422 MERMEN AND MERMAIDENS. 



the mermaids ; legends descriptive of their wonderful 

 beauty, on which it was ruin for man to look, and of their 

 exquisite singing, to which it was death for man to 

 listen. The sirens, it was said, lingered among the rocks 

 and caves of the wild sea-shore, and on the approach of 

 a vessel, raised immediately their choral song, which had 

 such a power in its melody, that the mariner, in spite of 

 himself, was drawn towards the singers, and thus know- 

 ingly steered his vessel into the jaws of destruction. 

 Homer tells us that Odysseus saved his own life and the 

 lives of his crew only by an ingenious stratagem. He 

 caused his men to stop their ears with wax, and then 

 directed them to bind him firmly to the ship's mast ; so 

 that though he heard the wild and wailing music, which 

 they could not hear, he was unable to yield to its tempta- 

 tion. The classic myth descended to the medieval poets, 

 and, combined with some rude fancies of the Norse, de- 

 veloped into the well-known story of the Men and Maidens 

 of the Sea, the mermaids and mermen, who occupy so 

 large a space in our modern poetry. Of these it was said 

 that they lived a charmed life in the restless waters ; and 

 the beautiful mermaids were described as sleeking their 

 long golden tresses in the ocean brine, or sporting grace- 

 fully on the sunlit waves. Tennyson has embodied the 

 popular conception in one of his most graceful lyrics : 



" T would be a mermaid fair ; 

 I would sing to myself the whole of the day ; 

 With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair, 

 And still as I combed I would sing and say, 

 ' Who is it loves me ? Who loves not me ? ' 

 I would comb my hair till my ringlets would fall 



Low adown, low adown, 

 From under my starry sea-bud crown, 



Low adown and around, 

 And I should look like a fountain of gold 



