Carolyn Turgeon - The Mermaid Handbook: An Alluring Treasury of Literature, Lore, Art, Recipes, and Projects

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

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The Mermaid, Howard Pyle, 1910.

Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, USA/Gift of the Children of Howard Pyle/Bridgeman Images

My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememberest

Since once I sat upon a promontory

And heard a mermaid on a dolphins back

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath

That the rude sea grew civil at her song

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres

To hear the seamaids music?

W ILLIAM S HAKESPEARE
A Midsummer Nights Dream, Act 2, Scene 1

Les Oceanides, Gustave Dor, c.18601869.

Private Collection/Photo Peter Nahum at The Leicester Galleries, London/Bridgeman Images

To hear the sea-maids music, illustrated by Arthur Rackham for his 1908 edition of A Midsummer Nights Dream.

Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library/Alamy Stock Photo

T HIS BOOK IS FOR MERMAIDS, AND FOR EVERYONE who loves mermaids, and for everyone who secretly wants to be a mermaid, deep down. Its for all those who hold conch shells to their ears to hear the ocean and its secret messages; who love the soft iridescent beauty of a shells interior; who have a special affinity for pearls and sea glass and aquamarine; who stalk beaches for a perfect washed-up treasure gleaming from the sand. Its also for those who love the feel of salt on their skin and in their hair and who dream of swimmingtail stretching out behind themin the open ocean, alongside manta rays, whales, and dangerous, glittering creatures who could pull you to the ocean floor without a thoughtand youd almost let them.

I wasnt always one of these people. I wasnt a mermaid person and I never secretly wanted to be one, though I loved fairy tales. Like almost every other girl of my generation, Id grown up loving Splash and Disneys animated film The Little Mermaid. Id spent most of my life avoiding the ocean, though: Im not only too pale for the sun but also have an abiding love of rain, cold weather, and generally nonoceanic terrains. When I visited the Arctic a few years ago, it was a dream come true. Plus, the ocean is terrifying. Who knows whats right there, below the surface?

I wrote my novel Mermaid, a reimagining of Hans Christian Andersens story The Little Mermaid, almost by accident. In 2008, a British publisher approached me about buying the UK rights to publish my novel Godmother, which was set to come out the following year in the United States, and asked to see what else I was working on. I detailed a few works in progress and then made a somewhat random dream list of other ideas, including something about a childrens book about a mermaid. The publisher bought that idea, to my surprise, but wanted an adult novel instead. I wasnt opposed to the ideawho wouldnt want to write about mermaids? I thoughtand spent some weeks trying to settle on a concept before my agent pushed me toward the Andersen tale as a source of inspiration. I loved The Little Mermaid but thought it was far too depressingbeautifully soto do anything with until one day I had this image of the human princess come to mind. Although her character is barely in the story, shes the one who marries the prince, leaving the mermaid brokenhearted. I imagined the princess standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean and seeing the mermaid for the first time, an almost-drowned man in her arms. That would be the kind of moment that changed a life, I thoughtand I could imagine a whole book unfurling from that moment.

I began writing that book in 2009, and thats when I started seeing what had been invisible to me before: mermaids are everywhere. They peek out from subway posters, blink up from Starbucks cups, and lounge treacherously in the guise of statues, plaques, and murals in cities all over the world. When friends (and strangers on Facebook) learned I was writing the book, they sent me photographs of mermaids they came across, too: painted on a door in Santa Fe or on the side of a boat in Germany, sculpted out of snow in Alaska, and, in the flesh, posing in an old-time mermaid tank in Portland, Oregon.

Mermaids in the Deep, Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1882.

Private Collection/Photo Christies Images/Bridgeman Images

I started a blog, I Am a Mermaid, to capture these mermaids from around the world. Thats when I realized how powerful mermaids really are, how they have held humankind in their dangerous but incredibly glamorous thrall in one form or another for millennia. Through the blog, I slowly became aware of a whole culture of people who love mermaids. More than that, I became aware of a whole culture of people who are mermaids; who, when they put on a tailand there are many dazzling, handcrafted, realistic-looking mermaid tails available todayliterally and figuratively slip into a new skin. As I met them, as I interviewed them, as I watched their videos, I realized that something wonderful and wild was happening behind all the flash and kitsch. Women were tapping into some mystical, primitive part of themselves, something powerful and dangerous, even awe-inspiring.

I heard many wonderful stories, like that of septuagenarian Vicki Smith, who began swimming at Weeki Wachee Springs in 1957 and who performed for Elvis Presley in 1961. She told me that returning to Weeki Wachee in her sixties was a transformative experiencegetting in that water, being weightless and free, made her feel seventeen again. Bambi the Mermaid, whos attended every Coney Island Mermaid Parade for more than twenty-five years, described how being a mermaid helped her during her bereavement after her husbands death. Plus, mermaids never worry about their weight or growing old or become bogged down by insecurities, she said. And Raina the Halifax Mermaid told me how her mermaid persona strips away her usual shyness and insecurities and gives her confidence and daring; the powerful mermaid was, she realized, the outward expression of her true, tamped-down inner self. Mermaid after mermaid spoke to me of freedom and power and a feeling of pure bliss under the water, and the stories kept coming.

Its hard to talk to all those sea-loving ladies and not fall in love with the sea, too. Eventually I heard the siren song myself. In 2011, three months after