The Fish Prince and Other Stories: Mermen Folk Tales Book

Everybody has heard of mermaids--Hans Christian Andersen's The Littlest Mermaid, and various others, such as the star of Splash, and the sirens luring men into the sea, and the list goes on.

But what of their male counterparts, the mermen? "Long before mermaids emerged to people our inner seas, long before they established their restless, inviting niche in human fantasy, there was the merman" (x). There are 27 stories of mermen from around the world here, as Jane Yolen and Shulamith Oppenheim take a reader on a tour of many cultures, from northern waters to Russia and other Slavic countries, to the British Isles, to Asia, and the Pacific Islands, and the New World.

Despite the wealth of stories, the merman "might be called Legend's Forgotten Man. In the Standard Dictionary of Folklore, the section on mermaids is four times as long as that on mermen." The authors argue this might because Nature is "most often considered female, and "the sea and water itself [is] a reflection of man's vision of the feminine element" (xi). They argue the men were here first and should be remembered.

The bibliography will lead the reader to more stories, about mermen, and folk tales in general, and the mythic.

For the scholar and for the writer.