A mermaid was stranded in 1403 near Haerlem,--driven ashore by a tempest, said one Meyer, a Dutchman. It was brought to feed upon bread and milk, taught to spin, and lived for many years. John Gerard of Leyden adds, that she would frequently pull off her clothes and run toward the water, and that her speech was so confused a noise as not to be understood by anybody. She was buried in the churchyard, because she had learned to make the sign of the cross. They had much consideration for a possible soul in those days.
Gerard spoke this upon the credit of several persons who had seen her. We find noted by another author, that, "in the fifteenth century, after a dreadful tempest on the coast of Holland, a mermaid was found struggling in the mud, near Edam, in West Friesland; whence it was carried to Haerlem, where it lived some years, was clothed in female apparel, and, it is said, was taught to spin." This was apparently the same.
This creature is said to have run,--a thing somewhat inconsistent with a caudal termination,--and she must be supposed, therefore, to be of the Wild-Man-of-the-Sea family rather than of the half-man, half-fish. She was, perhaps, a relative of this next, recorded in an ancient English chronicle:--
"In the time of King Henry I., when Bartholomew de Glanville was warden of Oxford Castle, the fishermen took in their nets a wild man, having the human shape complete, with horns on his head, and long and pick beard, and a great deal of shaggy hair on his breast; but he stole away to sea privately, and was never seen afterwards."
He wished, evidently, to avoid the embarrassment of the farewell.
Another of these footed sea-men makes his appearance in the book of Gellius on Animals. Therein is recounted the history, as far as landsmen knew it, of a Triton that used to come ashore on the coast of Epirus, and lie in wait by a well but a short distance from the sea, and who, when the country girls came to the well for water, would leap out and seize them, and bear them away beneath the waves; and not able to conceive the peculiarity of the human lungs that lurked beneath their beautiful bosoms, many a one the wretch thus drowned in his passionate admiration. Beautiful Greek girls! with such limbs as have come down in marble! Life under the sea seems favorable to the perfection of a correct taste.