Minstrelsy of the Scottish border - National Library of Scotland

332 MINSTRELSY OF
tiinist system of geology, has collected a variety of le-
gends, respecting mermen and mermaids, p. 230 et se-
qiicn. Much information may also be derived from Pon-
topiddon's Nalural History of Norway, who fails not to
people her seas with this amphibious race.* An older
authority is to be found in the Kongs skugg-s'io, or Royal
Mirror, written, as it is believed, about 1 1 70. The mer-
men, there mentioned, are termed Iiqfslrambur (sea-
giants, ) and are said to have the upper parts resembling
the human race ; but the author, with becoming diffi-
dence, declines to state, positively, whether they are
equipped with a dolphin's tail. The female monster is
caWed Mar-Gyga (sea-giantess,) and is averred certain-
ly to drag a fish's train. She appears, generally, in the
act of devouring fish, which she has caught. Accord-
ing to the apparent voracity of her appetite, the sailors
pretend to guess what chance they had of saving their
lives in the tempests, which always followed her ap-
peai'ance.
—
Speculum Regale, 1768, p. 1 66.
Mermaids wei'e sometimes supposed to be possessed
of supernatural powers. Resenius, in his life of Frede-
* I believe something to the same purpose may be found in tlie
school editions of Guthrie's Geographical Grammar ; a work which,
though in general as sober and dull as could be desired by the gra-
vest preceptor, becomes of a sudden uncommonly lively, upon the sub-
ject of the seas of Norway ; the author having thought meet to adopt
the Right Reverend Erick Pontopiddon's account of mermen, sea-
snakes, and krakens.