THE MERMAID. 203 



all his company saw two mermen swimming at a short 

 distance from the beach. 



" They had long and flowing hair of a colour between grey and 

 green, and from their swimming side by side it was presumed that 

 they were male and female. Six weeks afterwards the creatures were 

 again seen by him and more than fifty witnesses, at the same place, 

 by clear daylight. If any narrative in the world," adds Valentijn, 

 " deserves credit it is this ; since not only one, but two mermen 

 together were seen by so many eye-witnesses. Should the stubborn 

 world, however, hesitate to believe it, it matters nothing, ^s there are 

 people who would even deny that such cities as Rome, Constantinople, 

 or Cairo, exist, merely because they themselves have not happened to 

 see them. But what are such incredulous persons," he continues, " to 

 make of the circumstance recorded by Albrecht Herport* in his 

 account of India, that a merman was seen in the water near the 

 church of Taquan on the morning of the 2Qth of April, 1661, and a 

 mermaid at the same spot the same afternoon ? Or what do they say 

 to the fact that in 17 14 a mermaid was not only seen but captured 

 near the island of Boero, five feet, Rhineland measure, in height ; 

 which lived four days and seven hours, but, refusing all food, died 

 without leaving any intelligible account of herself?"! 



This last example is said to have been taken in 1712 by 

 a district visitor of the church, who presented it to the 

 Governor Vander Stell. Of this "well-authenticated" speci- 

 men Valentijn gives, on a large uncoloured plate, an 



* Itinerarium Indicum, Berne, 1669. 



f Valentijn's arguments are as amusingly quaint as the description 

 given by Stow, in his 'Annals' (p. 157), from the 'Chronicle' of 

 Radulphus Coggeshale, of a merman taken on the coast of Suffolk in 

 the time of Henry II. " Neare unto Orford in Suffolk," he writes, 

 " certain fishers of the sea tooke in their nets a fish having the shape 

 of a man in all points ; which fish was kept by Bartholomew de Glaun- 

 ville, custos of the castle of Orford, in the same castle by the space 

 of six moneths and more, for a wonder. He spake not a word. All 

 manner of meates he did eate, but, most greedily, raw fish, after he had 

 crushed out the moisture. Oftentimes he was brought to the church, 

 where he shewed no signs of adoration. At length he stole away to 

 sea, and never after appeared." 



