A Primer Of Mer Wisdom and Quotations

The more pragmatic among Water People insist that no finned ancestors ever existed and certainly don’t exist now, and that variations in our skills and physiology are mere vagaries, easily explained by random intermingling among our kind. I will not get into any wilder claims, here.

Lilith

They say there are tragic water spirits who sing to passing boatmen. Yet as anyone who has heard one of us singing can tell you, there is nothing tragic about the music of the water. It is the singing, not the silence, that matters.

Lilith

Almost all the stories of Water People are preposterous and insulting. They say we lure people into the sea and steal their souls. What a terrible stereotype. Our souls are in the water, not theirs.

Lilith

It is quite likely the fabulous worlds of Melasine and her kind had been in ruins for millennia when Neptune began paddling around Grecian male fantasies with his nubile nymphs and phallic trident.

Lilith

To sing is to charm the soul with illicit lures, said the churchmen of old. And so the songs of Water People, male and female, were designated a form of witchcraft. How sad, to turn love into darkness.

Lilith

Stalwart and true, by Ta-Mera’s princesses enslaved
Devoted lovers, bound to earth yet fulfilled in water,
We shall whisper their mortal names on shores
Kissed by eternal tides,
And forget them not in fluid rhyme:
Beckrith, Padrian, and Salasime.

At the risk of insulting those Water People who believe Landers cannot possibly share our legacy, I must point out that if the sea is the mother of us all, then we must all be, at heart, both Water People and Land People.

Lilith

The fantastic abilities of Water People are rooted in the physical laws of nature, not fairytales. I say that quite seriously.

Lilith

Land People fight and struggle and yearn to find magic in their lives. Water People hide behind that magic, but realize the loneliness of it.

Lilith

Some Water People use the word halfling as a slur when someone exhibits Lander-like traits. That usage, however, is generally considered both inaccurate and ill mannered.

Lilith

The Celts called him The Waterman and said he was once a sea-god named Dewi. In Christian times, he became Saint David. By any name, he was reported to be irresistible when playing the harp and singing. No doubt, since he was one of us.

Lilith

A notable percentage of the world’s popular singers and operatic stars are Water People. Good manners and common sense prevent me, of course, from naming celebrity names.

Lilith

The world is a very narrow stream for most people. They never realize how many other streams flow to the same ocean.

Lilith

Often we read the hoary old tale of dangerous sirens luring ships to their doom and men to damnation: The Cyrenes of Homer’s Odysseus, beckoning ordinary men and their possessions. The truth, dear readers, is far more sentimental; our kind tends to rescue hapless travelers and take only a small commission in return. It is the travelers who steal from us.

Lilith

As for Bonavendiers, add to our psyche the spoiled attitudes of a silver-spoon upbringing in the deep, coastal South, and you have that most dangerous of all combinations (and here I stoop to use two common stereotypes.) Southern Belles who are also mermaids. Gilding the magnolia, to say the least.

Lilith

Pull to and fro, Row men, row! Keep your eyes upright and your ears shut tight! The devil’s in the sea but he won’t get thee! Pull to and fro, Row men, row! The devil looks up from the depths below!

The term “mermaid” is literally translated as “virgin of the sea.” And thus I have never considered that popular term a particularly apt or complimentary name for our kind. To celebrate the water is to celebrate the consummation between water and earth, female and male. To have never experienced that unity is to be half-lived.

Lilith

Land People fight and struggle and yearn to find magic in their lives. Water People hide behind that magic, but realize the loneliness of it.

Lilith

In our version of Noah’s Ark, the world was destroyed by a great drought.

Lilith

A Poem by Alice

Water. Smooth. Life. Flow.
How do I find it?
How will I know?

The Nagas of India were matriarchal tribes named for the mythological serpent children of the Goddess Kadru. They were said to host fantastic undersea mansions and keep mystic books of wisdom, and in return, the goddess granted them long lives. What a beautiful story. All true.

Lilith

Water People say the earth formed as an afterthought inside the glorious depths of great seas, hardening like the dull, dry pit of a luscious fruit.

Lilith

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