Six fishermen reported that their fishing
line had become entangled with a mermaid. They said they had kept
her on board their boat for three hours, and said that she was
about three feet long. She 'offered no resistance nor attempted
to bite,' but she moaned piteously. 'A few stiff bristles were on
top of the head, extending down to the shoulder, and these she
could erect and depress at pleasure, something like a crest.' She
had neither gill nor fins and there were no scales on her body.
The fishermen who were very superstitious threw her overboard
eventually and said that she dived 'in a perpendicular
direction.'The story was
heard from the skipper by a Mr Edmondson who in turn told the
Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh:'Not one of the six men dreamed of a doubt of
its being a mermaid, and it could not be suggested that they were
infulenced by their fears, for the mermaid is not an object of
terror to fishermen, it is rather a wecome guest, and danger is
apprehended from its experiencing bad treatment. . . . The usual
resources of scepticism that the seals and other sea-animals
appearing under certain circumstances operating upon an excited
imagination and so producing ocular illusion, cannot avail here.
It is quite impossible that six Shetland fishermen could commit
such a mistake.Back
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