Massachusetts derives many of its resources from the Atlantic Ocean. From agencies dedicated to marine life, such as the
), the sea has always been important to the Commonwealth. With such strong ties to the ocean, I reasoned, surely there should be plenty of sea lore – more specifically stories about mermaids – connected with Massachusetts. With this assumption, I started poking around sources on Massachusetts and New England folklore.
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Detail image of cartouche showing merpeople from A South East View of ye Great
Town of Boston in New England in America (Map Mass. Boston 1743f-1)
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Peter Muise’s blog
New England Folklore led me to this resource:
Legends of the New England Coast by Edward Snow. Although not in our immediate collection, it is within the larger CW MARS network’s collection. Shout out to the State Library’s awesome
Interlibrary Loan Department for helping me get this book! His blog also led me to his own book –
Legends and Lore of the North Shore which is in our collection! I was a little disappointed to discover that there aren’t as many mermaid or merfolk related legends specific to Massachusetts as I expected (there have been sightings in other parts of New England and Nova Scotia, cf. Snow, 1957, p. 108ff.). According to Snow, in Massachusetts, the merfolk sightings have been around the Gloucester and Nantucket areas. For this week’s blog post, I was determined to examine the origins of these stories (spoiler alert, I only had time to investigate one).
Of these stories, the only one with a specific date was recorded by a person named Valentyn on May 1, 1714. The incident allegedly occurred near Great Point in Nantucket (according to Snow, 1957, pp. 109-110). I figured I would start with this one because it seemed the most straightforward (yet another inaccurate assumption on my part!). Snow details Valentyn’s encounter and claims to quote directly from him (Snow, 1957, pp. 109-110), however, he does not provide a citation to the source he was using.
Librarian public services announcement: citing sources is important!
Snow only describes Valentyn as “a traveler and writer” (p. 109) and doesn’t provide a first name. I went back to Peter Muise’s blog post on
the Nantucket merman; he describes Valentyn as a “minister.” The episode is also referenced in Nathaniel Philbrick's
Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People but there too he is only described as a traveler and no first name is indicated (Philbrick, 2011, p. 76).
After some flailing around on the internet, Googling combinations of “Valentyn,” “May 1714,” and “mermaid,” I wound up on Wikipedia (gasp!) reading an entry for one
François Valentyn, who was a Dutch Calvinist minister who also wrote about seeing mermaids on his travels. According to Wikipedia, the text in which he wrote about his merfolk encounter was
Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën which translates to “Old and New East Indies.” That title (along with other information from Wikipedia) didn’t seem like it was going to have much to do with New England, much less Massachusetts. Portions of this text are available on
Internet Archive; however, if you investigate a little, you will realize that this work is massive .... and it’s written in Dutch, which unfortunately I cannot read.
Additional flailing led me to
this essay on Valentyn’s work which gave me some clues as to where to find his discussion of mermaids within the multiple volumes that comprise
Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën. Valentyn discusses merfolk (as well as the specific encounter we’re investigating) on page 330 of volume 3, linked
here.
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| Inserted between pages 330 and 331 in volume 3 of Oud en nieuw Oost-Indiën |
Pressed for time, I did exactly what language teachers tell their students to refrain from doing ... I turned to Google Translate. Behold the hasty transcription that I fed Google Translate:
Alle deze voorbeelden, van zoo veel geloofweerdige lieden konnen my te gemakkelyker overhaalen, en doen gelooven een zaak, waar van ik zelf ten grooten deele het gezicht gehad heb, daar in bestaande, dat ik Ao. 1714 op de t'Huisreize, en nu tot de 12 Graden 38 min: Zuider breedte gevorderd, op den eerste May 's morgens ontrent elf uuren, nevens onzen Schipper, Boek-houder, de Stierman van de wagt, en een groot getal andre van ons Scheeps-Volk, ontrent drie Scheeps-lengten van ons, by dood-stil weder (zynde de Zee als Olie) zeer klaar en onderscheiden boven op de oppervlakte van de Zee, ontrent met 't halve boven-lyf als op de Zee, en met de rug na my toe zittende, vernomen heb een Zee-gedrogt, van couleur even eens, als de huid van een Kabbeljauw, of andre Visch, uit den gryzen of graeuwen zynde.
Uiterlyk aan te zien geleek het een Matroos, of een Mensch, die ergens op zat, en dat te meer, alzoo hy scheen een Engelsche Muts van die zelve gryze verwe op te hebben.
Hy zat wat kort in een gedrongen, en wy zagen hem zyn hoofd meer dan vyf en twintig malen al ginsch en weder draejen, weshalven wy hem allevooreen Schip-breukeling hielden.
Ik verzogt daar op de Schipper, na dat wy dit nu al eenigen tyd zoo gezien hadden, dat de Stierman 'er wat na toe houden mogt, alzoo hy zich wat na de Stier-boords-zyde vertoonde, op dat wy hem te beter van na by onderkennen mogten. De Stierman stevende daar op wat na Stierboord toe, zoo dat wy 'er toen maar een Scheeps-lengte van daan waren; dog door een schielyk geraas van ons Volk op de Bak buitelde dit Zee-gedroght 't onderste boven, en was ten eersten ons ontdoken; dog de Man, die boven aan de Steng op de wagt zat, getuigde, dat dit Gedrogt een vreezelyke lange start, en dat hy dat zeer klaar nog wel tweehonderd tellens lang gezien had.
And now behold what Google Translate spat out (in parentheses I have supplied what I think the translation should be, otherwise question marks indicate that I have no idea – your guess is as good as mine!):
All these examples, from so many religious people, could persuade me more easily and make me believe a thing of which I myself have largely witnessed, consisting in the fact that in 1714 on the Home Journey, and now until the 12 Degrees 38 min: South latitude advanced, on the first of May at about eleven o'clock in the morning, next to our Skipper, Accountant, the Bullman of the Watch (???), and a large number of other members of our Ship's People, about three Ships' lengths from us, in deathly still weather – the Sea is like Oil – very clear and distinct on top of the surface of the Sea, with half the upper body as on the Sea, and with the back behind me while sitting there, I heard a sea-dry (???), of color just like the skin of a cod, or other fish, from the gray or gray.
Outwardly it appeared to be a sailor or a man sitting on something, and even more so as he seemed to be wearing an English cap of that same gray color. He was sitting rather close together (???), and we saw him jerk his head back and forth more than five and twenty times, so we all took him for a shipwrecked man.
I asked the Skipper, after we had seen it like this for some time now, that the Taurus (captain?) could take some time, if he showed himself a little after the Taurus side (starboard?), so that we could better understand him. were allowed to recognize after by (???).
The Taurus (captain?) headed towards it a little after Taurus(???), so that we were only a ship's length away at the time; Only due to a sudden noise from our people on the barge, this sea monster fell upside down and evaded us in the first place; dog de Man (???), who was sitting on the watch at the top of the stem (mast?), testified that this Drug (???) had a terribly long start (tail?), and that he had seen it very clearly for about two hundred seconds. (pp. 334-335)
I have no doubt that Google translate is missing a lot of the language’s nuance, plus I’m pretty sure it isn’t programmed for 18th-century Dutch. In the margin of page 335 there is the following text:
Een zeldzaam geval, den Schryvner zelf, Ao. 1714. Voorgekomen. Google translate renders this as: “A rare case, den Schryvner himself, Ao. 1714. occurred.” I’m guessing that the “den Schryvner” that Google couldn’t figure out is 18th-century Dutch for “door de schrijver” ~ “(witnessed) by the writer” or something like that. As for Taurus man, I'm guessing “Stierman” might be a version of “stuurman” which means “steer-man” i.e. a person who steers something such as a ship which could mean “Stierman” = “captain.” Again, these are just guesses.
Unfortunately, the crucial part, which in my opinion is the description of the merperson, is where things really start to devolve. The English translation Snow has on page 110 of his book paints a much more coherent picture than what I was able to accomplish.
Aside from that issue, there is the fact that Valentyn’s book is about his time working for the Dutch East India company and the flora and fauna he observed there. His writings primarily concern the region of Indonesia, not New England. He makes mention of the ship’s coordinates at the time of the sighting: “12 Degrees 38 min: South latitude” and it’s
en route to Holland because he mentions that the ship is on its “home-journey.”
After even more flailing around on the internet in an attempt to understand 18th-century Dutch trade routes and coordinate systems, I found these two articles:
I’m not sure what happened and how Valentyn’s experience got linked to Great Point. I guess it's possible that his ship stopped near Massachusetts on its way back to Holland from Indonesia, but Nantucket isn’t exactly on the trade route described in the articles above. I have no idea what “
en nu tot de 12 Graden 38 min: Zuider breedte gevorderd” would actually mean in terms of today’s GPS coordinates (plus my understanding of coordinates and naval navigation is on par with my grasp of Dutch – 18th-century and modern!); however, I strongly suspect that the place he is referencing is nowhere near Massachusetts. If anyone has a better explanation, please share! Maybe in a future blog post I’ll investigate the other Massachusetts mermaid legends but for now, I’m going to call it quits with this one!
There are legends and folklore about mermaids and merpeople that originate from all over the world. If you are interested in learning more, a book worth exploring is the
Penguin Book of Mermaids. If you have a
State Library card, you can request a copy from the CW MARS libraries through
our catalog.
Happy reading!
Maryellen Larkin
Government Documents & Reference Librarian
