Mermaid Monday: Mermaid in Berlin October 9, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Bit of a melancholy mermaid story this week that has, sorry, little to do with mermaids and nothing to do with the sea.
The following story has been published at Berlin under quasi-official sanction [those Prussians!]: ‘On the 15th, the wife of a painter in Old Schonhaus Street, brought into the world a most wonderful creature. This was a child born only a few weeks before the regular time, which had the regular human form down to the loins, and thence downwards that of a fish, but without scales. It[s] fingers were webbed, but otherwise perfectly well formed. It died half an hour after birth, in the presence of the midwife and Dr Hoffmann. (Anon, 1854)
There is no record of an artist on Old Schonhaus Street and Beach has failed to find a German report of this mermaid birth, which, of course, does not mean that it didn’t happen or that it was not published. As to genetic malfunctions that can explain a malfigured child there is the so-called mermaid syndrome [upsetting pictures] when the legs are fused together. Perhaps this was a very severe case? Other newborn mermaids: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
