Mermaid Monday: Stoning Mermaids November 27, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
This brief account was published in the press in 1827 (Anon).
Within these last two or three days there have been several mermaids seen on the rocks at Trenance, in the parish of Mawgan. I will state the particulars at length, as I have been enabled to collect them, and which are from undoubted authority, and you can make what extracts you think proper. One evening this week, a young man who lives adjoining the beach at Mawgan Porth, had made an appointment to meet another person on the beach to catch sprats with him. He went out about ten o’clock at night, and coming near a point which runs into the sea, he heard a screeching noise proceeding from a large cavern which is left by the tide at low water, but which has some deep pools in it, and communicates with the sea by another outlet. He thought it was the person he had appointed to meet, and called out to him, but his astonishment is not to be described when on going up he saw something in the shape of a human figure staring on him, with long hair hanging all around it. He then ran away , thinking, as he ran that he had seen the devil. The next day, some men being on the cliffs near this place, saw three creatures of the same description. The following day five were seen. The persons who saw the last five describe them in this manner: The mermaids were about forty feet below the men (who stood on the cliff), and were lying on a rock, separated from the land by some yards by deep water; two of them were large, about four feet and a half to five feet long, and these appeared to be sleeping on the rock; the other small ones were swimming about, and went off once to sea and then came back again. The men looked at them for more than an hour, and flung stones at them, but they would not move off. The large ones seemed to be lying on their faces, their upper parts were like those of human beings, and black or dark-coloured, with very long hair hanging around them; their lower parts were of a bluish colour, and terminating in a fin, like fish. The sea would sometimes wash over them, and then leave them dry again. Their movements seemed to be slow. The hair of these mermaids extended to a distance of nine or ten feet.
This was originally published in the Plymouth Journal and their information came from ‘our correspondent at St Columb’.
