Let me sing you a song - The Rusalka

Hi! Thank you for dropping in to Myth Perceptions where I'm sharing with you various myths and legends I've discovered while researching for my fantasy writing!

Right now, I'm exploring various myths about Mermaids. Having recently spent a lovely Saturday enjoying a Ukranian and a Polish Festival, I am delighted to now share a Slavic "mermaid" myth--The Rusalkas.

Rusalka

Rusalkas are the Slavic form of mermaids, or naiads. Stories say that they are not creatures of their own, but the ghosts of maidens who die a violent death or suicide. The Rusalkas are described in various ways, sometimes with tails when they are lying in the bottom of rivers or streams, but usually with legs when they leave their watery homes to dance in the fields alongside the water or sit, singing, in trees to seduce young men to their deaths. The stories give them either green eyes or white eyes and long hair of either green or golden hue that is perpetually wet. Often, the Rusalka would leave the water to sit in a tree and sing songs or sit on the dock and comb her hair. Like a fish out of water, the Rusalka cannot live long without it, and it is said that if their hair dried out they would die. Their combs are how they call water to them.

There is a Czech opera about the Rusalka, which shares some similar elements as Hans Christian Anderson's famous story. However, in the opera, it is not the mermaid who dies, but the prince.

The Rusalka are said to be their most dangerous during a festival called Semik or Green Week which occurs on the seventh week after Easter. Traditionally, women would hang ribbons a birch tree as offerings to ward off the Rusalkas and swimming was strictly forbidden during this week. Green Week was also a traditional fertility festival and the birch tree would be "drowned" at the end of the week to bring rains to the fields. A wonderful example of sympathetic magic.

I hope you'll come back next month to find out what other types of mermaids I've encountered in my research. Until then, Blessed Be.

Denise Golinowski is a reader and writer of fantasy and romance. Her newest enovella, Collector's Item, is available from  The Wild Rose Press

Her first enovella, The Festival of the Flowers: The Courtesan and the Scholar is also available  through the Wild Rose Press. You can visit her blog at Golinowski's Gambol.

Mermaids - Before Ariel or Love Gets You in the End

Mermaids - Half Woman, Half Fish, Totally Intriguing

So many lovely myths to explore.
So many strange tales to share.
Where do I begin?
Where else?

The Little Mermaid

However, not the cute version beautifully illustrated by Disney, but with the original story by Hans Christian Andersen.

The Litte Mermaid Statue, Copenhagen - Wikipedia

When I was young, one of my favorite books was The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen.

Cover Image from Amazon.com

On the cover, it had this marvelous hologram of the mermaid swimming under the sea and inside were many two-page dioramas illustrating the story using these wonderful puppets. I spent many an hour reading and re-reading the story. One summer, my mother, sister, and I even planted our own gardens a la The Little Mermaid, filling them with our personal choices of flowers.

Interior Page Image from Amazon.com

But Hans Christian Anderson's story is not the same story as the one Disney popularized with it's darling Ariel. His story (beautifully portrayed in this book) is darker and tragic. The ending is less Happily Ever After and more selfless sacrifice is rewarded.

The little mermaid sacrifices all in hopes of winning love--her voice, her home, her family. Her transformation is accompanied by excruciating pain, and the price of failure is death. When she loses her love, the prince, to another woman, she is offered an opportunity to save herself, but only if she kills the prince. She cannot and casts herself into the sea. Instead of dying, she is transformed into a spirit of the air (angel) in recognition of her selflessness.

Interestingly enough, some of the earliest stories of mermaids involved an Assyrian goddess, Atargatis, who fell in love with a human. When she accidentally killed her lover (details unknown), she transformed herself into a mermaid. Talk about your story reversals, eh?

I'll be diving more seriously into mermaid myths around the world next month, so please come back to visit.

Denise Golinowski is a reader and writer of fantasy and romance. Her newest enovella, Collector's Item, is available from  The Wild Rose Press

Her first enovella, The Festival of the Flowers: The Courtesan and the Scholar is also available  through the Wild Rose Press. You can visit her blog at Golinowski's Gambol.