"...The following extract from a letter from an esteemed correspondent shows the existence of a belief in those fabled creations of the ocean amongst an extensive class of the labouring population of Cornwall. There is so much that is characteristic in my correspondent's letter that it is worth preserving as supporting the evidence of the existing belief:
"I had the chance of seeing what many of our natives firmly beleved to be that family. Some fourteen years ago I found myself, with about fifty emigrants in the Gulf of St Lawrence, on board the old tub Resolution, Captain Davies, commander. We were surounded in a fog so thick that you might cut it like a cheese, almost all the way from the Banks to Anticosti. One morning, soon after sunrise, when near that island, the fog as thick as night overhead, at times would rise and fall on the shore like the tantalising stage curtain. All at once there was a clear opening right through the dense clouds which rested on the water, that gave us a glimpse of the shore, with the rocks covered with what to us appeared very strange creatures. In a minute, the hue and cry from stem to stern, among all the cousin Johnnys, was 'What are they, you? What are they, you!' Somebody gave the word mermaids. Old men, women, and children, that hadn't been out of their bunks for weeks, tore on deck to see the mermaids, when, alas! the curtain dropped, or rather closed, and the fair were lost to sight, but to memory dear: for, all the way to Quebec, those not lucky enough to see the sight bothered the others out of their lives to know how they looked, and if we saw the comb and glass in their hands. The captain might as well save his breath as tell them that the creatures they saw on the rocks were seals, walruses, and sea-calves. 'Not yet, Captain dear, you won't come that over me at all; no, not by a long chalk! no, not at all, I can tell'e! I know there are mermaids in the sea; have heard many say so who have sees them too! but as for sea-calves, I ain't such a calf nor donkey neither as to believe ut. There may be a few of what we call soils (seals) for all I know; perhaps so, but the rest were flier-maidens.' No doubt, centuries hence, this story of the mermaidens will be handed down with many additions, in the log-huts of the Western States.""
Hunt 1903
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