Happy Belated St. Patty’s Day!! Extending the Irish vibes a little more this week with our latest blog into more Mermaid History.
When I went to research a correlation between Mermaids and our leprechauns, I assumed I would find some strong Irish folktale or lore. I thought this would be an easy one. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled across the idea of mermaids and leprechauns being related to CAIN! Yes, the Cain from the Old Testament Bible. The one that killed his brother, Abel.
This theory was discovered by Dr. Simon Rodway , a medieval scholar. He found it in a fifteenth-century Irish legal text, however the story dates roughly between the 10th and 12th centuries. It explores that the descendants of Cain (murderer of Abel) were turned into mermaids and leprechauns.
Dr. Simon Rodway published the text and translation in a paper, “Mermaids, leprechauns, and Formorians: a middle Irish account of descendants of Cain.” It can be found in the 2010 issue of Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies. He researches medieval Welsh and Irish texts.
In the text Dr. Simon Rodway found, a short passage relates the killing of Abel, and how God punishes Cain: God created five lumps on Cain after the killing of Abel, i.e. a lump on his forehead, and a lump on each of two cheeks, and a lump on each of his two hands; this was put as a sign for the offspring of Adam and as an example to them on account of the murder that Cain had done…Ambia daughter of Cain, she had the shape of a woman and the tail of a fish; so she could travel the sea and the land; and she was once sleeping under the sea and a trout squirted its spawn into her mouth so that there was fruit of that, and she gave birth to twenty-two children, ie. two of them were of very great size and twenty small children of the girl, ie Formoir was the man and Ispela the girl. It was sung concerning that:
Bec son of a trout, fair his foot
The smallest boy there was.
Becnait, she was the splendid queen
From whom is the line of the leprechauns.
In further research, several medieval texts, both from Ireland and other parts of Europe, remarked that various monsters were the descendants of Cain. (Not that I think mermaids are monsters….)
I wish I could dig deeper on this but for a blip this is was the best and most I could find. If you know more, please share in the comments.
And, letting you know, this won’t be the first mention of mermaids in association with the Bible. Stay tuned for future blogs where we will be circling back in Mer-ology to the Bible.
