Mermaids have been with us for thousands of years, recorded by the Babylonians back to 2000 BC and still seen today in small Irish coastal villages. This article, by South African film-maker and writer Wendy Hardie, tells the fascinating store of the continuing search.

As my readers know by now I am fascinated by folklore and myth. From Green Men to dragons, lost civilizations to architectural symbolism, witchcraft to sacred wells, I can think of nothing that links all of mankind through all time and geographic boundaries. One of my favorite subjects is the mermaid. Mermaids, River People, water spirits and Silkies are universal in both oral and written lore. Several eye-witness accountings were made by sailors from the 16th to the 19th centuries and even in the 1960’s accounts of mermaids were recorded from villagers by anthropologists on a small Irish island. Some of the more interesting tales come from Africa where the rivers and waterholes may be home to more than water-seeking animals.

I have been fortunate to be in contact with film-maker, writer and fellow researcher Wendy Hardie who calls South Africa home. She has recently produced a television documentary for SABC called “Searching for Mermaids in the Karoo.” Her efforts have resulted in a DVD and guide book which is available for R185 (approximately $23.50 in USD). Copies may be obtained by emailing Ms. Hardie at hardie(at)iafrica.com. She has allowed me to share the following article about her project. The photo above is that of rock art by the San people of South Africa showing that the mermaid has long been a part of their lives.


SEARCHING FOR MERMAIDS IN THE KAROO
A trip on the mythological side of life

By Wendy Hardie

The Mermaid or Water-meid, as she is also known in these parts, has been an integral part of Karoo folklore for years. Stories passed down from parents and grandparents, warn children not to go near deep pools, in case the Water-meid or Water-auntie drags them in, and drowns them. Just like European folk tales of sailors lured to their death by beautiful mermaids and sirens, the Karoo has many horror stories of people who have disappeared after going to fetch water from the river, and it’s difficult to know whether the mermaid warnings began as a way to protect children from the dangers of deep water, and developed from there, or whether they have a deeper origin.

Eager to discover more about this intriguing Karoo belief, I was thrilled when the SABC accepted our idea for their TV documentary series “Magic Places”.

In August 2006, Film-maker Maya Morgan and I set off from Cape Town, along the R62, over the Swartberg Pass, on a 2-week trip through the Karoo – following an intriguing trail of indigenous stories, firsthand sightings, fossils and rock art.

As most people know, the Karoo is an ancient and mysterious landscape where fantasy and reality collide in a myriad of desert mirages. If you think mermaids are too tall a tale to swallow, try dinosaurs…whose gigantic footprints palaeontologists have found fossilised in Karoo soil. Or imprints of sea shells and marine fish, found in rocks…here in the Karoo. Sea life…in the semi-desert?! You may well ask. And to top it all…there are mysterious San rock paintings of creatures with the upper body of a human, and a fish-tail, on the walls of caves high up in the Little Karoo mountains – could they be mermaids? And does this mean the San people saw such creatures?

Like many rural places worldwide, the Karoo is steeped in mysterious folklore and legend. Ghost stories and other believe-it-or-not tales are told and re-told by elderly people in the shade of big stoeps during those long blistering hot afternoons. Whether it’s because they have more time on their hands for imaginative thought…or getting in touch with their unconscious…, or because they live closer to nature and are aware of things that we city people aren’t, who knows. But I noticed a distinct change in the world almost the moment we turned off the N2 at Suurbraak, and joined the R62

Just past Barrydale, is Warmwaterberg Spa, an old Sanatorium, with an outdoor hot mineral spring pool surrounded by Klein Karoo mountains. Here, Willie Stuurman, one of the gardening staff, took us on a walk to a scrappy piece of land nearby, and randomly began picking up rocks, cracking them open and showing us the ochre-coloured fossil markings of sea-shells and marine fish inside – proving that about 250 million years ago this entire Karoo area was under the sea. As climates changed, the vast inland sea evaporated, leaving swamps teeming with reptiles, amphibians, fish and molluscs, traces of which can be found today. In other countries fossils like these would probably be in museums, here in the Karoo – history literally lies right under your feet. Willie said that years ago his grandmother told him that this whole Karoo area had once been under the sea, but that until he’d seen fossilised sea-shells embedded in the rocks, he hadn’t really believed it. He said his grandmother also told him that a “see-meid” – with the body of a woman, and a fish-tail - had once lived here, but he said that he’d never seen any sign of her himself.

Our next stop wasn’t even on the map. Amalienstein is an old Lutheran mission station off the R62, between Ladismith and Calitzdorp, which tourism doesn’t seem to have even heard of. Here we found local farmer, Hermanus Fourie, who told us the most incredible story of how, when he was 8-years old (and again when he was 12), he’d been to collect wood for his parents in the nearby kloof, and had caught sight of a beautiful woman sitting on a rock at the foot of a waterfall.

He described her as very friendly, but said that all of a sudden he realised that she wasn’t an ordinary woman, and that instead of legs, she had a fish tail. I asked him if he’d been scared, and he replied “Nie, ek was nie bang nie, sy was vriendelike, ‘n mooie mens daardie. Hier op aarde is nie so mooi ‘n mens nie.”

She gave him a friendly wave, he waved back, and then she slipped into the water and disappeared.

When the 8-year old Hermanus returned home, and breathlessly told his parents what he’d seen, they explained to him that it must have been a mermaid. They said that their parents had also spoken about mermaids in this area, from long ago.

And so it seems that the story has been passed down from generation to generation – of a beautiful woman with blue eyes, pink cheeks and a fish tail, sitting at deep mountain pools all over the Karoo, combing her long black hair. Her presence is said to bring rain and floods, and she is sometimes dangerous, pulling people into the water, and drowning them, much like the mermaids from European tales who lured sailors to a similar watery death.

Hermanus explained that he’d been born with a psychic gift, and has always been able to ‘see’ certain things that other people can’t. I asked him if what he’d seen had perhaps been a ghost? And he laughed kindly at me, saying: ”No, no, there’s no such thing as ghosts!”

We found a number of other people in the village who had similar stories to tell. One woman said that when she was walking home from school one day, she’d heard a rustle in the reeds, and had seen a man standing there – half human and half fish. Another saw a floating tea-cup on the water, which mysteriously disappeared when she looked again. And yet another saw her name spelt out in the water with algae. All of them said they’d been scared by the experience, and that their parents had then warned them not to go near the river again.

We were incredibly moved by our afternoon in Amalienstein. The people we met in this small, isolated village, who told us these stories, weren’t looking for any kind of publicity. Their sincerity and kindness was so apparent, and I have to say that I didn’t doubt them for a second.

Travelling deeper into the Little Karoo, we were shown San rock paintings on the walls of caves, high up in the mountains, depicting mermaid-like creatures. These enigmatic paintings have puzzled archaeologists for years. Does this mean that the San people saw Mermaids? Could this be the origin of the stories we heard in Amalienstein? And why do mermaid paintins appear only here in the Karoo, a place of such dryness?

Many experts who have studied San culture and rock art, however, believe that rather than being a realistic depiction of something they’ve seen, these paintings are symbolic of the experience a Shaman went through when calling for rain, and that they depict Swifts or Swallows (birds associated with rain), rather than Mermaids.

Others though, point to examples where the painted figures are holding objects in their “hands”, saying that these can’t possibly be wings, and must be the arms…of a Mermaid-like creature. Agreeing that they may not be Mermaids in the western storybook sense, they think they may well depict the Shaman’s experience while calling for rain – where they become… or feel… half-human and half fish.

This Mermaid/Swift debate played out during our journey through the Karoo, where we met believers of both theories – adding further intrigue to an already fascinating subject, which allows everyone to decide for themselves.

It is interesting to note that Mermaids appear in stories all over the globe. In ancient Roman, Greek and Egyptian mythology Mermaids appear along with other half-animal half-human creatures such as the Minotaur and the Sphinx. In Homer’s Odyssey he tells of Mermaid-like sirens he encounters along the way. In Europe the famous Little Mermaid from Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale has become a symbol of Copenhagen. And in African Mythology there are many references to Water-spirits, Water-maidens and Water-animals.

In early nature-based societies around the world, people, like the San, understood that having a harmonious and balanced relationship with Mother-Earth was crucial for their survival. They saw how valuable clean water was to life, and considered it sacred. In fact they believed water itself was alive, and that water spirits, goddesses and monsters inhabited the rivers, lakes and ponds where they lived. They believed too that these creatures were responsible for the storms, floods and droughts which affected their lives, and as such, needed to be appeased. In short, they saw and revered the power of nature, and were aware that if they mistreated the earth, it would mistreat them in return.

And perhaps this is what people of the Karoo still have – a connection with the earth which allows them to still see the sacred in nature. They say, for example, that in parts of the Great Karoo children as old as 5 have never seen rain! And then when the drought breaks and the rains eventually do come – they can be ferocious, resulting in destructive storms and floods. So here in the Karoo, people know that water is sacred.

With the dawn of the so called Enlightenment, linear rationality that came along with the scientific and technological age caused belief in land and water spirits to fall away. A more patriarchal culture ensued, where nature was seen as something wild and threatening that needed to be tamed, dominated, owned, controlled, managed, used, exploited and polluted for the exclusive benefit of human beings.

Most of us are now plainly aware of the devastating results this approach has had on the environment - how greed and arrogance have resulted in a dwindling access to clean water and other valuable resources, an unsustainable environment, global warming, destructive weather patterns, earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis - and how crucial it is that we rectify things before ‘nature mistreats us in return’!

It seems to me that in many ways a return to the respect & values held by people who lived in harmony with nature, like the San people, is what is needed. The magical qualities with which they imbued nature, in fact kept them from mistreating it. With all our sophistication & arrogance it always amazes me how much we still don’t know. The Japanese researcher Dr. Masaru Emoto’s recent discovery that water responds to human intent is one modern-day example of the mysteries of the universe we have yet to realise. Taking a series of photographs, he showed that newly formed crystals of frozen water varied depending on how polluted the water was, and on the emotional intent it was exposed to. He found that water from clear springs and water that had been exposed to loving words shows brilliant, complex, and colorful snowflake patterns. In contrast, polluted water, or water exposed to negative thoughts, formed incomplete, asymmetrical patterns with dull colors.

With half of the earth, and three-quarters of our body being made up of water – the impact of this research could be ground-breaking in terms of our understanding of the positive effect we can have on the earth and on our personal health. We are connected to nature in ways we have forgotten.

So whether the San rock paintings we saw on our journey were of mermaids or swallows, isn’t really what matters. Either way, they are a unifying symbol of our oneness with animals and nature.

Another fascinating stop along our route, was in Nieu Bethesda – to visit Helen Martins’enigmatic Owl House. Broken relationships, caring for aged parents, plus the harsh Karoo itself, are thought to have lead this Outsider Artist to try and bring light back into her dull existence, by obsessively covering interior walls with crushed glass, and filling her yard with hundreds of esoteric statues of various mythical, religious and symbolic figures, including 35 mermaids.

“Helen was fascinated by sea imagery… universally used as a metaphor for the unconscious and semi-conscious realms” says Anne Emslie, author of several books on the Owl House. She points to sea shells dotted around the Owl House, or embedded in cement in the Camel Yard. “And there is the wave-like shore line, created from white sand, along the front facade of the house…..It leads one to think about the Owl House as a place where Helen dived into her own inner world of the unconscious and fished up a teeming subterranean realm of archetypal imagery.”

Her mermaids are mostly sitting in pools, and seem to be beckoning us “…tempting the pilgrim and visitor to go further and further into the garden and continue the difficult journey (into the unconscious realm).”

Jung’s belief in archetypal images which are universal and which spring from the collective unconscious, and play out in myths, fairytales and folklore, show Mermaids as an archetypal figure of the “Sacred Feminine” - female power, submerged, and the gatekeeper to the mysterious deep - the unconscious realm.

In European fairytales and myths beautiful mermaids, often depicted combing their hair, and holding mirrors (mirrors to the soul) would lure sailors – who significantly were either on a journey/pilgrimage, shipwrecked or lost at sea - to join them in their underwater world, a symbolic invitation to men to be courageous and dive deep down into the realm of the unconscious, to get in touch with the anima, and all the treasures of the sacred feminine - qualities which have over time sadly been denigrated and lost - and to transform into a new wholeness.

Carl Jung suggested that the age of patriarchy has reached it’s end, and that the time has come for feminine power to rise up and join with the masculine to create a new world order – one of partnership with each other, with all animals and with the earth.

I find it fascinating that this mythology remains alive in the Karoo today, and think we have so much to learn from it. For me the Mermaid is a symbol reminding us that we are not separate from animals, to tread lightly on this beautiful, magical earth, which we share with other creatures, and to harness the sacred feminine power needed to help give us the courage to search our hearts and undergo the transformation to a higher consciousness that is necessary for the survival of the planet.

Our documentary “Searching for Mermaids in the Karoo” went out on the SABC on 15 February, 2007. We’ve now produced a Travel Pack consisting of a DVD of the documentary, a Travel-Booklet and map – giving details of how to get there, who to contact and where to stay along the route. Our hope is that people will enjoy the DVD for the story of the legend, and then be inspired to use the Booklet to embark on their own journey – down dusty roads off the beaten track, stopping to have tea with local people, listen to their stories and make their own discoveries about this intriguing Karoo mystery.

The DVD can be ordered directly from us by mailing hardie(at)iafrica.com