I've loved mermaids ever since I was a little girl. I had the fake plastic fins, and I would swirl around in the pool for hours until my parents made me come inside. There was that Disney movie, The Thirteenth Year, where the boy grew up as a human and didn't realize he was a mermaid until he turned 13. I was absolutely convinced that this was why I wasn't a mermaid yet. Alas, my 13th birthday came and went and I never grew a tail. Even though I have (somewhat) accepted that fact that I will never be a mermaid, I haven't grown out of my fascination with mermaid legends. Here are my absolute favorite legends about mermaids:

Japan

Japanese mermaid folklore is the most unique of all I have ever read. While most cultures attribute beauty and allure as characteristics of mermaids, Japanese culture has a much different idea. The “ningyo” meaning “human fish” is the most prominent legend in similarity to western legends, in that they are a creature that is part fish and part mammal; from there the similarities end. The ningyo is mainly a fish with a human-like or monkey-like head. It is known to be a very ugly creature, but one of great luck. The legend states that ningyo’s are cursed humans, but also tokens of luck, oracles of the future, and a means to immortality. Ningyo’s were thought to predict good harvests and plagues. Figures and monuments were erected in their honor to bring luck during times of harvest and hardship. According to folklore, a man once caught a ningyo and prepared it for his friends to eat, but they refused. His daughter ate it instead and lived as a wandering nun for the next 800 years.

British Isles

Mermaids in the British Isles take on a more traditional view as to what we normally think in western culture. They are half women, half fish creatures who would sing to men from the oceans. They were omens of bad weather for fishermen and symbols of vanity and promiscuity; they took all they wanted and destroyed everything in return, all with a beautiful smile and song.

Babylonian Empire

Babylonian mermaid legends are among the oldest cultural myths involving mermaids that are studied. Around 600-500 B.C. parts of modern day Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey made up the Babylonian empire. Through this expanse, legends of mermaid like creatures arise in their ideology on the afterlife. Art relics of the time show mermaid-like creatures in their idea of what can be compared to “heaven”. The difference is that their “heaven” is shown as being under ground in an oceanic, Atlantis-like setting. The mermaid-like creatures, according to the art relics, are not the God or Goddess of the afterlife, but mere inhabitants. I love this legend because who knows what they are? Are they spirits or “angels”, or just members of the afterlife? The possibility that ancient cultures believed the dead would turn into a mermaid in the afterlife is basically the coolest idea of “heaven” I have ever heard.

Celtic

Finally, my absolute favorite mermaid legend is that of ancient Celtic cultures. In these stories mermaids had the ability to shed their tails like a snake, to reveal human legs. Mermaids in these legends were beautiful creatures content with their ocean lives, but they held a curiosity for the world on land. When they would come on shore and shed their tales, the men in the village would marry them and steal their tales so that they could not return to the ocean. Through this legend the mermaids then began life as humans; they were married, they had babies, and they raised families. Therefore, many believed they had mermaid ancestry in their genealogy and their blood. Many grave markers from this culture have mermaid relics to mark their ancestry.

To think that my Celtic ancestors could have been mermaids, or that when I die I could become a mermaid ghost in a watery afterlife, or that there are beautiful creatures out there powerful enough to bring storms and crash ships, or predict the weather and bring immortality is beyond cool. If you don’t think it’s cool you probably don’t have mermaid blood in your ancestry, but I do.