The sea in culture
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The role of the sea in culture has been important for centuries, as people experience the sea in contradictory ways: as powerful but serene, beautiful but dangerous. Human responses to the sea can be
The Great Wave off Kanagawa (Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1830)
An Assyrian relief from the reign of Sennacherib, Nineveh, c. 700 BC showing fish and a crab swimming around a bireme.
The Isonade as depicted in Takehara Shunsen's Ehon Hyaku Monogatari, 1841
Nereid riding a sea-bull (2nd century BC)
Mermaid
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In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including Europe, Latin
The sea in culture
…joined in unison to sing folksongs such as the mid-eighteenth century ballad The Mermaid, a song which expressed the sailors' superstition that seeing a mermaid foretold a shipwreck. When on duty, there were many repetitive tasks, such as turning the capstan to raise the anchor and heaving on ropes to raise and…
John William Waterhouse A Mermaid
The Fisherman and the Syren, by Frederic Leighton, c. 1856–1858
Siren and onocentaur.―Bern Physiologus. Berner Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 281, fol. 13v
Siren in a Second Family bestiary―British Library MS Add. 11283, fol. 20v.