a common form of the kelpie in British mythology .
literature
- Barbara Stamer (Ed.): Fairy tales of mermaids and water women. Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-596-22873-5 .
- Enn Vetemaa: The mermaids of Estonia . Frankfurt 2002, ISBN 3-8218-4515-5 .
- Gwen Benwell & Arthur Waugh: Daughters of the Sea. Of mermaids, nereids , sirens and tritons . Marion von Schröder, Hamburg 1962.
- Helga Arend: Competing images of women in the sagas of the Rhine. In: The mermaid legends from Brey retold by Ulli Biere and Werner Müller. Edited by Bernd Ullrich Biere. mykum Verlag: Bornau 2019, pp. 69–93. ISBN 978-3-9819884-2-0 .
