MERMEN AND MERMAIDS. 285 



melody charmed the entranced voyager to his 

 destruction ! The fancies of the northern nations 

 were not less imaginative. " Beneath the depths 

 of the ocean, an atmosphere exists adapted to the 

 respiring organs of certain beings resembling, in 

 form, the human race, who are possessed of sur- 

 passing beauty, of limited supernatural powers, and 

 liable to the incidents of death. They dwell in a 

 wide territory of the globe far below the region of 

 fishes, over which the sea, like the cloudy canopy 

 of our sky, loftily rolls, and there they possess ha- 

 bitations constructed of the pearly and coralline 

 productions of the ocean. Having lungs not adapted 

 to a watery medium, but to the nature of atmo- 

 spheric air, it would be impossible for them to pass 

 through the volume of waters that intervenes be- 

 tween the submarine and the supramarine world, if 

 it were not for their extraordinary power of enter- 

 ing the skin of some animal capable of existing in 

 the sea. One shape they put on is that of an ani- 

 mal human above the waist, yet terminating below 

 in the tail of a fish ; and thus possessing an amphi- 

 bious nature, they are enabled not only to exist in 

 the ocean, but to land on the shores, where they 

 frequently lighten themselves of their sea dress, re- 

 sume their proper shape, and with much curiosity 

 examine the nature of this upper world."* 



But we must endeavour to give our readers a 

 nearer view of these wondrous creatures. Not 



Hibbert's Shetland Islands, 4to, p. 566. 



