Open Writing

Since time began, people have believed and seen strange creatures that were half human and half fish, to which they gave the name, Merfolk, or People of the Sea. The most common sightings were always Mermaids, the female version of Merfolk, but there was once a famous Merman brought ashore in Yorkshire, and it is his story we tell now.

The long and varied coastline of Yorkshire breasts the North Sea, and so was home to fishermen who plied their trade from many a harbour and inlet along its length for more than a thousand, maybe two thousand, years.

At one time, the harbour port of Whitby was home to the whaling fleet that searched for the giants of the oceans off the frigid shores of Greenland, returning home with the slaughtered whales, which were then cut up into portions, their flesh to be eaten, their blubber boiled down for tallow for candles, their ambergris used in the perfume industry, made into bead, or used to flavour food, and in the case of whalebone which is called baleen, made into corset stays or ladies fans.

It is the baleen of the baleen plates, arranged in two parallel rows resembling combs made of dense hair, attached to the upper jaws of baleen whales. Like the nails of our toes and fingers, it is made of keratin. These combs are used to filter what whales scoop up into their giant mouths for food. The enormous Blue Whale, the largest animal ever to have lived on our planet earth is a baleen whale, and is sometimes called the 'blasko'. There are other uses for whale parts, but you have to find out about those yourself without asking your parents!

I hope you remember that this tale is not about whales, but about a merman. But if it hadn’t been for the whales we might never have heard about the merman. In the seventeen-hundreds, whaling was in its heyday at Whitby, and from there the baleen was taken by horse and cart or by packhorse to a little place called Loftus, a mean and poor place that was then the home of the corset industry. Looking into the future from the time of our story we would see the stay making industry die out as the whaling industry died out and stopped the supply of raw materials. But this is not a story about corsets, but about a merman!

Yet in Loftus, if one has nothing better to do than linger among its ancient hovels, one might yet hear strange stories of the past, especially when one wanders near the mound and dolmen in the village where, it is told, a dragon fierce, who is also called ‘The Grisly Worm’ was slain by a doughty stalwart whose bones yet lie encased in a stone coffin close by.

Now, listen: although we are used to thinking that the old people who inhabited our land before we did were vulnerable to superstitions and dreads that had no foundations, hence our disbelief in dragons is as strong as was their belief in them. In case we think we are the wise ones, and they of past ages the simpletons, I will tell you what was found in that place not above a hundred or so years ago.

A saurian was unearthed. He was dead and had been for some times when his skeleton was unearthed, but he was, the bespectacled greybeards say, a plesiosaurus whose gorgeous terms were in those far off ages when Mother Earth was still learning to tie her own shoelaces. Was the alarming slitherer the same fellow as the dragon-lizard of the Loftus combat? I know not, but leave it to your young imagination to decide for yourself. But, if you were to ask me I would have to say that … I really dare not say! However, our account is not about dragons, ancient or modern, but about a merman!

As to the merman, his history is of relatively recent date. Recent, that is, when compared to the received times of the marine sauropterygian that was thought by some to lay its eggs on land, like sea turtles. I mention these because it was as recently as exactly 400 years to the year in which I was born that the fossilised skeletons of one such was discovered at Loftus. Coincidence? What do you think? It is not unknown for prehistoric or antediluvian creatures to be found alive when we all thought they were dead as, for example, the terrible looking armour-plated fish, the coelacanth. I rest my case. However, as you are aware, we are not talking of sauropterygians or coelacanths, but of mermen – one particular merman to be exact, the Skinningrove Merman.

Joseph Smith Fletcher wrote of this in 1901, thusly:

"In the Cotton Library, there is a strange story relating to a merman who was captured by the fishermen of Skinningrove and kept by them in captivity for several weeks, during which he was fed, at his own desire, on raw fish.

‘Instead of voyce he skreaked,’ says the narrator, ‘and showed himself courteous to such as flocked farre and neare to visit him; faire maydes were welcomest guestes to his harbour, whom he woulde beholde with a very earnest countenaynce, as if his phlegmatike breste had been touched with a sparke of love.

‘One daye, when the good demeanour of this new gueste had made his hostes secure of his abode with them, he privily stole out of doores, and ere he could be overtaken recovered the sea, whereinto he plunged himself; yet as one that woulde not unmannerly depart without taking of his leave, from his middle upwardes raised he his shoulderes often above the waves, makinge signs of acknowledgeing his good entertainment to such as behelde him on the shore, as they interpreted it. And after a prety wrhile he dyved downe, and appeared no more.’"

Back to Granddad Bray!

Skinningrove lies between Loftus and the sea, and so it was as you have heard that one day some fisherman caught in their nest the sea-man and hauled him into their boat expressing strong surprise in Broad Yorkshire, such as "Ee, bah Gow, ar ‘arry, wot the ummer’s yon chap, eh?" and evincing not a little speculation, also in the Dialect of God, "Ah’ll berrees on a them sea-craytoors as beylongs to them theear marmaids ‘at sings and drahns sailors, eh?"

Confused and delighted with their find, especially since on closer acquaintance they found him personable and although they could not understand his screechings, they soon cottoned onto what he needed. The obliging fishermen found lodgings for their friendly if demanding sea creature and let local folk come and gawp at him feasting on raw fish.

Perhaps, I have thought in a dark moment, the fact that he was extremely attentive to the ‘fayre maydes’ who visited, gazing fondly at them ‘as if his phlegmatyike breste had been touched with a sparke of love,’ he could have been considering converting to a carnivore. Who knows?

It is fairly typical of the spirit of that careless age, when such curiosities as they had drawn from the deep were of less importance than was their labour to put bread on the table and clothe the ample brood of dependants common to working people of that time, that they forgot, it seems, to draw up a roster of worthies to stand guard over their prize catch, and so it transpired that when his homesickness outgrew his desire to eat young girls he made his way out of captivity and from his captors and slithered back into his native element, where, after a hearty ‘fare-thee-weel’ and a generous wave to the fellows on shore calling him to return, he smiled, then laughed, and then plunged beneath the foam was never seen again.

What manner of creature was he who is described as man to the waist and fish beneath? Do his descendants flash and splash along the coast off Loftus? Are they the cause of another legend of that place that described the sea on dark and wild nights roaring with a pained cry that can be heard for six miles inland?

Will you come with me on such a night and stand with me at the water’s edge with the spume flying in our faces, the wind blowing our wigs off, and see what we can see out there in the wildness that is the playground of whales, plesiosaurii, and the Merfolk?

Or –it could chill your bones – we will stand alone in the darkness and see what discovers us!

Ronnie Bray © 2007
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Other Stories by Ronnie Bray:
http://www.meridianmagazine.com/voices/011024summer.html

http://www.2theheart.com/author_ronnie_bray/