Mermaids

Although the characters in Neil Gaiman's "Hob's Leviathan" see the Sea Serpent, they merely discuss mermaids:

"Ah, you are talking about mermaids then, the cold fishy women with clammy kisses and scaly breasts? Ladies who lure you by clasping you to their cold bosoms and then make you go 'Now I am dead oh dear oh me' by dragging you beneath the briny?"
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Worlds' End (New York, 1994), p. 76.

Ironically, The Sandman is set in a fictional universe that does include merpeople as descendants of Atlanteans although they do not appear here. This dialogue is ambiguous: maybe mermaids are real; maybe they are not. Cold, fishy, clammy, scaly murderesses do not correspond to the merwomen in Poul Anderson's The Merman's Children but do exactly match Dahut in Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys.

Poul Anderson, of course, presents an sf version of merpeople (see here) and also alien aquatic beings who, like the merpeople, dance in the water in Ensign Flandry - also human beings who remain air breathers but spend most of their lives on and under water in "The Game of Glory." Andersonian comprehensiveness.

The Ysan sea god is Lir. The mermen's city is Liri. Superman's mermaid girlfriend is Lori Lemaris, which sounds similar.

Off Greenland

The Merman's Children, Book Three, VII.

Merfolk brother and sister, Tauno and Eyjan, swim near Greenland. The cold choppy sea water rocks their bodies, caresses their muscles, warms their interiors and tastes not only of salt but also of:

"...life and deeps and distances." (p. 156)

Winds have smelled of distance. Now water tastes of it. This water also whooshes and gurgles around the two merpeople but roars on the shore. As for colours, the blue-black whitecaps shimmer green. Thus, the water generates inner and outer bodily sensations, multiple tastes, sounds and colours.

There are many other sensations. The wind is sharp. Gull wings and cries fill the silver-gray sky where wrack flies like smoke. Cliffs are darkling. Autumnal meadows are yellow. Peaks are snow-covered. Inland ice is bleak but bright. Merpeople live in and with nature.

The Veil Of Subitj

The historical Pavle Subitj tells the fictional fantasy character, Vanimen the merman:

"'...I've worked harder than you imagine, to contain the news of you.'" (The Merman's Children, p. 147)

This is like the Veil Of Brennilis in Poul and Karen Anderson's The King Of Ys. By working hard to contain the news of a group of merpeople, Subitj "saves the appearances" of our history which has no record of such beings in Europe - except as legends.

Subitj continues:

"'Outside the Skradin vicinage, there go naught but rumors...Even when you join us, I'll strive that that happen quietly. No public tidings, no dispatches to King or Pope.'" (ibid.)

He does this because:

"'Did your story spread wide, excitement might easily take a dangerous turn.'" (ibid.)

And such excitement would more likely have been recorded. As it is, public, King and Pope will be kept in ignorance - and so are their descendants. In fact, Vanimen initially refuses this invitation for his people to be quietly and peacefully integrated into Western Christendom so what does happen to them? I must continue to reread but I do remember that some of the merpeople will remain free and wild and go West. Yet again, we would like another sequel.

Similar Scenarios

(i) A time traveler visits the far future Earth.
(ii) A space traveler visits an older Earth-like planet.
(iii) A space traveler returns to the far future Earth.

In each of these similar scenarios, a modern or near future viewpoint character can witness the long time decline or devolution of human, or humanoid, beings. In the previous post, I compared Poul Anderson's "The High Ones" (scenario (ii)) with HG Wells' The Time Machine (scenario (i)). "The High Ones" turns out to have been an ironic title.

Anderson's "The Horn of Time the Hunter" (original title, "Homo Aquaticus"), which I am about to reread, is a variation on scenario (iii). Space travelers to the galactic core, returning to Earth in the far future, stop at a humanly colonized planet where human beings have become aquatic and lost their humanity.

Anderson has merpeople in his fantasies. There is, or was, an "aquatic ape" theory according to which early human beings lost their body hair by standing up to their necks in the sea for long periods to evade predators. Imagine if some of them had swum out further, becoming human equivalents of dolphins or even developing gills, real merpeople but sf, not fantasy.

Starting Book Two

The Merman's Children

I will be away from home and the computer all day tomorrow so there will be a twenty four hour moratorium on blogging.

The Merman's Children, Book Two, Chapters I-V, occupies pp. 71-109, thirty nine pages of text.

Vanimen and his merpeople have stolen a ship called Pretiosissimus Sanguis. He thinks that this name bodes ill but what does it mean? "The Most Precious Blood." (I find this devotional focus on blood shed by impalement distasteful.)

The ship yaws. It is accompanied by Vanimen's loyal orca which only he dares mount. (p. 14) He orders that the sail be reefed. Not all the merpeople can fit in the ship but they swim near. A gale comes from "'...Greenland and the boreal ice beyond.'" (p. 72) Vanimen has seen cold gathering for a few centuries. Was the storm caused by the curse of the watchman whom he killed to steal the ship? Vanimen summons some mermen up the Jacob's ladder.

Like several of Poul Anderson's Prologues, Forewords or opening chapters, Chapter I of World Without Stars (New York, 1966) introduces a setting that will reappear later in the novel and presents statements that will not make sense until later.
-copied from here.

I have copied this sentence from an earlier blog because we have a similar situation in The Merman's Children. Beginning to read Book Two, we still do not know how the setting, characters or events of the Prologue are going to connect with the rest of the novel.

Naive Mythology

The Merman's Children.

Since any fantasy assumes counterfactual premises, Poul Anderson bases this particular historical fantasy novel on:

"...the naive, half-pagan mythology of peasants and seafarers in the early fourteenth century..." (p. viii)

- which he sharply distinguishes from Thomist theology. Indeed. In this mythology:

pictures and images turn their faces to the wall when a merman enters a church;

some rational beings, e.g., merpeople, do not have souls - but can be given them!

This contradicts not only what I believe now but also what I was told to believe in school but it does not matter because the work is a fantasy. Soulless rational beings coexisting with souled rational beings is a fictional premise just as much as merpeople and revolving images.

This fantasy does not have to be set in a parallel universe because the idea is that, as in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series, Faerie withdrew from Earth in historical times so it should be completely gone by the time the novel is written.

"A Town Of Merfolk!"

An archdeacon tells his bishop:

"'...offshore is a town of merfolk!'"
-Poul Anderson, The Merman's Children (London, 1981), p. 10.

This surprises us. We expect merpeople in a fantasy novel but do not expect them to be generally known about - unless this is another of Anderson's alternative histories in which magic works? No, it is our history but is also another case of fantastic events occurring in the past but being forgotten about in the present. The fabulous city of Ys was secluded while it existed, was totally destroyed by the sea and has since been forgotten except as a legend. Liri, the merfolk town, is destroyed by exorcism and its few survivors flee across the Atlantic.

The promise of a new world across the ocean is present in Poul Anderson's works set in earlier periods. St Brendan, Bjarni Herjulsson and an Ysan sailor reached North America and the merpeople will also.

In his Foreword to The Broken Sword, Anderson raised the unanswered question: what became of Faerie? The blurb on the back of my edition of The Merman's Children (Sphere Books. London, 1981) is worded as if to answer that question:

"THE FANTASTIC EPIC OF THE LAST DAYS OF THE FAERIE

"In the waning years of the Middle Ages, before Christendom had completely scoured the world of magic, both Faerie and Man lived on Europe's shores. This is the story of those last days: of how the Faerie were driven out of Denmark..."  

Neil Gaiman has Auberon leading Faerie to another plane.

Ys And The Merman's Children

The Merman's Children (London, 1981) is set about a thousand years later than The King Of Ys. Rereading the former immediately after the latter, we notice:

(i) merpeople in both (not only does an Ysan princess become a mermaid but merfolk plural had been mentioned earlier in connection with the Irish sea god);

(ii) a sea god called Lir in Ys and a merpeople town called Liri in The Merman's Children;

(iii) that Ys ends with the exorcism of the mermaid whereas Children begins with the exorcism of Liri;

(iv) in the later work, not Ys but another submerged city whose inhabitants had worshipped a kraken;

(v) characters in both works hoping to cross the Atlantic to colonise a "new world";

(vi) in Ys, Pagan gods retreating before Christianity and, in Children, Pagan supernatural beings almost extinct;

(vii) the Kings of Ys and Liri converting to Christianity but the merman's son sailing "Westward, maybe to Vinland or beyond..." in order to retain his heathen freedom (p. 256).

(viii) St Martin, a character in Ys, referred to in Children - also appropriate references in the latter to Arthur and Ogier.

The Merman's Children And Operation Chaos

The premise of Poul Anderson's The Merman's Children is that magic used to happen but not any longer whereas the premise of his Operation Chaos is that magic happens now but in a parallel universe. Both premises recognize that magic does not overtly happen here and now. I have just noticed a structural and thematic parallel:

The Merman's Children, about merpeople, is divided into -

Prologue
Book One: Kraken
Book Two: Selkie
Book Three: Tupilak
Book Four: Vilja
Epilogue

Operation Chaos, narrated by a werewolf, collects -

"Operation Afreet"
"Operation Salamander"
"Operation Incubus"
"Operation Changeling"

Thus, these two volumes present ten kinds of mythical being. The Broken Sword also features a changeling.

The merpeople kill a kraken and are helped to return home by a selkie. I have not yet reread Books Three and Four. I have been noting nautical terms:

"...the halfworld lived yet along this littoral..." (The Merman's Children, p. 95)

"Vanimen tried to work clear of the lee shore..." (p. 96)

"Pole out the starboard clew!" (p. 97)

Some Shakespearen Reflections

(For the Latin and English verses under Shakespeare's funerary monument, see here.)

(i) "The Comedy of Errors" is a play by William Shakespeare; "A Tragedy of Errors" is a short story by Poul Anderson.

(ii) Anderson's Father Tomislav speculates here that everything created, including the soulless merpeople, might be resurrected to the glory of God. Merpeople are carved on seats in Holy Trinity Church where Shakespeare was baptized and buried.

(iii) I read an sf story about a future explorer of Earth who sickened and died after disturbing an ancient grave:

"Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare
"To dig the dust enclosed heare.
"Blese be ye man that spares these stones,
"And curst be he that moves my bones."
-see here.

Some previous posts resulting from holiday trips:

Ys And The Village
search result for Caernarfon

Blown Off Course; Steering A New Course

The Merman's Children.

The stolen ship has a cabin on the starboard and  larboard sides. During the storm, merpeople who cannot fit onto the ship hang onto lines but some are lost as is the accompanying orca.

Vanimen had intended to cross the Atlantic but the storm drives the ship south to the Gates of Hercules where dolphins advise him that Dalmatia beyond Italy in the Mediterranean might welcome Faerie creatures - whereas the  now damaged ship will never cross the ocean. We remember a Time Patrol mission to "Gibraltar Falls."

We have ordered Island In The Sea Of Time by SM Stirling in order both to appreciate a post-Anderson time travel/alternative history series and to compare it with Anderson's works on these themes. In previous posts, the conclusions drawn were:

Anderson comprehensively covered every aspect of sf, including alternative histories;
Stirling, specializing in alternative histories, has developed this concept further than Anderson.

However, although the past cannot change, our interpretation of it can so we will continue to read and reread without preconceptions.

Space, Time And Experience

We have discussed space travel and time travel and will now consider experience. We experience an empirically discerned spatiotemporal realm. The subject and objects of experience are both spatially differentiated and temporally enduring. If there were neither space nor time, then experience would shrink to an instantaneous point, i.e., would cease to exist. I think that experience is necessarily spatiotemporal and therefore that timeless consciousness is as impossible as a sideless square. Can there be transtemporal consciousness that would incorporate time just as three-dimensional space incorporates planes? I don't know.

If a fictional character has qualitatively different sensory experiences and/or thought processes, then how does the auther convey these qualitative differences to his readers? Poul Anderson describes the heightened sensations of werewolves, merpeople and Ythrians in flight. I was reminded of this by reading Elliot S. Maggin's accounts of Superman's ability to perceive the entire electromagnetic spectrum and of Lex Luthor's ability routinely to think his way out of any high security confinement.

Prefigurements II

I have found another example. In Poul and Karen Anderson's Dahut (London, 1989):

"Dahut raised herself to a sitting position, rising from the blankets like a mermaid from the sea." (p. 282)

I illustrated a previous post (also here) with a picture of the legendary Dahut as a mermaid. Is that what she becomes at the end of The King Of Ys Tetralogy? She does not become half fish but "merpeople," meaning simply "sea people," can be aquatic bipeds, as in another historical fantasy by Poul Anderson.

The Anderson's "...synopsis of the basic medieval story..." has Dahut becoming "...a siren, haunting the coast, luring sailors to shipwreck among the many rocks..." (The Dog And The Wolf (London, 1989), pp. 529-530). As far as I remember, not having reread that far yet, that is what she does in The Dog And The Wolf, whereas the half-fish mermaids were supposed, I think, to pull individual sailors under the water.

In any case, the Andersons' Dahut becomes something that lives in the sea and that is prefigured when, in the previous volume, she rises from her lover's bed like a mermaid.

Sunken Civilisations

In Poul Anderson's The Dancer From Atlantis (London, 1977), the phrase:

"...the fair and happy realm which the sea took back unto itself..." (p. 44)

sounds like the city of Ys in Poul and Karen Anderson's King of Ys tetralogy but here refers to Atlantis. Thus, the Andersons wrote four novels about one sunken civilisation and Poul wrote one novel about another. The Atlantis of myth, fantasy and much science fiction (sf), including Doctor Who, was a prehistoric civilisation, sometimes technologically advanced, on a mid-Atlantic continent that sank. In some works of fiction, it even survives into the twenty first century as a submarine civilisation whose inhabitants adapted by becoming merpeople.

Apart from the time travel premise that makes it sf, The Dancer From Atlantis is historical fiction and therefore is set not on the mythical continent but on Crete in accordance with the theory that Cretan Minoan civilisation was the source of the Atlantis legend. I am still rereading so have not yet retrieved all the details.

A well written time travel story makes more sense when reread. One such detail is that we know at an early stage that Reid will lose his wrist watch. Erissa says of the watch, "'You did not have this before..." (p. 40).

She remembers meeting him in her youth and he is soon to meet her in her youth.

"The Freedom Of The Swan's Road"

"Vanimen and Meiiva walked down the wagon track that went through the forest. Snow had fallen of late, an inch or two that soon melted off bare dirt but abided in purity under the trees. Boughs and twigs reached austere across blueness. The air was quiet and nearly warm." (The Merman's Children, Book Three, Chapter V, p. 150)

Three senses: blueness; silence; warmth.

The two leading merpeople need a quiet walk and talk to discuss the future of their people:

Meiiva asks:

"'Do you really think that we should forsake Faerie?'...We had the freedom of the swan's road.'" (p. 151)

Vanimen replies in part:

"'Our people can do well enough. Their swimming skills are in demand...'" (ibid.)

Although this text is a fantasy, it expresses real historical social changes - from a way of life that was more spontaneous and closer to nature to an economy in which populations are integrated into urban civilization where they survive by selling their skills in the market place - and, I would add, where we can preserve "...the freedom of the swan's road..." in new ways. Shakespeare's plays addressed this transition: see here.

"'In one or two hundred years, the blood of Liri will be mingled unto evanishment, the memory of Liri be a myth that no sensible man believes." (ibid.)

However, people live by remembering old myths and creating new ones.

Vocabulary And Fantasy

Caitlin says:

"'... - lost memories rise before me like merrows from the sea - ...'"
-Poul Anderson, The Avatar, XLIV, p. 368.

What are we to make of such a statement? I have never encountered the word "merrow" anywhere else. My computer does not recognize it. It is not in my edition of Chambers Dictionary. On previous readings, I might not had a dictionary to hand or might not yet have learned that it was advisable to keep a dictionary nearby when reading Poul Anderson. I would have guessed a (completely wrong) meaning from the context, then would have instantly forgotten the word while continuing to follow the narrative. I have no memory of reading this word before although this is at least my third reading of the novel. Now I google it. See here.

The appearance of the Others as gods and Caitlin's reference to merpeople remind us of Anderson's fantasies and of Clarke's third law. Anderson's most comprehensive fantasy-sf interface is the Time Patrol story, "Star of the Sea," where successive sections are mythological writing, historical fiction and science fiction with a contemporary setting and the concluding section is a prayer.

Today begins a new working week except for those of us who are unemployed or retired. I will gym and swim, visit Ketlan for lunch, attend meditation group this evening and hopefully also blog more. I have yet to reread The Avatar, XLIX and L.

Then, Now And Later

The Merman's Children, Book Three, I.

Father Tomislav knows of merpeople, Leshy, domovoi, poleviki and viljai. Is it feasible that such beings were known to exist back then yet are believed never to have existed now? Many medieval accounts that were thought to be fanciful must have been literally true.

If Faeries fades as Christianity advances, will Christianity fade as secularism advances? The Bible recounts what God did miraculously in the past whereas future histories recount what mankind will do technologically in the future. CS Lewis replies with his Ransom novels. A revived Merlin and descending angels will sabotage an attempted scientific reorganization of society. A likely story. Poul Anderson and James Blish show religious belief and doubt continuing to coexist in future.

(I am experiencing difficulty with retrieving images.)

On Bornholm

The Merman's Children, Book Four, IV.

A ship crosses the Baltic Sea from Copenhagen to Bornholm and docks at Sandvig near Hammer House.

Whitecaps are gray. The sky is pale and whistling. Pebbles rattle. Gulls fly and mew. Brown tangled kelp, strewn on the sand, bladders popping, smells of the deeps. Also: dunes, grass, moor, heather and a standing stone. (Three senses.)

The merman's children wade ashore, naked, Tauno's hair greenish-gold, Eyjan's bronze-red with a seaweed undertint.

Conversation commences but I have formed the habit of pausing on the descriptions. And what descriptions these are with the merfolk effectively personifying the elements and the deeps. In fact, in the prevailing mythology, merpeople are entirely of nature because they lack the human souls that would link them to the supernatural. But they have been in those deeps that the kelp evokes.

(Here, it is time for a pause for other reading.)

Echoes

A Poul Anderson fan can enjoy historical references when they occur elsewhere. This evening, on my car radio, I heard part of a drama in which a Norseman in the Varangian Guard had to swear allegiance to the White Christ although he knew that, when he drew his sword, it was Thor that was beside him. Right on, bro! I would prefer an Empire in which (as long as they wanted to) Norsemen kept Thor, Gratillonius kept Mithras, others followed the Buddha Dharma etc and, if the state insisted, all paid lip service to the official cult of the Jade Emperor, the Olympians or the White Christ etc. But I remember the merpeople fleeing from exorcism. See Filming It.

The Merman's Children has an Author's Note, in which the author addresses the readers, and both a Prologue and an Epilogue, which are parts of the narrative. See Foreword. Chamber's Dictionary identifies a prologue as an introduction.

Aquatic Men

 

In Poul Anderson's The Merman's Children, merpeople exist because the novel is historical fantasy.

In Anderson's "The Horn of Time the Hunter," human colonists of an extra-solar planet have adapted to become sea dwellers.

In James Blish's The Seedling Stars, one group of Adapted Men lives in pools of water on an extra-solar planet.

In James Blish's and Norman L. Knight's A Torrent Of Faces, the Tritons are genetically engineered human amphibians on Earth.

Maybe that fourth group is the least implausible. They colonize Terrestrial oceans, not other planets.