Merrymaids and Merrymen part 2

"...The Irish legends make us acquainted with the amours of men with those sea-sirens. We learn that the Merrows, or Moruachs, came occasionally from the sea, and interested themselves in the affairs of man. Amongst the fragments which have been gathered, here a pebble and there a pebble, along the Western coast, will be found similar narratives.

The sirens of the Aegean Sea--probably the parents of the medieval mermaid--possess in a pre-eminent degree the beauty and the falsehood of all the race. Like all other things, even those mythical creations take colour from that they work in, like the dyer's hand. The Italian mermaid is the true creature of the romance of the sunny South; while the lady of our own southern seas, although she possesses much in common with her Mediterranean sister, has less poetry, but more human sympathy. - The following stories, read in connection with those given by Mr Keightley and by Mr Croker, will show this.

(See "The Fairy Family: a Series of Ballads and Metrical Tales Illustrating the Fairy Mythology of Europe," Longman, 1857; "The Fairy Mythology, Illustrative of the Romance and Superstitions of Various Countries," by Thomas Keightley; and "Irish Fairy Legends," by Crofton Croker.)..." [cont.]

Hunt 1903