The Truth About the Little Mermaid

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "The Truth About the Little Mermaid"

Podcast: Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society
Host: Dr. Kate Lister
Guest: Professor Diane Purkis (University of Oxford)
Date: April 7, 2026

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Overview

In this lively and wide-ranging episode, sex historian Dr. Kate Lister and Renaissance literature expert Professor Diane Purkis delve into the truth behind the story of The Little Mermaid. Centering on how Hans Christian Andersen’s original fairy tale differs from its now-ubiquitous Disney adaptation, they explore mermaid folklore across cultures, unpack the gendered symbolism behind mermaid myths, and reflect on the recurring themes of longing, transformation, and female power (or lack thereof). The conversation is thoughtful, humorous, slightly irreverent, and full of literary and historical context.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Disney's Mermaid vs. Andersen's Mermaid

• [08:16] The episode begins by comparing the modern image of the mermaid (Ariel) to earlier versions, acknowledging that Disney’s 1989 film has shaped mass perception.
• Diane Purkis suggests that Disney’s adaptation, while appearing simplistic, contains deeper, more subversive currents, particularly through characters like Ursula and the authorship of Howard Ashman, the film’s gay lyricist, who was grappling with stigma and mortality due to AIDS.

“So though it seems like a poor place for people to start, I think I'm gonna argue. No, actually it's got, if you will, hidden currents that give it depth.” — Diane Purkis [10:29]

• Ursula is based on the iconic drag performer Divine, adding a layer of queerness to the narrative.
• The song "Part of Your World" is described as a gay torch song, centering on longing for acceptance and belonging.

“It's all about longing to be part of a world, bigger, more tolerant, more loving, more acceptant, more urban community than your birth family.” — Diane Purkis [09:43]

2. Hans Christian Andersen: Thwarted Love and Suffering

• In Andersen’s original, the mermaid’s love is unrequited, and the story ends not with marriage but with suffering, self-sacrifice, and tragic dissolution.

“In Anderson's story, the mermaid does not get to marry the prince, unlike in the Disney film… It's all about her suffering and perpetual loyalty.” — Diane Purkis [12:15]

• Discussion of The Little Mermaid as an allegory for Andersen’s own life—his obsessions and unrequited loves, specifically his love for Edvard Collin, and his experiences as an outsider (including his asexuality and persistent longing).
• The pain and transformation suffered by the mermaid are layered with symbolism—menstruation, puberty, and transgender longing.
• A key difference: The original story’s harsh deal (painful human legs, no guaranteed soul or love, the risk of death by sea foam), compared with Disney’s sanitized narrative.

“The Little Mermaid is just coming into puberty and that's sort of bleeding from the lower body and pain. It's kind of fairly obviously symbolic of menstruation.” — Diane Purkis [13:20]

3. Folkloric Contexts: Stories Beyond Andersen

• Andersen drew on popular European myths, notably the romantic bestseller "Undine" and the Irish Saint Li Ban, both involving woman-water spirit hybrids who seek redemption or a soul via love.
• Mermaids, silkies, sirens, and "water women" are motifs in many cultures—across Ireland, Scandinavia, Africa, Japan, and the classical Mediterranean.

“There are many kinds of sea dwelling entities that are sort of partially human… Even though they don't initially present that way.” — Diane Purkis [24:49]

• Silkies (seal people in Celtic lore), Lady of the Lake (Arthurian myth), and Grendel’s mother (from Beowulf) are discussed as related figures.

4. What are Mermaids?

• Definitions are fluid. The term "mermaid" is linguistically rooted in "maid" (archaic) rather than "woman," as in the original Anglo-Saxon "merwif."
• Human-animal hybridity is central, with narratives often centering on transformation, duality, and otherness.

“The point about these entities is less their body shape than the fact that they're both one thing and another.” — Diane Purkis [26:38]

• Cross-cultural examples: Japanese mermaids (sometimes part-goldfish), African water spirits like Mami Wata.

5. Mermaids and Gender

• Mermaids reflect beliefs about women’s bodies rooted in Western medicine’s ancient humoral theory: women as "colder and wetter" than men, and thus naturally aligned with water or the sea.

“...the idea is that women's bodies are less perfect than men's bodies… they're colder and damper… The body of woman seeks out male bodies because their warmth and dryness will help to perfect the defective female body.” — Diane Purkis [30:42]

• Mermaids’ yearning for transformation or human love is entwined with perceptions of female deficiency, desire, and suffering.

6. Mermaids as Symbols (Danger, Desire, Power)

• Sirens (Greek myth) are included as dangerous, bird-woman hybrids whose song promises forbidden knowledge and doom. The fatal and seductive powers of mermaids/sirens blend together across culture.
• Sailors’ mythologies cast mermaids as omens of death, drawing on real dangers of seafaring and perhaps vitamin deficiency-induced hallucinations among sailors ("scurvy, pellagra, Korsakov syndrome").

“If we need a scientific explanation for why sailors are so rich in myths and superstitions, they were probably borderline hallucinating with scurvy and pellagra.” — Diane Purkis [39:06]

• The ocean itself is contextualized as a space of fear, the unknown, and fantasy—especially for land-bound, non-swimming people.

7. Mermaid Myths Across the World: Assertive and Vengeful Women

• African river goddess Mami Wata is discussed as a powerful, assertive water entity merging African and Western attributes, symbolized by red and collecting modern tokens like Coke cans. [40:44]
• The Russian Rusalka is introduced as a drowned, betrayed woman who returns as a vigilante spirit, avenging women against predatory men.

“Rusalkas have killed themselves by drowning, but they rise from that to be a vengeful monster... What they're doing is hunting down other bad men…” — Diane Purkis [44:28]

• Grendel’s mother is reframed as a misunderstood and even sympathetic "cool, relatable monster" with her own powerful agenda.

8. Gender, Agency, and Rethinking Mermaid Ambitions

• The conversation closes with gentle mockery of the passive, suffering mermaid, and celebratory encouragement toward more powerful, assertive mermaid mythologies.

“The Little Mermaid maybe needs to rethink her life goals.” — Diane Purkis [43:05]
“Think bigger, Ariel. Think bigger, think bigger.” — Kate Lister [43:09]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Ursula as Divine, Ashman’s AIDS Diagnosis, and Queer Longing:

  “Ursula is a kind of intrinsically very transgressive, interesting figure, even though obviously she's demonized. And then alongside that, Howard Ashman, who wrote the lyrics...was gay and actually really tragically knew he was dying of AIDS when he wrote those songs...Part of your world is very much a gay torch song.”
  — Diane Purkis [09:17–10:18]

• On the Bleak Endings of Andersen’s Tale:

  “She takes the dagger...stands over the prince and she can't bring herself to stab him...And in Andersen's original ending, she just dissolves into sea foam.”
  — Diane Purkis [16:17]

• Why Mermaids Are Always Tragic:

  “It's really about the fact that mermaids are part animal and part human. So in a kind of Christian cosmology, they are lower than the human because half of them is animal.”
  — Diane Purkis [23:59]

• On Folklore’s Global Reach:

  “There are so many of them and all cultures have them all around the world.”
  — Diane Purkis [26:19]

• On the Pleasure and Fear of the Sea:

  “If I hadn't been able to swim, ...the beach was always something of a place of terror because it was hot and she didn't feel confident going into the sea to cool off...Once that was everybody's situation.”
  — Diane Purkis [32:30]

• On Women’s Bodies and Old Science:

  “This is based on the idea that women's bodies are colder and wetter than men's bodies.”
  — Diane Purkis [30:22]

• Reframing Female Water Monsters:

  “I think that's kind of cool...the Rusalkas dull Isla into ponds and drown. So I think that's kind of cool.”
  — Diane Purkis [44:28]

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• Introduction and banter: [02:09–06:13]
• Origins of Diane’s interest in mermaids: [06:15–08:02]
• Disney’s The Little Mermaid: subversive queerness: [08:16–10:53]
• Hans Christian Andersen’s biography and the original tale: [10:53–19:36]
• Comparing global mermaid tales and definitions: [21:31–28:16]
• Silkies, Lady of the Lake, and Grendel’s mom in the mermaid tradition: [25:56–29:47]
• Cultural and gendered symbolism of mermaids: [30:02–33:13]
• Danger and allure: sirens, omens, and hallucinations: [35:21–40:01]
• Assertive mermaids—Mami Wata and the Rusalkas: [40:44–45:01]
• Final thoughts, favorite mermaid, and sign-off: [45:01–45:44]

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Conclusion

This episode deftly weaves together literary analysis, folklore, gender studies, and playful banter to illuminate how mermaids—from tragic Disney heroines to vengeful water spirits and assertive river goddesses—reflect deep anxieties, longings, and fantasies about gender, transformation, and the boundaries between worlds. Kate Lister and Diane Purkis urge listeners to look past the sanitized wedding-ending narrative and instead see the mermaid in her full mythological, monstrous, and often misunderstood glory.

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Recommended for:
Listeners curious about the darker origins of fairy tales, the interplay of gender and folklore, mermaids’ cultural significance, and anyone who enjoys witty academic discussion with a feminist and queer lens.

Transcript

[Kate Lister]

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries plus new releases every week covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe.

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[Kate Lister]

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[Kate Lister]

Hello my lovely betwixters. It's me, Cait Lister. Welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets the podcast where we root around in the pants of history for your entertainment. But before we can go any further, dear listener, I do have to tell you once again, this is an adult podcast. Spoken by adults to other adults, but also things in adulty way occurring around your subjects need to be an adult too. And we call that the fair dues warning. Because if you keep listening and your feelings get hurt. Fair dues. We did tell you it might get a bit spicy. Right, on with the show. The voyage today has not started well. The Betwix team is feeling not their best. Freddy is vomiting over the bow, Stu is on the verge of starting a mutiny, and Sophie has been clinging on to the mast for dear life since before we even left. Tom, Hannah and Tim are doing their best to keep the boat afloat. And I've given up hope altogether. But what's the. That over there. Let me get out my telescope. Oh, my. It is a beautiful woman with long red hair. Smooth despite the salt water and this crazy breeze. She must be cold in that tiny shell top. I think that we should go over to her. Maybe she's got some tips on how to weather the storm. But what's that? Scales where there should be skin, A tail where you'd expect legs and feet. I've heard of women like this. Or to be more accurate, Mer women like this. She might be a Disney princess. She might be an omen of death. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. If I asked you to picture a mermaid, I wouldn't be surprised if we all ended up imagining the same thing. And we've gone with Ariel. Yep, Ariel from the Disney film. She is the Little Mermaid. But where did she come from? How does the Disney portrayal of the mermaid compare with the original fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen? And how does his understanding of a mermaid compare with historical interpretations? Well, today I'm joined by the marvelous Diane Purkis from the University of Oxford. Diane specializes in the Renaissance and women's literature, witchcraft and the Civil War. But recently, Diane has been touring a talk all about the history of mermaids, sea spirits and women, and she is going to join us today to tell us all about them. Have you got your shell brows on? Then let's do it. Well, hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Diane Perkis. How are you doing?

[Diane Purkis]

I'm doing fantastically well, thank you. Not least because it's not teaching term anymore. She said stretching.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, I remember it well. I'm having flashbacks.

[Diane Purkis]

Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. To revive a trauma memory. I mean, I love teaching. I really do. The part I don't like is the part where I have to go to meetings.

[Kate Lister]

That's the one, isn't it? That's the one is the students are great and you sit and you talk to them, and then everyone.

[Diane Purkis]

And I can.

[Kate Lister]

I can say this now because I'm not in it anymore, but every once in a while you have to go to some insane meeting, usually a meeting about a meeting about another meeting that hasn't happened yet, and do some random set of objectives with a middle manager who knows nothing about what you're teaching.

[Diane Purkis]

It's very weird and indeed seems to exist to thwart all your efforts to actually improve your students experience.

[Kate Lister]

Exactly it. Do you think that mermaids would have middle managers? Because that's what we're here to talk about today.

[Diane Purkis]

No, I think that's why we all want to be mermaids, Kate, to be really honest with you, I think mermaids symbolize a freedom from all those things, and that's why we all long to enter the deeps of the ocean to get away from middle managers.

[Kate Lister]

You can imagine a group of mermaids just right. Everyone's got to come in for the meeting on Zoom today. Oh, God. Trident. You on mute? You're on mute.

[Diane Purkis]

I love trident. You're on mute. You're muted.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, no.

[Diane Purkis]

Right.

[Kate Lister]

Oh. But the reason I'm asking you this is because you are somewhat of an expert on there on mermaid folklore and history. And where did this interest of yours come from?

[Diane Purkis]

Well, I had a very lucky childhood in that I grew up partly on the Sydney Beaches. And I wouldn't say I ever identified as a mermaid the way I gather some women do in Minnesota where they actually go to the swimming pool in tails. But I did it. Yeah. There's a Netflix show about this if you want to follow up.

[Kate Lister]

I didn't know that.

[Diane Purkis]

Yeah, probably. Yeah, probably an extreme position. But I love that you could feel that way in Minnesota. But I mean, actually it's that most Sydney kids spend a huge amount of time, or did when I was a child on the beach. A perfect weekend for me was a weekend where my feet hardly touched the ground. And the interesting thing that follows from that is that quite young, you develop a very good knowledge of seas and tides, waves and winds, weather patterns. Sydney kids can tell when there's a dominant weather system called a southerly buster, which comes up from Antarctica. So a bit like a northerly in northern Europe, it's a huge dark cloud, and the temperature instantly drops by about 15 degrees. And when I was 8, I could spot a southerly buster cloud coming up and could spot rip tides and gutters and could tell you all about the difference in onshore or offshore wind made to wave breaks.

[Kate Lister]

Proper water, baby.

[Diane Purkis]

Yeah, exactly. It just gave me a lifelong feeling that I was more at home in water than on land. And I think that is still something that I identify with and relate to in Tales of Mermaids, where, characteristically, the mermaids really dumb and want to be human. And I think the reason we're all fascinated is that we quite like to be them.

[Kate Lister]

I think you're probably right, aren't you? I suppose most people's immediate image, and I must say most people. I just mean if you went around the streets and asked people, what do you think of when I say the word mermaid? They probably think Disney.

[Diane Purkis]

They think of the 1989 Disney film. And in a way, that's where we have to start from, because as you rightly say, it's where we all start. And the interesting thing about that film, I always argue, is that it's not as boring as it seems. Ooh.

[Kate Lister]

Okay.

[Diane Purkis]

On the face of it, it's this drearily commercial, ends in a wedding, she gets the prince. Yawn. Kind of a movie. But actually, there's some hidden factors, not least the fact that there's another watery woman in the film, and that's Ursula, the sea witch.

[Kate Lister]

Love Ursula.

[Diane Purkis]

Love Ursula. Exactly. Ursula, who's so super strong and powerful and who doesn't have girly goals. She pretends she wants to marry the prince, but it's just a ploy. She actually wants to rule the ocean. She wants to replace King Neptune.

[Kate Lister]

I think she was actually. I think she's been done dirty in that film because Ariel signed a contract with her. It's not Ursula's fault she didn't read the small print there, quite frankly. Yeah.

[Diane Purkis]

It's like those things we sign when we update our phones. Right. God knows what we're signing.

[Kate Lister]

Terms and conditions, Ariel, for goodness sake.

[Diane Purkis]

But I'm also gonna go with, interestingly, the film kind of knew that she was compelling because it based the drawings of her on the very celebrated drag act Divine.

[Kate Lister]

Yes.

[Diane Purkis]

So in many respects, Ursula is a kind of intrinsically very transgressive, interesting figure, even though obviously she's demonized. And then alongside that, Howard Ashman, who wrote the lyrics for all the songs, the one I really want people to hear in their heads is Part of your world was gay and actually really tragically knew he was dying of AIDS when he wrote those songs. Oh my God. Oh, I didn't know that back in the day. And I remember this cause I'm a sad old person. You couldn't tell people you had AIDS because there was such a stigma. So nobody knew that he had it. That part of your world is sort of very much a gay torch song actually. It's all about longing to be part of a world, bigger, more tolerant, more loving, more acceptant, more urban community than your birth family.

[Kate Lister]

When you know that that whole song just the meaning shifts entirely, doesn't it?

[Diane Purkis]

Yeah, it's basically like over the Rainbow sung by Judy Garland.

[Kate Lister]

Oh my God. Wow.

[Diane Purkis]

So though it seems like a poor place for people to start, I think I'm gonna argue. No, actually it's got, if you will, hidden currents that give it depth. I'm sorry to keep doing these puns, but it is that. And so it's not quite, quite as sweet and anodyne as it seems. It retains some of Hans Andersen's original. And it's not as straight as it seems either, because Anderson wasn't straight.

[Kate Lister]

What do you think was going on there?

[Diane Purkis]

Definitely. Well, a big part of that was that he grew up in this Danish Puritan family, very poor. His mother, who was super ambitious for him, made sure he got a reasonably good education, but there was nothing much he could obviously do with it. And interestingly, what happened first of all to him is he fell in love, the idea of being an actor. So he foot slugged to Copenhagen to become an actor. But it was a bit hopeless because he wasn't that pretty and he wasn't even that confident on stage. Eventually he picked up some other patrons who got him to start writing. But all his life he fell in love with people of both sexes in a really passionate way.

[Kate Lister]

Obsessive, really, we would probably say.

[Diane Purkis]

Yeah, I think became a creepy stalker in many respects.

[Kate Lister]

Yes, I'm glad you said that.

[Diane Purkis]

Dian poor Jenny Lind, the opera singer, and she was like, I don't know what to do with this. But at the time he wrote the Little Mermaid in particular, he was deeply in love with another man, a man called Edvard Colin. And before Anderson had finished the story, Edvard Colin announced his engagement to a woman, obviously, because that was the only kind of engagement you could have. So the Little Mermaid's really a story of thwarted love and hope. In Anderson's story, the mermaid does not get to marry the prince, unlike in the Disney film.

[Kate Lister]

No, she doesn't, does she? It's Mermaid.

[Diane Purkis]

It's all about her suffering and perpetual loyalty and perpetual love for this individual who in many respects at best thinks of her as like a pet animal.

[Kate Lister]

The original story, if anyone hasn't read it, and I'm sure some people will have done, but can you give us an overview about where it departs from Disney's version and what the darkness of that story is?

[Diane Purkis]

It's significantly darker than Disney's version because part of the deal the mermaid makes with the witch from the beginning is that every step she takes with her human feet will be agonizingly painful, like walking on swords. In the Disney film, this is kind of replaced by clumsiness. So the mermaid is clumsy, but in Andersen it's like walking on the edges of razors or swords. And it's so painful that even though there's no visible wound, her feet actually bleed. So it's quite like. And we could also think of the symbology of that, that the Little Mermaid is just coming into puberty and that's sort of bleeding from the lower body and pain. It's kind of fairly obviously symbolic of menstruation and the beginnings of menstruation. So in a way, what she's also wished for is a grown up body. To grow up, she'll be visible to

[Kate Lister]

the prince because she's only 15, isn't she? She's only a little slip of a thing. She's just 15 in Anderson's, but only 16 in Disney's as well, which is

[Diane Purkis]

actually pretty creepy in all versions. And I mean, she is the Little Mermaid in some illustrations. If you really want to pull your hair out, she's clearly barely more than a toddler. So it's very uncomfortable, really.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, that is.

[Diane Purkis]

And in all those respects, part of what she's wishing for and wishing to be a human is she's sort of wishing to be a grown up princess. And that of course is also what Disney wants to sell to little girls, that tiny girls buy these Little Mermaid costumes which have a bra that in a way is completely unsuitable for a prepubescent body. So it's also about the pain, therefore, of being in the wrong body. And that one of the letters that survives from Hans Andersen to Edvard Colin, he describes himself as, he says, the feelings I have for you are those of a woman. So that sort of sense of what it is that we're longing for, what she's longing for is the kind of body that would be appealing to the prince. But to get that kind of body is to endure extreme pain. So that's one big difference. Another big difference that's really important is the ending. In Anderson's story, the prince just marries another princess. It's not the sea witch in disguise. She just marries another princess. He marries another girl. It's partly because, as in the Disney film, he deludedly believes that this other princess is the one who has saved him. But it's also, and this maybe is more disturbing because he never takes her seriously anyhow. He treats her as a pet. She sleeps on a cushion outside his door. Yikes.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, no.

[Diane Purkis]

Oh, I'm like, ugh, this is so horrible. And I mean, she's kind of also a little bit like a clown or a fool figure. She does dances for them and they

[Kate Lister]

all laugh and applaud the whole time she's in pain.

[Diane Purkis]

It's sort of very exploitative. So, yeah, he marries this other princess. And then this is a big flip too. Her five sisters, who are much more important in the Anderson story than they are in the Disney movie, make a fresh pact with the sea witch. They cut off their hair, and in exchange they get a magical dagger from the sea witch, and they bring that to the little mermaid, who's on board a ship with the freshly married prince, and they give her the dagger. And they say, you stab the prince in the heart. When his heart's blood falls on your feet, they'll change back into a tail and you can then live your full 300 years. Otherwise, at the very first light of dawn, you'll die and turn to sea foam.

[Kate Lister]

Oh.

[Diane Purkis]

So really, really violent and very strongly worded fates for the mermaid here. So she takes the dagger and she goes into the royal bedchamber cabin and she stands over the prince and she can't bring herself to stab him because she still loves him. So instead, she throws the dagger out the window, throws herself out after it. And in Anderson's original ending, she just dissolves into sea foam.

[Kate Lister]

And that's not very happy, is it? So she kills herself to save the man that she loves. Yeah, who didn't love her back.

[Diane Purkis]

Exactly. So it's deeply tragic and kind of awful. Then Anderson felt that himself and felt uncomfortable. And so he wanted maybe to give himself a bit of hope, so he wrote a different ending, which is the one that you will see in published versions. And that is where as she dissolves into sea foam, she becomes instead a sort of airish body, a daughter of the heir. And this is a category of being that Anderson invents for the story that in her previous existence. But they're spirits of the air in the same way that the mermaid is the spirit of the oceans and the waters. But unlike her, they can earn a soul by doing good deeds. So she's then gonna spend 300 years, but she's gonna spend them doing good deeds, and at the end, she'll get a soul.

[Kate Lister]

That's still a rough deal. I'd have stabbed him, Diane.

[Diane Purkis]

Not only is it rancid, but it's really annoying as well, because it seems like she was good in that she didn't kill him to save herself. And the fact that she's now got to jump through a bunch of other hoops seems a bit harsh.

[Kate Lister]

Well, he's running off with some other tart. That's not a nice story.

[Diane Purkis]

No, I share your indignation. I don't think anyone likes it. And just to make it a bit worse, it's also one of those awful, moralistic things where the little Mermaid, now a daughter of the heir, sees a naughty child, her sentence is extended and she has to work for longer. So you can imagine your mum or your grandma or someone like, well, Agatha, you've just extended the Little Mermaid sentence by throwing that food on the floor.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, my God. And the whole thing is like. It's really a sort of. When you look at Anderson's other work, you do get this reoccurring theme of someone's in love and that they weren't loved back. Like the Ugly Duckling is another one of his.

[Diane Purkis]

Yes, absolutely. Exactly that. And, yeah, I mean, there are lots of instances. The other one is the constant tin soldier who has this deep love for the fairy ballerina and the Both die.

[Kate Lister]

Or he was a strange potato. There's those records in there of him in his diary, that he would go to brothels and just pay the women for their time and would just sit there and cry.

[Diane Purkis]

It's awful.

[Kate Lister]

And then would go home and write about how well behaved he was and how he tested himself, but he hadn't succumbed. But there was lots of crosses for masturbation. He seems to have been masturbating furiously, but never actually had sex with anybody.

[Diane Purkis]

Exactly. But there's something so obvious in that respect, in the stories, that these are stories about longing rather than stories about fulfillment. And while I think that, yeah, he was an odd duck, an odd duckling, if you like. An ugly duckling himself and a very strange man, there's wonderful stories about when he went to stay with the dickens Family. And they were just desperate to get rid of him. Like, how can we make him go home? Is there any way. Is there any way we can get

[Kate Lister]

him to leave this man out of my house? Oh, dear.

[Diane Purkis]

Because he was always upset about something, you know, he seems to have had incredibly poor self control, dear. But I feel like he nonetheless captures something that's a big part of general human experience and perhaps women's experience and girls experience above all, which is this sense of being sort of passionately eager but constantly rebuffed.

[Kate Lister]

Be back with Diane and Mermaids after this short break.

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[Kate Lister]

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[Diane Purkis]

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[Kate Lister]

When he wrote his Little Mermaid. Were mermaids like a big part of folklore and mythology at the time? They were like. There was many other stories about them.

[Diane Purkis]

Yeah, I mean, what his story is really drawing on is two specific previous stories. One is a huge romantic era bestseller called Undine. If listeners know about this, it might be from the fact that it's briefly referenced in Little Women. It's one of Jo March's Christmas presents. And this is a very similar story to the Little Mermaid. Actually, it's the story of a water spirit in Undine who falls in love with a mortal man as they do. This is fairly normal for this kind of entity and initially is unable to attract him, but eventually, through kind of redemptive sacrifice, is able to acquire a human soul and be christened. So that's the happy ending. And similarly. And the 300 year motif is important here. There's the Irish Mermaid, Saint Li Ban. Okay, yeah, it's Ireland. So we've gotta have an obviously vaguely pagan story that's been Tartan up by monks.

[Kate Lister]

What's that story? I'm not familiar with that one.

[Diane Purkis]

This is Liban. She is living on the site of what's going to be Loch Neag. And suddenly the floodwaters start arising around her and miraculously, and after a bit of time's gone by, she's changed into a mermaid and her lapdog is changed into an otter. So the pair are able to continue to live in a cave under the loch. And she surfaces from time to time and people hear her singing. And eventually one of the interfering people who hears her singing goes and tells St. Patrick about this strange phenomenon, this beautiful singing female. And he comes down to the lockside, she swims over, asks him for help, and he baptizes her, and she dies immediately. Loathe a happy ending.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, it's rubbish being a mermaid. What's going on here? They're all dying and sad and fallen in love. And Is that a mermaid's lot getting baptised by random saints who are walking around that no one asked them to do it? Are they always sad?

[Diane Purkis]

Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. I mean, what this is really about is the fact that mermaids are part animal and part human.

[Kate Lister]

Yes.

[Diane Purkis]

So in a kind of Christian cosmology, they are lower than the human because half of them is animal.

[Kate Lister]

Okay, okay, that makes sense.

[Diane Purkis]

So they have to kind of go up a couple of rungs on the ladder to be equal to humans.

[Kate Lister]

So I probably should have asked you this right at the beginning, but for your research, how do you even define a mermaid? Is it half human, half fish? Do we count? Was Ursula a mermaid? Cause she was a sort of an octopus thing going on. Like what? Like how much fish, how much person can men be? Mer men? I suppose they can be, but they can definitely.

[Diane Purkis]

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's a really important question. And the interesting thing I'm gonna focus on now is not the mare, but the maid. Why do we still call them maids? It's deliberately archaic, like ye olde English tea shoppie.

[Kate Lister]

It is, isn't it? Maid.

[Diane Purkis]

Why don't we call them mer? A bit odd that we still use this term.

[Kate Lister]

Mer women. Yeah, I've never even thought of that.

[Diane Purkis]

Because, in fact, the Anglo Saxon term is mwif, which is actually mer woman.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, that's much better. That was like Grendel's mum. She was referred to as wiff, wasn't she?

[Diane Purkis]

Yeah, definitely. Absolutely right. I'd love to talk about whether Grendel's mom is adjacent to mermaids in a bit, but Yeah, I mean, there's sort of two things here. There's what your body form is like, whether you're part sea creature and part human, and there's also whether you live in water and if so, whether you breathe water. So there's two interesting things. There are many kinds of sea dwelling entities that are sort of partially human, even though they don't initially present that way. And the obvious example here in the British Isles is the silkie Silky is seals. Literally when they're on the land, they present just as humans. And you wouldn't necessarily know by looking at them that when they're in the sea they present as seal. And when you look at the seals, you can't tell that they could be human on land. So that's a different way of being sort of a bit human and a bit sea, instead of being half one and half the other. It's a question of where you are. But there's a similar concept at work that you are both one thing and another.

[Kate Lister]

So would you say silkies are mer people?

[Diane Purkis]

Yeah, I'd say that they're as near as down there, let's say. I'd say that there's another bunch of water figures like the lady of the Lake forgotten about her.

[Kate Lister]

Yes. Is she a mermaid?

[Diane Purkis]

I mean, she's also highly female. She lives at the bottom of a lake. Again, a bit like Grendel's mum.

[Kate Lister]

Grendel's mum. I'd never thought of her being a mermaid before, but talking to you, these

[Diane Purkis]

creatures are all very similar and it's interesting that there are so many of them and all cultures have them all around the world. So there are Japanese ones who are part goldfish, who are sort of goldfish some of the time and human at other times. A bit like the silkies.

[Kate Lister]

Is aquaman a merman?

[Diane Purkis]

Yeah, arguably, yes.

[Kate Lister]

Arguably, yeah.

[Diane Purkis]

So this is where I'm going with the. The point about these entities is less their body shape than the fact that they're both one thing and another. The body shape is just one way of realizing that in a story or a picture, a different way of doing it, as with the silky, is the idea that you can be one thing in one place and another thing in another place. And usually there's. It's important in silkiness and this is very related to a certain kind of mermaid story, that the silky has to have access to their skin. So if you hide the silky skin, they can't go back into the sea.

[Kate Lister]

I hadn't heard that part of their cloth.

[Diane Purkis]

Fantastic. Isn't it? So a very standard sort of silky story, and there's mermaid stories that are almost identical, is a bloke captures a beautiful woman he sees dancing on the shore in the moonlight, takes her home, hides her skin, which he finds lying on the sand the next day, has lots of children with her, they're married for ages. It's all fine as long as she doesn't find the skin. But the stories all end the same way. She finds the skin and she's off.

[Kate Lister]

Wow. Wow. There was a storyteller story, the Jim Henson one, about Hands, my hedgehog, who was a hedgehog, and put a skin on. Those stories quite common in folklore.

[Diane Purkis]

Yeah, yeah. The standard one that people will also know is ones about bearskins in the Brothers Grimm, where this is kind of like a boy that princes disguise themselves as bears.

[Kate Lister]

Oh.

[Diane Purkis]

Or we could think about the French fairy tale donkey skin, where it's not that the princess ever presents as a donkey, but skins are really foundational to the tail.

[Kate Lister]

Yes. So for your research, a mer person is somebody that there's a sense of changing shape and that they can live in the water and on land. Cause we never get that kind of information in these stories. Like, how can they breathe the air and breathe underwater as well when they're like half fish, half person?

[Diane Purkis]

Well, again, it seems to vary from one figure to another. And because you mentioned Grendel's mom and I mentioned Liban, they actually live in caves under lakes. So Grendel's mom doesn't live in the water. She's more like a pearl diver. She seems able to hold her breath between sort of diving in and reaching her safe space, her cave.

[Kate Lister]

But she's never given a name. Is she Grendel's mom?

[Diane Purkis]

No, she's just Grendel's mum. It's like being at the school gate, to be honest, where you really just, you know, know Jane's mom or whatever.

[Kate Lister]

Grendel, what are you doing? Going out. Get back in. It's past your tea time.

[Diane Purkis]

Absolutely. Seems very much like that. Yeah.

[Kate Lister]

No, she. I'd never thought of being a mer person. So I suppose. Why do you think?

[Diane Purkis]

Well, as you rightly say, what she's called, which is super cool, is Ag la Ca Vif, which is mistranslated by Seamus Heaney. Horrifyingly, he's not very good at Anglo Saxon, bless him as monstrous hell wife. But actually, Aglak Aglaka doesn't mean that at all. It means awesome, overpowering, impressive, ferocious. And Gerard Tolkien translates it as ferocious warrior in woman's form.

[Kate Lister]

Wow, that's a big difference, isn't it? How that's translated.

[Diane Purkis]

God, yeah, those are big.

[Kate Lister]

Why do you think there are so many of these merpeople myths all around the world? Cause they do seem to crop up in isolation from one another as well.

[Diane Purkis]

And in the classical world as well, which we haven't even touched on. But you know, you've got your Nereids, you've got your watery goddesses like Cetis, the mother of Achilles, who's the sea goddess. You've got the idea of Aphrodite being born from sea foam rather than dying into becoming sea foam. All those kinds of people. I have a theory, I'm happy to say.

[Kate Lister]

Please.

[Diane Purkis]

It really only applies to places influenced by Greek and Roman culture. But my theory is that this is based on the idea that women's bodies are colder and wetter than men's bodies.

[Kate Lister]

Ah, that one.

[Diane Purkis]

Can you just explain that? In fact, I know you know this.

[Kate Lister]

Can you explain it to the listeners there?

[Diane Purkis]

This is rather shocking theory, so you can chip in whenever you want with additional horrifying and misleading details from this worldview. But yeah, the idea is that women's bodies are less perfect than men's bodies. And the way this manifests is that they're colder and damper than men's bodies. So the body of woman seeks out male bodies because their warmth and dryness will help to perfect the defective female body. And even the uterus roams around the woman's body searching specifically for warm, dry male seed to perfect it. Can see how close this is to the narrative of mermaid stories in which mermaids also seek heat and dryness from human males. And this is some kind of quest towards spiritual advancement or becoming a better category of being. So I think the reason that there are so many stories like this is that they are grounded in what, one's past for science.

[Kate Lister]

Wow, I'd never even thought of that. But that's. That's absolutely right, isn't it? And obviously, if the, the humoral understanding is that women are cold and wet, well, you don't get much colder and wetter than the ocean, do you? That's very cold and wet over there.

[Diane Purkis]

Exactly. Another thing just to bear in mind, because I haven't had a chance to say it, but I. I think it's really important for me is how few people could swim back in the day when most of these stories were told. Yes, I started by talking about my own experience, my sort of mermaid like experience in The Sydney surf, where seafoam was to me, the loveliest thing in the world. But I only say that because I could swim from when I was three.

[Kate Lister]

Very true.

[Diane Purkis]

If I hadn't been able to swim, my mother, despite growing up in Australia, couldn't swim very well. And for her, the beach was always something of a place of terror because it was hot and she didn't feel confident going into the sea to cool off. And she could really only swim a few strokes. She wouldn't have been able to save herself if she'd fallen into the village pond. And I mean, once that was everybody's situation. People would go off to sea in sailing ships and cross the Pacific Ocean without being able to swim a stroke.

[Kate Lister]

Which is mad when you actually think

[Diane Purkis]

about it, and horrifying too, because it meant that travel on rivers or lakes or oceans was much like air travel for us, where, you know, if something goes wrong with the plane, you're not going to be able to fly it to safety. It.

[Kate Lister]

That's it, isn't it? I suppose. But there's something very human in. I mean, even today, with all our benefit of science and rational logic, and we know what's what, if you're swimming in the ocean and you get out far enough so your feet don't touch the ground, there are many people who don't panic. But I'm definitely in the camp of like, oh, my God, I can't just what's underneath me. I go. Then I want to get back as quickly as possible. It's just this huge unknown of, like, what is down there? I don't know.

[Diane Purkis]

Interesting. So you don't like not being able to touch the bottom.

[Kate Lister]

It panics me a little bit, like I'm okay.

[Diane Purkis]

So interesting because when I was small, that was what I always wanted most from swimming experience. And the thing that most Australian kids learn to do nowadays, they mostly learn with a small surfboard, but in my day, you just did it all by yourself is body surfing, where you throw yourself into the wave and let the wave fling you to the shore.

[Kate Lister]

I'm all right at swimming, but it's when you don't know what's underneath you. And I wonder if it's like the same psychological thing as, like. Because the other place that you get a lot of monsters and mythical creatures turning up in folklore is the forest, which is also dark and unknown, and the ocean is dark and unknown. I'll be back with Diane and mermaids after this short break.

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[Kate Lister]

What about something like sirens? Now, they're very famous in Greek mythology. Would we classify them as mer people? And I like them because they're not hanging around waiting for a man to upset them, are they?

[Diane Purkis]

Actually, they're actually looking to have blokes for their dinner. And yeah, I think that they absolutely do count. I wouldn't say they're the same as mermaids. You'll find some Victorian era paintings of sirens with Odysseus. More on Odysseus in a sec. That actually show them as mermaids. But in fact, if you look at Greek vase paintings, what they actually were was half woman and half bird. So they're portrayed as like big scary birds of prey. Maybe like a big herring gull. They're scary. Herring girls are scary. So they're also mostly characterized by singing. Is why they're so close to mermaids. You can only find them on the sea. They live on a particular island, but their main power is expressed through song, which is also true of mermaids who can enchant and deceive by the beauty of their song. So the sirens also do this. And what they offer we learn from homer's odyssey, roughly 8th century BCE. What their main attraction was was universal knowledge. So the reason that Odysseus wants to listen to them, even though he's a great hero, is that he's endlessly curious. And what they offer is a kind of uber Wikipedia answer to everything. The kind of knowledge that they present in their song is all knowledge of everything, everywhere that it's ever happened and ever will happen.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, wow, I didn't know that about them.

[Diane Purkis]

That's cool, isn't it?

[Kate Lister]

That is cool, actually. Is that maybe where like this idea? Because I've read that mermaids are sometimes they're symbols of doom, or sailors viewed them as symbols of doom. Does that come from the sirens or somewhere else?

[Diane Purkis]

Definitely. Because it's fatal if you actually jump in the water and go and interact with them because they will in fact eat you. When Odysseus has himself tied to the mast. He's advised by the witch Circe to do this, that so he can listen to their song and get all that knowledge, but won't be tempted to join them in the water. His men have their ears stuffed with wax, so they won't be tempted either. And they also don't hear the song as they sail past the island, sensibly not jumping off, they see all these bones scattered around. So it's fairly clear what these sort of herring gull shaped creatures might really be looking for. But they nonetheless have this extraordinary and not very girly superpower. Yeah.

[Kate Lister]

Did sailors, I mean, they really believed in mermaids and merpeop, didn't they, for a very long time?

[Diane Purkis]

Oh, definitely, yeah. Absolutely right. And what you're thinking of when you're talking about mermaids as an omen of shipwreck is, yeah, there are lots and lots of ballads and songs about this. Typically you just see them as soon as you leave the harbor. So you just leave port and suddenly you see a mermaid and immediately you go, well, that's it. The ship's gonna sink then. And so everyone on board starts saying goodbye to their families. I have a father and mother in fair Portsmouth town and tonight they'll weep for me. And I mean, this illustrates two surprising things about the age of sail. One, getting trapped by a storm as soon as you leave port is pretty common, actually. Storms tend to haunt the land. And two, also importantly, near shore is much more dangerous than the deep ocean in certain ways, in that you can be pushed by the wrong sort of wind back onto the shore and your ship can break up. So that's why they tend to be coastal, I guess.

[Kate Lister]

What were they looking at when they were looking at mermaids, do you think?

[Diane Purkis]

No idea. And my own theory, for what it's worth, is that one reason that people thought that was that they were probably suffering from horrendous vitamin deficiencies.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, God. Wow.

[Diane Purkis]

If we need a scientific explanation for why sailors are so rich in myths and superstitions, they were probably borderline hallucinating with scurvy and pellagra, especially in pellagra, which will give you massive, massive altered states of consciousness.

[Kate Lister]

Really?

[Diane Purkis]

Yeah. And the reason that we know so this very unfortunately, but it probably affects sailors as well, is a thing called Korsakov syndrome, which is mostly associated with late stage alcoholism, where the substance abuse means that you never eat properly and so you develop a walloping vitamin B deficiency. And that's why then to bring pirates into it. You're like the pirates in treasure island where you see old Flint plain as I see you now. And it's actually not even alcohol or alcohol withdrawal. It's a subset, a result of being alcoholic, which is your massive vitamin deficiency. So you'd be cured by a bit of toast and Marmite.

[Kate Lister]

So really, when Eric was on the bow of that ship and the Little Mermaid, he was just hallucinating due to lack of vitamin B.

[Diane Purkis]

Doubtless. Doubtless. Without a doubt. Absolutely. Though he seems kind of too wimpy to go to sea for that long.

[Kate Lister]

Yes, he does, doesn't he? Quite frankly?

[Diane Purkis]

I mean, he's definitely a Ken doll, right? I mean, that's the trouble with Disney Princess. They have all the attraction of Ken in the Barbie movie. Movie.

[Kate Lister]

That's very true. So so far, the mermaids have sounded kind of. They're often very sad or perhaps they're quite angry, and they're trying to get after humans and human men. But there are other examples from around the world that are a bit more positive. What's the. Is it the one from. I can't remember which African country, but Mama Wata.

[Diane Purkis]

Oh, Mamuatta. Yes. She's very cool. And she is, in fact, a mermaid. What she really is is a creolization, one of my favorite words in folklore of an orisha, a river orisha and a Western mermaid. We don't typically find pure folklore forms that go back to. For thousands of years without change. They have to kind of keep being updated. So Mumbawatta is a river orisha that's now depicted generally like a Western mermaid and has some of the same characteristics of a Western mermaid, but remains. Yeah. Quite assertive as her love of red things signifies. I don't know if you know this, but she always collected red flowers before, and now she collects Coke can.

[Kate Lister]

I know. I didn't know that. I'd read a legend about Mamo Atas that she would seduce mortals by the river. I read that about her. So she's another sexy one, but that's who she is.

[Diane Purkis]

And I'm gonna do a shout out for Grendel's mother as well, if we do say anything. And this is a very cool lady. When Beowulf eventually dives down into the mere to kill her off, the sword bounces off her skin. And so he finds another sword, which is, I think, fairly evidently has her sword.

[Kate Lister]

Her sword. And he steals it and he breaks into her house. So again, absolutely. Again, she's in the right.

[Diane Purkis]

Her awesome sword. So there's. And also her vengeance quest to an Anglo Saxon audience that would have been fairly sympathetic. Anglo Saxon society had to go to endless amounts of trouble to prevent people from prosecuting blood feuds. She's monstrous. She's kind of a cool, relatable monster.

[Kate Lister]

I couldn't agree more. I used to take teach Beowulf and my students. We always got to Grendel's mum and we'd always. And nobody was ever on the side of Beowulf because they were like, no, look, he's killed her son. He's. All she's trying to do is just go and get her. Her son's body back or his. His arm back. That's all she wants. Yes. She kills a few soldiers while she's doing it, but that's not her fault. And then he follows her and he breaks into her underwater lair and he steals her things and then he stabbed. So very much like Ursula. No, she is the one in the right here, quite frankly.

[Diane Purkis]

Absolutely right. And again, with a much larger agenda than just finding a prince to marry.

[Kate Lister]

Yes, exactly.

[Diane Purkis]

And in the light of recent events, and I've said this and got a good laugh at recent talks, I think the Little Mermaid maybe needs to rethink her life goals.

[Kate Lister]

Yes, she does. Think bigger, Ariel. Think bigger, think bigger.

[Diane Purkis]

What about a career as an opera singer? That would also have been very appealing to Hans Christian Anderson.

[Kate Lister]

Right. And I made a joke about Triton at the beginning, but who is he exactly?

[Diane Purkis]

Nobody. The problem with these father figures that get dotted around in these texts is that they don't seem to have much purpose. I'm gonna do a shout out to one of the Little mermaid's sisters in Hans Andersen. This is the fifth sister, and they all have to go up to the surface on their 16th birthday at some kind of puberty rite of passage. And this one, it's wintertime for her birthday and she sits on an iceberg combing her hair and singing. That sounds like a pretty good life to me.

[Kate Lister]

Yes, that does, doesn't it? Actually, I think that she's nailed that one. So as a final question then, do you have a favorite mermaid in all of your research? The ones that you think, yeah, that's what I would do if I was gonna be a mermaid.

[Diane Purkis]

Oh, wow. It's so hard to choose. I mean, if I have a favorite story, it's probably the story, one kind of story told about the Rusalka in Eastern Europe. And again, this is kind of an interesting assertiveness story. Rusalka, potentially women who are abandoned when pregnant by their lovers. So a bit Like Les Mis, you know, the lover is posh and he knocks you up and he leaves town.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah.

[Diane Purkis]

And Rusalkas have killed themselves by drowning, but they rise from that to be a vengeful monster again, a little bit like Grendel's mum. What they're doing is hunting down other bad men who are on the point of betraying other girls. So they've actually got kind of a vigilante role. And, you know, any promising young man who's being a bit rapey or a bit prone to break hearts is the kind that the Rusalkas dull Isla into ponds and drown. So I think that's kind of cool.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, that's very cool. Yes. That's the job. If we're going to be mer people, that's the one punishing for.

[Diane Purkis]

Or actually just be perfectly happy to swim around.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, I think that'd be pretty cool, wouldn't it? Oh, Diane, you have been wonderful to talk to. Thank you so much.

[Diane Purkis]

Thank you, Kate. It's such a pleasure to meet someone whose work I so admire.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, thank you. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

[Diane Purkis]

My most recent book is called the Museum of Witchcraft, published by Hachette. The book before that was English food. And if you want to contact me personally at Oxford, we don't turn our email addresses into code because we're not afraid that we're spies, really. So it's easy just to search for my contact details. Feel free. Free to do that if you have questions.

[Kate Lister]

Thank you so much. You've been marvellous. Pleasure. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Diane for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to, like, review and follow along where every day you get your podcasts. Coming up, we'll be traveling from New Orleans to the Moulin Rouge to Imperial Russia to meet the brothel madams, sex workers and the punters of history. And if you want us to explore a subject, or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us@betwixt historyhit.com this podcast was edited by Tim Arstel and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again Betwixt sheets the history of sex scandal in society A A podcast by History hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

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