INTRODUCTORY NOTES

Mariners in all ages, prone to superstitious fears, have peopled the great deep with beings of the most dreadful kind, all the more wonderful and indescribable because of the mysterious and unknown regions in the sea depths which they were supposed to inhabit. Classic mythology in its wealth of imagery allotted a whole hierarchy of greater and lesser divinities to the government of the watery element, whose capricious ruling of the waves man altogether failed to comprehend. Their fancied terrors, begot in calms and storms, in darkness and in fogs, midst dangers of the most appalling kind, assumed those monstrous and fantastic shapes which their own fears created. The active forces of nature in unusual forms impressed them as the result of supernatural agency, or the “meddling of the gods,” whose favours and protection the mariner, by prayers and supplications, endeavoured to propitiate; and whilst tremblingly he skirts the horizon’s edge in timid ventures, new dangers impel him to promises of greater gifts to assuage the wrathful mood of his angry god or some other equally powerful or more spiteful.

The national god of the Philistines was represented with the face and hands of a man and the tail of a fish. It was but natural that a seafaring people should adopt a god of that form.

“Dagon his name; sea-monster, upward man
And downward fish: yet had his temple high
Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast
Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon,
And Accaron and Gaza’s frontier bounds.”
Paradise Lost, Book i. 462.

In the leviathan and behemoth of Scripture are darkly indicated monsters of the great deep. Scandinavian mythology, like that of all bold maritime peoples in old times, is rife with legends of certain great monsters of the sea. The kraken or sea-serpent of popular legend is a myth not yet laid to rest; there is still a lingering belief in the existence of the mermaid.

“With a comb and a glass in her hand, her hand, her hand,
With a comb and a glass in her hand.”
Popular sea-song.Chief amongst the Grecian sea-divinities stands Poseidon, or Neptune as he was called by the Romans, the potent “ruler of the seas.” He usually dwelt, not in Olympus, but at the bottom of the sea, in a magnificent golden palace in the neighbourhood of ÆgÆ. He is always represented with a trident, sometimes with a rudder—special symbols of his power over the sea. Accompanied by his wife, fair Amphitrite, he was frequently pictured in royal state in his chariot, drawn through the billows by wild sea-horses, attended by “Triton blowing loud his wreathed horn,” Proteus, “the godlike shepherd of the sea,” and other followers—dolphins leaping the waves and showing their high arched backs in wild gambolings.

Nereus and his fifty daughters, the Nereides, who dwelt in caves and grottos of the ocean—beneficent sea-nymphs,—win the hearts of the sailors, now by their merry sports and dances, now by their timely assistance in the hour of danger. Whilst Nereus and his lovely daughters represent the sea under its calm and pleasant aspect, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto present it as the world of wonders, under its more terrible conditions. The storm winds and all the terrors and dangers of the deep were typified under various strange and peculiar forms. Not the least dreaded were the Sirens, fatal sisters, who “spread o’er the silver waves their golden hair,” basked near sunlit rocks, and lured all men to their ruin by their enchanting voices, save only the crafty Ulysses.These and many others of lesser note, Proteus, Glaucus and the rest, make up the discordant influences that govern the watery element.

Many wonderful stories are told by classic writers concerning these old myths, and innumerable relics of antique art which embody the conceptions of the times are extant in our museums, by which we may judge to what a large extent such ideas influenced the common life and formed the beliefs of ancient peoples.

It is also worthy of observation to note in what manner the ancients sought to identify the various sea-deities and other mythical creatures with the element they lived in. Each was known by his form or the attributes by which he was accompanied. Modern heraldry repeats many of these old-world myths as new-coined fables, so that for their proper understanding and signification it will be necessary briefly to refer to ancient ideas respecting them. Lakes, rivers and fountains had each their impersonation peculiar to them, which will be found referred to in classic story.

MediÆval legend is equally rife with accounts of wonderful creatures of the sea. The change of one form of superstition for another alters but little the constitution of the mind to harbour fears, and the imagination will deceive even the wisest and best so long as Nature’s laws are misunderstood.

Particular whirlpools, rocks and other dangerous places to navigation, are personated under the forms of monsters of various and awful shapes feared by the mariner, who dreads

“The loud yell of watery wolves to hear.”

Scylla and Charybdis are two rocks which lie between Italy and Sicily. Ships which tried to avoid one were often wrecked on the other. The ancients feigned an interesting legend to account for their existence. It was Circe who changed Scylla into a frightful sea monster, and Jupiter who changed Charybdis into a whirlpool, the noise of which was likened to the loud barking of dogs; and the monster was therefore represented with savage dogs amidst her scaly folds, and loudly baying.

“Far on the right her dogs foul Scylla hides;
Charybdis roaring on the left presides,
And in her greedy whirlpool sucks the tides,
Then spouts them from below; with fury driven
The waves mount up, and wash the face of heaven.
But Scylla from her den with open jaws
The sinking vessel in her eddy draws
Then dashes on the rocks. A human face
And virgin bosom hides her tail’s disgrace;
Her parts obscene below the waves descend,
With dogs enclosed, and in a dolphin end.”
Æneid, Book iii.

Homer gives a vivid description of Ulysses passing the rocks and whirlpools:

“Now through the rocks, appall’d with deep dismay,
We bend our course, and stem the desperate way;
Dire Scylla there a scene of horror forms;
And here Charybdis fills the deep with storms.
When the tide rushes from her rumbling caves,
The rough rock roars, tumultuous boil the waves;
They toss, they foam, a wild confusion raise,
Like water bubbling o’er the fiery blaze;
Eternal mists obscure the aËrial plain,
And high across the rocks she spouts the main:
When in her gulfs the rushing sea subsides,
She drains the ocean with the refluent tides:
The rock rebellows with a thundering sound;
Deep, wondrous deep, below appears the ground.”
Odyssey, Book xii.

The giants and ogres of romance were never so fearfully armed or clothed by the wildest fiction with so terrible an aspect as the cephalopods, the race to which the cuttlefish or octopus belongs. Eminently carnivorous, voracious and fierce; beneath staring eyes are spread eight strong fleshy arms furnished with tenacious suckers, which adhere with unrelenting pertinacity, and the arms are swiftly twined round the struggling prey, which vainly strives to disengage itself from so fearful and so fatal embrace. Cephalopods of enormous size are sometimes found with arms as thick as a man’s thigh. Homer refers to its tenacity of grip in a simile.

The cuttlefish appears upon ancient Greek coins of Coressus, in allusion to the worship of Neptune, a deity much venerated as the protector of this island.

Amongst the veritable inhabitants of the ocean there are few more extraordinary mammals than the sea-unicorn, Monodon monoceros, the beaked whale of the Arctic seas, twenty to thirty feet from stern to snout. His length is increased about eight feet by his magnificent spirally twisted tusk of the purest ivory, which in reality is simply the canine tooth growing straight out of the upper jaw. One of the royal treasures of Denmark is the narwhal throne of the Castle of Rosenberg. It is the horn of this “strange fish” which has kept up the belief in the existence of the mythical unicorn.

Xiphias gladius, swordfish, is the largest of the thorny fishes, and belongs to the scombers or mackerel group. The sawfish, Pristis antiquorum, ranks by himself between the rays and sharks. He has the long body of a shark and the underside gill openings of a ray. His saw, like the sword of the Xiphias, is a long flattened bony snout, but is double-edged and serrated. It is well known as a weapon among the Polynesian islanders, and, like the sword of the Xiphias, is frequently found buried in the hulls of ocean-going ships.

There are two denizens of the deep which bear the name of sea-horse—one the tiny Hippocampus, the other the mighty walrus. The hippocampus of our public aquariums, a bony pipefish some six or eight inches in length, swimming upright, his favourite position in the water, with the general resemblance of his head to that of a horse, is very striking; anchored to the seaweed stems by their tails they dart on their prey with great quickness.Hippocampus (?pp??, hippos, a horse; ??p?, campe, a bending), the steed of Neptune, had only the two forelegs of a horse, the hinder quarter being that of a dolphin. The word means “coiling horse.”

The Sea-horse of the North, or walrus—the Rossmareus or Morse of the Scandinavians, the Trichecus rosmarus of science, is fifteen or twenty feet long, or even longer, and armed with huge canine teeth, sometimes measuring thirty inches in length—tusks which furnish no small amount of our commercial ivory. Many are the thrilling stories of the chase of these great sea-horses, for the walrus fights for his life as determinedly as any animal hunted by man. The walrus has had the honour assigned to it also of being the original of the mermaid, and Scoresby says the front part of the head of a young one without tusks might easily be taken at a little distance for a human face, especially as it has a habit of raising its head straight out of the water to look at passing ships.

The manatee, or sea-cow, found on the tropical coasts and streams of Africa and America, is called by the Portuguese and Spaniards the “woman-fish,” from its supposed close resemblance. Its English name comes from the flipper resembling a human hand—manus—with which it holds its young to its breast. One of this species, which died at the Royal Aquarium in 1878, was as unlike the typical mermaid as one could possibly imagine, giving one a very startling idea of the difference between romance and reality; but if it was observed in its native haunts, and seen at some little distance, and then only by glimpses, it might possibly, as some have asserted, present a very striking resemblance to the human form.

Sir James Emerson Tennent, speaking of the Dugong, an herbivorous cetacean, says its head has a rude approach to the human outline, and the mother while suckling her young holds it to her breast with one flipper, as a woman holds an infant in her arm; if disturbed she suddenly dives under water and throws up her fish-like tail. It is this creature, he says, which has probably given rise to the tales about mermaids.

Seals differ from all other animals in having the toes of the feet included almost to the end in a common integument, converting them into broad fins armed with strong non-retractile claws. Of the many varieties of the seal family, from Kamchatka comes the noisy “Sea-lion” (Otaria jubata), so called from his curious mane. In the same neighbourhood we get the “Sea-leopard” (Leptonyx weddellii), and the “Sea-bear” (the Etocephalus ursinus), whose larger and better-developed limbs enable him to stand and walk on shore. But the most important of the seals, in a commercial sense, are the “Harp Seal” (Phoca GrÆnlandica) and the Common Seal, or “Sea-dog” (Phoca vitulina), which yield the skins so valuable to the furrier. There are several other species, of which the most known are the Crested Seal, or Neistsersoak (Stemmatopus cristatus), and the Bearded Seal (Phoca barbata).Apart from the seal having possibly given rise to legends of the mermaid, it has a distinguished position in superstition and mythology on its own account. In Shetland it is the “haff-fish,” or selkie, a fallen spirit. Evil is sure to follow the unfortunate destroyer of one of these creatures. In the Faroe Islands there is a superstition that the seals cast off their skins every ninth night and appear as mortals, dancing until daybreak on the sands. Sometimes they are induced to marry, but if ever they recover their skins they betake themselves again to the water.

Stephen of Byzantium relates that the ships of certain Greek colonists were on their expeditions followed by an immense number of seals, and it was probably on this account that the city they founded in Asia received the name of Phocea, from f??? (PhokÉ), the Greek name of a seal, and they also adopted that animal as the type or badge of the city upon their coinage. The gold pieces of the Phoceans were well known among the Greek States, and are frequently referred to by ancient writers. “Thus from a single coin,” says Noel Humphreys,[29] “we obtain the corroboration of the legend of the swarm of seals, of the remote epoch of the emigration in question, the coin being evidently of the earliest period, most probably of the middle of the seventh century before the Christian era.”

Luigi (+ 1598), brother to the Duke of Mantua, had for device a seal asleep upon a rock in a troubled sea, with the motto: “Sic quiesco” (“So rest I”). The seal, say the ancient writers, is never struck by lightning. The Emperor Augustus always wore a belt of seal-skin. “There is no living creature sleepeth more soundly,” says Pliny,[30] “therefore when storms arise and the sea is rough the seal goes upon the rocks where it sleeps in safety unconscious of the storm.”

The poet Spenser embodies many of the conceptions of his time in the description of the crowning adventures of the Knight Guyon. He here refers to “great sea monsters of all ugly shapes and horrible aspects” “such as Dame Nature’s self might fear to see.”

“Spring-headed hydras, and sea-shouldering whales;
Great whirlpools, which all fishes make to flee;
Bright scolopendras arm’d with silver scales;
Mighty monoceroses with unmeasured tails;
The dreadful fish that hath deserved the name
Of death, and like him looks in dreadful hue;
The grisly wasserman, that makes his game
The flying ships with swiftness to pursue;
The horrible sea-satyr that doth shew
His fearful face in time of greatest storm;
Huge Ziffius, whom mariners eschew
No less than rocks, as travellers inform;
And greedy rose-marines with visages deform;
All these, and thousand thousand many more
And more deformed monsters, thousandfold.”
Faerie Queen, Book ii. cant. xii.The early heralds took little account of these dreadful creatures—more easily imagined by fearful mariners or by poets than depicted by artists from their vague descriptions. The most imaginative of the tribe rarely ventured beyond such representations of marine monsters as appealed strongly and clearly to the universal sense of mankind—compounds of marine and land animals—either from a belief in the existence of such creatures, or because they used them as emblems or types of qualities, combining for this purpose the attributes of certain inhabitants of the sea with those of the land or of the air to form the appropriate symbol.

In modern heraldry such bearings are usually adopted with special allusion to actions performed at sea, or they have reference in some way to the name or designation of the bearer, and hence termed allusive or canting heraldry. Some maritime towns bear nautical devices of the fictitious kind referred to. For instance, the City of Liverpool has for supporters Neptune with his trident, and a Triton with his horn. Cambridge and Newcastle-on-Tyne have sea-horses for supporters to their city’s arms. Belfast has the sea-horse for sinister supporter and also for crest.

Many of the nobility also bear, either as arms or supporters, these mythical sea creatures, pointing in many instances to memorable events in their family history; indeed, as islanders and Britons, marine emblems—real and mythical—enter largely into our national heraldry.

Poseidon or Neptune

Poseidon or Neptune, the younger brother of Zeus (Jupiter), sometimes appears in heraldry, usually as a supporter. In the ancient mythology he was originally a mere symbol of the watery element, he afterwards became a distinct personality; the mighty ruler of the sea who with his powerful arms upholds and circumscribes the earth, violent and impetuous like the element he represents. When he strikes the sea with his trident, the symbol of his sovereignty, the waves rise with violence, as a word or look from him suffices to allay the fiercest tempest. Poseidon (Neptune) was naturally regarded as the chief patron and tutelary deity of the seafaring Greeks. To him they addressed their prayers before entering on a voyage, and to him they brought their offerings in gratitude for their safe return from the perils of the deep.

Dexter supporter of Baron Hawke.

In a famous episode of the “Faerie Queen” (Book iv. c. xi.) Spenser glowingly pictures the procession of all the water deities and their attendants:

“First came great Neptune with his three-forked mace,
That rules the seas and makes them rise and fall;
His dewy locks did drop with brine apace
Under his diadem imperial:
“And by his side his Queen with coronal,
Fair Amphitrite, most divinely fair,
Whose ivory shoulders weren covered all,
As with a robe, with her own silver hair,
And decked with pearls which the Indian seas for her prepare.”

Amphitrite, his wife, one of the Nereids in ancient art, is represented as a slim and beautiful young woman, her hair falling loosely about her shoulders, and distinguished from all the other deities by the royal insignia. On ancient coins and gems she appears enthroned on the back of a mighty triton, or riding on a sea-horse, or dolphin.

Examples.—Baron Hawke bears for supporters to his shield an aggroupment of classic personations of a remarkable symbolic character, granted for the achievements of the renowned Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet, Vice-Admiral of Great Britain, &c. &c., created Baron Hawke of Tarton, Yorks, 1776. The dexter supporter is a figure of Neptune, his mantle vert, edged argent, crowned with an eastern crown, or, his dexter arm erect and holding a trident pointing downwards in the act of striking, sable, headed silver, and resting his left foot on a dolphin proper.

Sir Isaac Heard, Somersetshire; Lancaster Herald, afterwards Garter. His arms, granted 1762, are thus blazoned in Burke’s “General Armory”: Argent a Neptune crowned with an eastern crown of gold, his trident sable headed or, issuing from a stormy ocean, the sinister hand grasping the head of a ship’s mast appearing above the waves, as part of a wreck, all proper; on a chief azure, the Arctic pole-star of the first between two water-bougets of the second.

Merman or Triton

Triton was the only son of Neptune and Amphitrite. The poet Apollonius Rhodius describes him as having the upper parts of the body of a man, while the lower parts were those of a dolphin. Later poets and artists revelled in the conception of a whole race of similar tritons, who were regarded as a wanton, mischievous tribe, like the satyrs on land. Glaucus, another of the inferior deities, is represented as a triton, rough and shaggy in appearance, his body covered with mussels and seaweed; his hair and beard show that luxuriance which characterises sea-gods. Proteus, as shepherd of the seas, is usually distinguished with a crook. Triton, as herald of Neptune, is represented always holding, or blowing, his wreathed horn or conch shell. His mythical duties as attendant on the supreme sea-divinity would, as an emblem in heraldry, imply a similar duty or office in the bearer to a great naval hero.

Mermaid and Triton supporters.

Examples.—The City of Liverpool has for sinister supporter a Triton blowing a conch shell and holding a flag in his right hand.

Lord Lyttelton bears for supporters two Mermen proper, in their exterior hands a trident or.

Ottway, Bart.—Supporters on either side, a Triton blowing his shell proper, navally crowned or, across the shoulder a wreath of red coral, and holding in the exterior hand a trident, point downward.

Note.—In classic story, Triton and the Siren are distinct poetic creations, their vocation and attributes being altogether at variance—no relationship whatever existing between them. According to modern popular notions, however, the siren or mermaid, and triton, or merman as they sometimes term him, appear to be viewed as male and female of the same creature (in heraldic parlance baron and femme). They thus appear in companionship as supporters to the arms of Viscount Hood, and similarly in other achievements.

The Mermaid or Siren

This fabulous creature of the sea, well known in ancient and modern times as the frequent theme of poets and the subject of numberless legends, has from a very early date been a favourite device. She is usually represented in heraldry as having the upper part the head and body of a beautiful young woman, holding a comb and glass in her hands, the lower part ending in a fish.

Ellis (Glasfryn, Merioneth).—Argent, a mermaid gules, crined or, holding a mirror in her right hand and a comb in her left, gold. Crest, a mermaid as in the arms. Motto, “Worth ein ffrwythau yn hadna byddir.” Another family of the same name, settled in Lancashire, bears the colours reversed, viz., gules, a mermaid argent.

Crest of Ellis.

Sir Josiah Mason.—Crest, a mermaid, per fess wavy argent and azure, the upper part guttÉe de larmes, in the dexter hand a comb, and in the sinister a mirror, frame and hair sable.

Balfour of Burleigh.—On a rock, a mermaid proper, holding in her dexter hand an otter’s head erased sable, and in the sinister a swan’s head, erased proper. The supporters of Baron Balfour are an otter and a swan, which will account for the heads appearing in the hands of the mermaid, instead of the traditionary comb and mirror. In some other instances the like occurs, as in the mermaid crest of Cussack, the mermaid sable crined or, holds in dexter hand a sword, and in the sinister a sceptre.

Sir George Francis Bonham, Bart.—Crest, a mermaid holding in dexter hand a wreath of coral, and in the sinister a mirror.

Wallop, Earl of Portsmouth, bears for crest a mermaid proper, with her usual accompaniments, the comb and mirror. Another family of the same name and bearing the same arms has for crest a mermaid with two tails extended proper, hair gold, holding her tails in her hands extended wide.In foreign heraldry the mermaid is generally termed MÉlusine, and represented with two fishy extremities.

Die Ritter, of Nuremberg.

Die Ritter of Nuremberg bears per fess sable and or, a mermaid holding her two tails, vested gules, crowned or.

The Austrian family of Estenberger bears for crest a mermaid without arms, and having wings.

A mermaid was the device of Sir William de Brivere, who died in 1226. It is the badge of the Berkeleys; in the monumental brass of Lord Berkeley, at Wolton-under-Edge, 1392 A.D., he bears a collar of mermaids over his camail. The Black Prince, in his will, mentions certain devices that he appears to have used as badges; among the rest we find “Mermaids of the Sea.” It was the dexter supporter in the coat-of-arms of Sir Walter Scott, and the crest of Lord Byron. The supporters of Viscount Boyne are mermaids. Skiffington, Viscount Marsereene, the Earl of Caledon, the Earl of Howth, Viscount Hood, and many other titled families bear it as crest or supporters. It is also borne by many untitled families.

The arms of the princely house of Lusignan, kings of Cyprus and Jerusalem, “Une sirÈne dans une cuvÉ,” were founded on a curious mediÆval legend of a mermaid or siren, termed MÉlusine, a fairy, condemned by some spell to become on one day of the week only, half woman, half serpent. The Knight Roimoudin de Forez, meeting her in the forest by chance, became enamoured and married her, and she became the mother of several children, but she carefully avoided seeing her husband on the day of her change; one day, however, his curiosity led him to watch her, which led to the spell being broken, and the soul with which by her union with a Christian she hoped to have been endowed, was lost to her for ever.

This interesting myth is fully examined in Baring Gould’s “Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.”

The mermaid is represented as the upper half of a beautiful maiden joined to the lower half of a fish, and usually holding a comb in the right hand and a mirror in the left; these articles of the toilet have reference to the old fable that always when observed by man mermaids are found to be resting upon the waves, combing out their long yellow hair, while admiring themselves in the glass: they are also accredited with wondrous vocal powers, to hear which was death to the listener. It was long believed such creatures really did exist, and had from time to time been seen and spoken with; many, we are told, have fatally listened to “the mermaid’s charmÈd speech,” and have blindly followed the beguiling, deluding creature to her haunts beneath the wave, as did Sidratta, who, falling in the Ganges, became enamoured of one of these beautiful beings, the Upsaras, the swan-maidens of the Vedas.

All countries seem to have invented some fairy-like story of the waters. The Finnish Nakki play their silver harps o’ nights; the water imp or Nixey of Germany sings and dances on land with mortals, and the “Davy” (Deva), whose “locker” is at the bottom of the deep blue sea, are all poetical conceptions of the same description. The same may be said of the Merminne of the Netherlands, the White Lady of Scotland and the Silver Swan of the German legend, that drew the ship in which the Knight Lohengrin departed never to return.

In the “Bestiary” of Philip de Thaun he tells us that “Siren lives in the sea, it sings at the approach of a storm and weeps in fine weather; such is its nature: and it has the make of a woman down to the waist, and the feet of a falcon, and the tail of a fish. When it will divert itself, then it sings loud and clear; if then the steersman who navigates the sea hears it, he forgets his ship and immediately falls asleep.”

The legendary mermaid still retains her place in popular legends of our sea coasts, especially in the remoter parts of our islands. The stories of the Mirrow, or Irish fairy, hold a prominent place among Crofton Croker’s “Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland.” Round the shores of Lough Neagh old people still tell how, in the days of their youth, mermaids were supposed to reside in the water, and with what fear and trepidation they would, on their homeward way in the twilight, approach some lonely and sequestered spot on the shore, expecting every moment to be captured and carried off by the witching mere-maidens. On the Continent the same idea prevails. Among the numerous legends of the Rhine many have reference to the same fabled creature.

As we know, mariners in all ages have delighted in tales of the marvellous, and in less enlightened times than the present, they were not unlikely to have found many willing listeners and sound believers. Early voyagers tell wonderful stories of these “fish-women,” or “women-fish,” as they termed them. The ancient chronicles indeed teem with tales of the capture of “mermaids,” “mermen,” and similar strange creatures; stories which now only excite a smile from their utter absurdity. So late as 1857 there appeared an article in the Shipping Gazette, under intelligence of June 4, signed by some Scotch sailors, and describing an object seen off the North British coast “in the shape of a woman, with full breast, dark complexion, comely face” and the rest. It is probable that some variety of the seal family may be the prototype of this interesting myth.

The myth of the mermaid is, however, of far older date; Homer and later Greek and Roman poets have said and sung a great deal about it.

The Sirens of Classic Mythology

The Sirens (Greek, entanglers) enticed seamen by the sweetness of their song to such a degree that the listeners forgot everything and died of hunger. Their names were, Parthenope, Ligea, and Leucosia.

Ulysses and the Sirens. Flaxman’s “Odyssey.”

Parthenope, the ancient name of Neapolis (Naples) was derived from one of the sirens, whose tomb was shown in Strabo’s time. Poetic legend states that she threw herself into the sea out of love for Ulysses, and was cast up on the Bay of Naples.

The celebrated Parthenon at Athens, the beautiful temple of Pallas AthenÆ, so richly adorned with sculptures, likewise derives its name from this source.Dante interviews the siren in “Purgatorio,” xix. 7-33.

Flaxman, in his designs illustrating the “Odyssey,” represents the sirens as beautiful young women seated on the strand and singing.

Ulysses and the Sirens. From a painting on a Greek vase.

In the illustration from an ancient Greek vase gives a Grecian rendering of the story, and represents the Sirens as birds with heads of maidens.

The Sirens are best known from the story that Odysseus succeeded in passing them with his companions without being seduced by their song. He had the prudence to stop the ears of his companions with wax and to have himself bound to the mast. Only two are mentioned in Homer, but three or four are mentioned in later times and introduced into various legends. Demeter (Ceres) is said to have changed their bodies into those of birds, because they refused to go to the help of their companion, Persephone, when she was carried off by Pluto. “They are represented in Greek art like the harpies, as young women with the wings and feet of birds. Sometimes they appear altogether like birds, only with human faces; at other times with the bodies of women, in which case they generally hold instruments of music in their hands. As their songs are death to those subdued by them they are often depicted on tombs as spirits of death.”

By the fables of the Sirens is represented the ensnaring nature of vain and deceitful pleasures, which sing and soothe to sleep, and never fail to destroy those who succumb to their beguiling influence.

Spenser, in the “Faerie Queen,” describes a place “where many mermaids haunt, making false melodies,” by which the knight Guyon makes a somewhat “perilous passage.” There were five sisters that had been fair ladies, till too confident in their skill in music they had ventured to contend with the Muses, when they were transformed in their lower extremities to fish:

“But the upper half their hue retained still,
And their sweet skill in wonted melody;
Which ever after they abused to ill
To allure weak travellers, whom gotten they did kill.”
Book ii. cant. cxii.

Shakespeare charmingly pictures Oberon in the moonlight, fascinated by the graceful form and the melodious strains of the mermaid half reclining on the back of the dolphin:

“Oberon: ... Thou rememberest
Since once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid’s music.”

Commentators of Shakespeare find in this passage (and subsequent parts) certain references to Mary Queen of Scots, which they consider beyond dispute. She was frequently referred to in the poetry of the time under this title. She was married to the Dauphin (or Dolphin) of France. The rude sea means the Scotch rebels, and the shooting stars referred to were the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, who, with others of lesser note, forgot their allegiance to Elizabeth out of love to Mary.

“Few eyes,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “have escaped the picture of a mermaid with a woman’s head above and a fish’s extremity below.” In those old days when reading and writing were rare accomplishments, pictured signboards served to give “a local habitation and a name” to hostelries and other places of business and resort. Among the most celebrated of the old London taverns bearing this sign,[31] that in Bread Street stands foremost.We find this “Mermayde” mentioned as early as 1464. In 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh established a literary club in this house, and here Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and the choice intellectual spirits of the time used to meet, and there took place those wit combats which Beaumont has commemorated and Fuller described. It is frequently alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher in their comedies, but best known is that quotation from a letter of Beaumont to Ben Jonson:

“What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid? heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that any one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life; then when there had been thrown
Wit able enough to justify the town
For three days past; wit that might warrant be
For the whole city to talk foolishly,
Till that were cancell’d; and when that was gone,
We left an air behind us, which alone
Was able to make the next two companies
(Right witty, though but downright fools) more wise.”

The Dolphin of Legend and of Heraldry

As the Lion is the king of beasts, the Eagle the king of birds, so in similar heraldic sense the Dolphin is king of fishes. His position in legend is probably due to his being one of the biggest and boldest creatures of the sea that passed the Pillars of Hercules into the Mediterranean Sea. Pliny (Book ix. ch. 8) calls it “The swiftest of all other living creatures whatsoever, and not of sea fish only, is the dolphin; quicker than any fowle, swifter than the arrow shot from a bow.”

The dolphin, of which there are several varieties, enjoys a pretty wide geographical distribution, being found in the Arctic seas, the Atlantic Ocean, and indeed of all seas. It was well known to the ancients and furnished the theme of many a fabulous story.

The common dolphin (Delphinus Delphis) the true hieros ichthus, is only rarely met with on the British coast. Its length is usually seven or eight feet, though some specimens have been found to measure ten feet. Its back is almost straight, or only slightly elevated; its colour is dusky black above and whitish beneath. Its pectorals or flappers, which are placed low in the sides, are well developed, and a dorsal fin, which is somewhat short, is much elevated. Its tail is broad and notched in the centre and expanded horizontally—not vertically as in most other fishes—by the help of which it makes its peculiar leaps over the surface of the water and at the same time takes its breath.

Unlike its near relatives the porpoises, who haunt the coast, dolphins live far out at sea, and are generally mistaken for porpoises. The long-snouted dolphin feeds on pelagic fishes. The short-nosed porpoise likes salmon and mackerel, robs the fishermen’s nets, and even burrows in the sand in search of odds and ends. The dolphin is the sea-goose. The porpoise is the sea-pig; he is the porc-poisson, the porc-pois, or sea-hog.

The convex snout of the dolphin is separated from the forehead by a deep furrow; the muzzle is greatly extended, compressed, and much attenuated especially towards the apex, where it terminates in a rather sharp-pointed beak. The French name bec d’oie, from the great projection of its nose or beak, has led to its adoption in the arms of English families of the name of Beck. The dolphin is an elegant and swift swimmer, and capable of overtaking the swiftest of the finny tribe. Because the creature is noted for its swiftness it has been adopted in the arms of Fleet.

The dolphin is able to hold his own against nearly all others of his size and weight, and even some of the larger cetaceans only come off second best in an encounter with the dolphin. He is voracious, gluttonous, and ever on the look out for something to turn up, hunting his prey with great persistency and devouring it with avidity. He has been not inaptly styled “the plunderer of the deep.”

The destructive character of the dolphin amongst the various tribes of fish is not lessened when we examine its formidable jaws studded with an immense number of interlocking teeth. Notwithstanding its rapacious habits and the variety of its diet it was in England formerly regarded as a royal fish, and its flesh held in high estimation. Old chroniclers have frequent entries of dolphins being caught in the Thames, thus: “3 Henry V.—Seven dolphins came up the Thames, whereof four were taken.” “14th Richard II.—On Christmas Day one was taken at London Bridge, being ten feet long, and a monstrous grown fish.” (Delalune’s “Present State of London,” 1681.) The early fathers of the Church deemed “all fish that swam in the sea”; the dolphin was therefore eaten in Lent. He is, however, a mammal, not a fish, and though an air-breathing creature he lives and dies in the ocean. But one is brought forth at a birth, and between the old and young of their kind, as in the case of all marine animals, a strong affection exists.

Travellers’ tales are notoriously hard of belief, and must be taken cum grano salis. We learn from Sir Thomas Herbert, an early voyager, that when he was on the coast of Sanquehar, a large kingdom on the east side of the Cape of Good Hope, he “saw there great numbers of dolphins,” of which he says: “They much affect the company of men, and are nourished like men; they are always constant to their mates, tenderly affected to their parents, feeding and defending them against hungry fishes when they are old,” and much more information equally astonishing.

A story is related of a man who once went to a mufti and asked him whether the flesh of the sea-pig (the dolphin) was lawful food. Without any hesitation the mufti declared that pig’s flesh was unlawful at all times and under all circumstances. Some time after another person submitted the question to the same authority, whether the fish of the sea, called the sea-pig, was lawful food. The mufti replied: “Fish is lawful food by whatever name it may be called.”

Classic Fable and MediÆval Legend have shed a halo of romantic interest around the dolphin which cleaves to it even to the present hour; the rare event of a dolphin being caught in British waters revives with a thrill all the old-world stories and historic associations of this famous fish as if it were a veritable relic of the golden age. The dolphin of fact we have found to be quite a different creature from what he is pictured by the ancients. The mariner may be engulfed by “the yawning, dashing, furious sea,” but no generous dolphin now watches with tender eye, solicitous for his safety, nor offers his ready back to speed him to the shore.

The dolphin of our modern poets and sailors—the swift swimmer that leaps after the flying-fish and frolics in front of the vessel’s prow until he is caught by the glittering tin—is the CoryphÆna hippurus, the species famed for its changing tints when taken from the water. During a calm, these fishes, when swimming about a ship, appear of a brilliant blue or purple, shining with a metallic lustre in every change of reflected light. On being captured and brought on deck, the variety of these tints is very beautiful. The bright purple and golden yellow hues change to brilliant silver, varying back again into the original colours, purple and gold. This alteration of tints continues for some time, diminishing in intensity, and at last settles down into a dull leaden hue. The iridescent lines which play along its elegant curves as he lies on deck has awakened the enthusiasm of many a writer. Byron tells us in a beautiful simile:

“Parting day
Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues
With a new lustre, as it gasps away,
The last still loveliest, till ’tis gone—and all is grey.”

It is needless to say that the legendary dolphin is not to be confounded with the gay and graceful coryphÆna to whom alone belong those rainbow flashes of colour in dying. The common dolphin (Delphinus delphis) is dark on the back and satiny white beneath but not even in the agonies of death does he change colour, though like all dead things the body becomes slightly phosphorescent during decomposition. There are two curious fresh water dolphins, the Sooloo of the Ganges and the Inia of the Amazon, which form the connecting-link between the herbaceous and carnivorous cetacea.

The dolphin (de?f??) may be considered an accessory symbol of Apollo, who, as we read in the Homeric hymns, once took the form of a dolphin when he guided the Cretan ship to Crissa, whence, after commanding the crew to burn the ship and erect an altar to him as Apollo Delphinios, he led them to Delphi, and appointed them to be the first priests of his temple.

The dolphin is the most classic of fishes, the favourite of Apollo, and sacred to that bright divinity, deriving his name from the oracular Delphi, that mysterious spot, “the earth’s umbilicus,” the very centre of the world, Delphi or Delphos, a town in Phocis, famous for its oracle in the Temple of Apollo, upon the walls of which were sculptured the Helios ichthus, Apollo’s fish.

In the legend of Tarento, Phalantus, heading the PatheniÆ, was driven from Sparta and shipwrecked off the coast of Italy, and escaped on a friendly dolphin’s back to Tarentum. We learn from Aristotle that the youthful figure seated on the dolphin, which is the most common type on the coins of this city, was intended for Taras, a son of Poseidon, from whom the city is said to have derived its name.

The dolphins, “the arrows of the sea,” were the great carriers of ancient times. Not only did they bear the Nereides safely on their backs, but Arion, the sweet singer, when forced to leap into the sea to escape the mariners who would have murdered him, had previously so charmed the dolphins by his playing that they gathered round the ship and one of them bore Arion safely to TÆnarus, whilst the musician

“with harmonious strains
Requites his bearer for his friendly pains.”

The classic myth of Arion and the dolphin, like many other pagan fictions, was invested by the early Christians with an entirely different signification, and in the sculptures and frescoes of the catacombs and other symbolic representations of the Christian converts, the frequent introduction of the dolphin “points not to the deliverer of Arion, but to Him who through the waters of baptism opens to mankind the paths of deliverance, causing them to so pass the waves of this troublesome world that finally they may come to the land of everlasting life.”

The poet Licophron says Ulysses bore a dolphin on his shield, on the pommel of his sword, as well as on his ring, in commemoration of the extraordinary escape of his son Telemachus, who when young fell into the sea and was taken up by a dolphin and safely brought on shore. Pliny and others relate a story of one of these fishes which frequented the Lake Lucrin: “A boy who went every day to school from Baia to Puzzoli used to feed this dolphin with bread, and it became at last so familiar with the boy that it carried him often on its back over the bay.”

The dolphins were early symbols on the coins of Ægina, and though abandoned for a time were afterwards resumed; and they appear upon later and well-known coins of that State accompanied by the wolf and other national devices. Argos had anciently two dolphins; Syracuse, a winged sea-dog, a dolphin, &c.; Teneos (Cyclades) two dolphins and a trident. The dolphin and trident figures also upon coins of the ancient city of Byzantium, signifying probably the sovereignty of the seas. It is even figured by the ancients as a constellation in the heraldry of the heavens. In botany it lives in larkspurs called delphiniums, from their curious petals and the slender segments of their leaves.

The dolphin and anchor is a famous historic symbol. Titus, Emperor of Rome, took the device of a dolphin twisted round an anchor, to imply, like the emblem of Augustus, the medium between haste and slowness, the anchor being the symbol of delay, as it is also of firmness and security, while the dolphin is the swiftest of fish. This device appears also upon the coins of Vespasian, the father of Titus. The anchor was also used as a signet ring by Seleneus, King of Syria. The dolphin and anchor was also used, with the motto “Festina lente” (“Hasten slowly”), by the Emperor Adolphus of Nassau, and by Admiral Chabot. The family of Onslow bear the same for crest and motto.

Aldus Manutius, the celebrated Venetian printer, adopted this well-known device from a silver medal presented to him by Cardinal Bembo, with the motto in Greek “hasten slowly.” Camerarius describes this sign in his book of symbols “to represent that maturity in business which is the medium between too great haste and slowness.” “When violent winds disturb the sea the anchor is cast by seamen, the dolphin winds herself round it out of a particular love for mankind, and directs it as with a human intellect so that it may more safely take hold of the ground; for dolphins have this peculiar property that they can, as it were, foretell storms. The anchor then signifies a stay and security whilst the dolphin is a hieroglyphic for philanthropy and safety.”

This sign was afterwards adopted by William Pickering, a worthy “Discipulus Aldi” as he styles himself. Sir Egerton Bridges has some verses upon it, amongst which occur the following:

“Would thou still be safely landed,
On the Aldine anchor ride;
Never yet was vessel stranded,
With the dolphin by its side.
··· ··
“Nor time nor envy shall ever canker,
The sign which is my lasting pride;
Joy then to the Aldus anchor
And the dolphin at its side.

“To the dolphin as we’re drinking,
Life and health and joy we send;
A poet once he saved from sinking,
And still he lives the poet’s friend.”

The dolphin was the insignia of the Eastern Empire—the Empire of Constantinople. The Courteneys, a noble Devonshire family, still bear the dolphin as crest and badge, and the melancholy motto, “Ubi lapsus? Quid feci?” (“Whither have I fallen? What have I done?”), “a touching allusion,” says Miss Millington (“Heraldry in History and Romance”), “to the misfortunes of their race, three of whom filled the imperial throne of Constantinople during the time that city was in possession of the Latins after the siege of 1204. Expelled at length by the Greeks, Baldwin, the last of the three, wandered from Court to Court throughout Europe vainly seeking aid to replace him upon the throne.”

A branch of the imperial Courteneys settled in England during the reign of Henry II., and their descendants were among the principal Barons of the realm. Three Earls of Courteney perished on the scaffold during the Wars of the Roses; the family was restored to favour by Henry VII. Another Courteney, the Marquis of Exeter, became first the favourite, and subsequently the victim of the brutal tyrant Henry VIII. His son Edward, after being long a prisoner in the tower, ended his days in exile, and the family estates passed into other hands.

Sir William Courteney, of Powderham Castle, Devon (temp. Edw. IV.), bore emblazoned on his standard three dolphins in reference to the purple of three Emperors.

The Arms of Peter Courteney, Bishop of Exeter, 1478, is still to be seen in the episcopal palace environed with the dolphins of Constantinople.

The Dauphin of France

In France the bearing of the dolphin was exclusively restricted to the Dauphin or heir to the throne of the kingdom. Brydson mentions that one of the first of the troubadours was called the Dauphin, or Knight of the Dolphin, from bearing that figure on his shield, adding that “the name in his successors became a title of sovereign dignity.”

The title “Dauphin,” borne by the eldest son and heir-apparent of the kings of France under the Valois and Bourbon dynasties, originated in the Dauphins of Viennois, sovereigns of the province of DauphinÉ. Guy VIII., Count of Vienne, was the first so styled. The title descended in the family till 1349, when Humbert II., de la Tour de Pisa, sold his seigneurie, called the DauphinÉ, to Philippe VI. (de Valois), on condition that the heir of France assumed the title of “Le Dauphin.” The first French prince so called was Jean, who succeeded Philippe; and the last was the Duc d’AngoulÊme, son of Charles X., who renounced the title in 1830. In 1601, when Louis XIII. was born, there had not been a Dauphin since Francis II. (the husband of Mary, Queen of Scots)—eighty-four years. The province of DauphinÉ sent a deputation to Fontainebleau, headed by the Archbishop of Vienne, to recognise the infant as their sovereign, and make him a present of an entire service of richly chased plate with various figures of dolphins, estimated at 12,000 crowns.

Grand Dauphin.—Louis, duc de Bourgogne, eldest son of Louis XIV., for whom was published the edition of the Latin classics entitled “Ad usum Delphini” (1661-1711).

Second, or Little Dauphin.—Louis, son of the Grand Dauphin (1682-1712).

Shakespeare, by an anachronism of a hundred years, introduced into King John

“Lewis, the Dauphin and the heir of France.”

Mary Queen of Scots bore the title on her marriage in 1558 to the Dauphin, afterwards Francis II., and styled by her adherents:

“Mary, Queen, and Dolphiness of Fraunce,
The nobillest lady in earth.”

The Heraldic Dolphin

The heraldic dolphin, as usually represented by modern heralds, is an ornamental monstrosity bearing but slight resemblance to the natural form of this celebrated historic marine symbol; a nearer resemblance to the natural shape is decidedly preferable. Some of the early heraldic representations, though a little crude, are very characteristic and thoroughly heraldic in treatment, though at the same time very unlike the real dolphin.

In its series of leaps out of the water the dolphin appears with high arched back, just as we see it represented in antique works; its natural shape, however, is straight, the back being but slightly curved. The broad tail paddle being placed in a horizontal position necessitates an up and down stroke, which makes their swimming to appear a series of leaps and divings. Like its near relative the porpoise, it is an air-breathing animal; its apparent gambollings on the water may, therefore, be more truly attributed to its breathing and blowing whilst in pursuit of its prey.

The Dolphin is generally, if not always, depicted in heraldry embowed, that is, having its back greatly incurvated. In blazon the word Dolphin, alone, implies that its natural position, naiant (swimming) and embowed, is understood, but for the sake of accuracy it is better always to give the description in full, as a doubt may arise as to the omission of a word indicating its position.

Torqued, torquend, torgant, or targant, from the Latin torquere, to twist, are old terms for embowed, or bowed embowed, bent in the form of the letter S, turning contrary ways at each bending; applicable also to serpents.

Hauriant, from the Latin ab hauriendo, is a term applied to fishes generally when placed in an upright position or in pale, as if putting the head above water to get air.

Hauriant Urinant Naiant Torqued

Shell-fish are blazoned erect or upright, the term hauriant being only applicable to fishes with scales and fins.

Urinant (from the Latin urino, to duck or dive under water) signifies borne with the head downwards and the tail erect, the reverse position of hauriant.

Two dolphins are occasionally borne together, sometimes endorsed, or back to back; sometimes respecting each other.

As signifying the conquest of the sea, it appears in the shields of many seaport cities. It figures on the well-known bearings of the towns of Brighton, Dunkirk, Poole, &c.

The Dolphin appears in English heraldry as early as the middle of the thirteenth century. In a roll of arms of that date, a dolphin is given as the coat of Gile de Fiseburn.

“The Godolphins of Helston,” says Miss Millington, “who had estates in that part of the kingdom (Cornwall) at the time of the Conquest, bore argent three dolphins embowed, sable.” Similar arms are borne by many English families.

The Godolphins, Franklins, Franklands, Frenches, Fishers and Kennedys, in many of their branches, bear the dolphin fish as their crest.

A man playing the harp on a dolphin is the heraldic cognisance of the Walterton family.

Sea-horse naiant.

The Sea—Horse

The steeds of Neptune are favourite subjects in ancient poetry and art in the triumphs and processions of the marine deities, drawing the chariot of the sea-god in its progress through the waves. The imaginative Greeks pictured to themselves the horses of Poseidon in the rolling and bounding waves as they pursue each other in haste towards the shore, “curling their monstrous heads.” This may seem to account for the constant and close connection between the god and the horse. The origin of the horse is ascribed to the contest between Poseidon and AthenÆ as to who should make to mankind the most useful present; Neptune created the horse, Minerva the olive-tree.

Sea-horse erect.

The city of Lampsacus, in Mysia, founded by the Phoceans, adopted the winged sea-horse as their monetary type, in allusion to the fleetness of their vessels. Others of the maritime States of Greece also adopted the sea-horse upon their coins.

A coin of the celebrated Pyrrhus, King of Epirus (slain B.C. 272), the knight-errant of ancient heroes, represents the head of Achilles, the reputed ancestor of Pyrrhus, on one side, and the Nereid, Thetis, the mother of Achilles, on the sea-horse on the reverse. Thetis carries the arms forged by Vulcan for Achilles, in allusion to the succour brought by Pyrrhus to the Italian Greeks against the barbarians, as the rising Romans were termed by them.

In Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” we find a reference to a veritable sea-horse, if we may believe our authority. John Sobieski, the victorious King of Poland, in his letters to his wife, when he raised the memorable siege of Vienna and delivered Europe for ever from the incursions of the Turks, describes to her how, in the tent of Mustapha, he found the great standard of the Turks, “made of the hair of the sea-horse (?) wrought with a needle and embroidered with Arabic figures.” It was afterwards hung up by the order of the Emperor in the Cathedral of St. Stephens, “where,” adds the historian, “I have seen it.”

The coast of Naples is celebrated for the production of a small fish in great repute with mothers who nurse their offspring; among its other virtues it is said to cure the bite of a mad dog. It is about four to six inches in length, and has a head resembling that of a horse, terminating in a dragon’s tail. This is the tiny hippocampus of our public aquariums. The Neapolitans call them “cavalli-marini,” which was once ingeniously translated by a learned English traveller as “horse marines.”

This fabulous marine creature in heraldry is compounded of the fore quarters of a horse with webbed paws, and the hinder part of a fish or dolphin. A scalloped fin is continued down the neck and back in place of a mane. It is frequently, though erroneously, to be seen depicted with the flowing mane of a horse; wings are also sometimes added to it, both of which, it is needless to say, are wrong, unless specially mentioned in the blazon.

The Westenras (Baron Rossmore), descended from the family of Van Wassenhaer of Wassenburg, were of great antiquity in Holland, and they bore the augmentation of the sea-horse in reference to the valour and intrepidity of an ancestor, who, during the Duke of Alva’s campaign, was actively employed against the enemies of his country and undertook at great risk to swim across an arm of the sea with important despatches to his besieged countrymen.

Arms of the city of Belfast.
The sinister supporter and crest are Sea-horses.

The Sea-horse is of very frequent use in armory, and usually has reference to meritorious actions performed at sea. It is also borne by many seaport towns in allusion to the trade and commerce of the port, as in the arms of the city of Belfast.

Cromwell, Protector, bore as supporters a lion of England and a sea-horse, probably to denote his protectorship of the sea, as of the land.

Bossewell (“Works of Armorie,” 1589), in his peculiar mixture of English and Latin, gives a quaint description of the animal: “This water-horse of the sea is called a hippotame, for that he is like an horse in back, mayne, and neying: rostro resupinato a primis dentibus: cauda tortuosa, ungulis binis. He abideth in the waters on the day, and eateth corn by night et hunc Nilus gignit.” The latter may be classed with those fantastic ornamental forms frequently employed in fountains and waterworks, such as the Ichthyocentaur, i.e., a combination of man and horse, or the centaur with a fish’s extremity.

Sea-lion

or Lion poisson, a mythical sea-creature, frequently used in heraldry as an emblem of bold actions achieved on the ocean in the country’s service. It is depicted as the fore part of a lion with webbed feet, the hinder part ending in a fish’s tail.

Two such animals support the arms of Viscount Falmouth.

The Earl of Howth has for supporters a sea-lion argent, and a mermaid, proper. The crest also is a sea-lion.

Sea-lion erect.

The crest of Duckworth is a tower, the battlements partly demolished, from the top flames issuant proper; on the sinister side a sea-lion erect azure, pressing against the tower.

Silvestre.—Argent, a sea-lion couchant azure, crowned armed and langued gules.

When the sea-lion or other compounded creature of this kind is erect, it should be clearly blazoned as “a sea-lion erect on his tail,” to distinguish it from naiant, the swimming position natural to it.

Sea-dog

is depicted like a talbot in shape, but with the tail like that of a beaver, the feet webbed and the whole body scaled like a fish, a scalloped fin continued along the back from the head to the tail.

Baron Stourton has two such beasts, sable, scaled or, for his supporters.The crest of Sir H. Delves Broughton.—A sea-dog’s head gules, eared and finned argent.

Sea-dog rampant.

The Sea-bull, Sea-wolf, Sea-bear, Sea-cat, Sea-dragon, etc., when they occur in heraldry, are all depicted as having the anterior portions of their bodies in the forms which their several names denote; but, like the sea-lion and sea-horse, they have fishes tails and webbed paws.

In conclusion, having, as far as possible, given the raison d’Être of each, and traced the life-history and characteristics of the many strange and fantastic creatures in our symbolic menagerie, it only remains to express the hope that the information contained in this volume may be found both interesting and useful, as without some such knowledge there can be little or no intelligent understanding of the proper treatment of the forms of these mythical and symbolic beings. The suggestive illustrations, while giving the recognised forms of each, leaves to the artist free scope to adopt his own style of art treatment, whether purely heraldic or merely decorative.

Printed by Ballantyne & Co. Limited
Tavistock Street, London

Footnotes:

[1] “Decorative Heraldry,” by G. W. Eve.

[2] The above notes on heraldic treatment are largely adapted from the admirable works on Decorative Art, by Louis F. Day.

[3] See Audsley’s “Glossary of Architecture,” “Angel,” p. 101.

[4] “Restit. of Decayed Intell. in Antiq.” p. 147.

[5] “Great Cities of the Middle Ages.”

[6] “History of Signboards.”

[7] Brewer’s “Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.”

[8] “Analysis of Ornament,” by Ralph N. Wornum.

[9] That is, Visconti is only a variation of Biscia equivalent to Anguis, Italianised to Angleria.

[10] Pliny, Book xi. ch. 25, from an old translation.

[11] But for an oversight in the drawing, the unicorn should have been represented with the divided hoofs of a stag.

[12] “Mythology of Greece and Rome, with special reference to its Use in Art,” from the German of O. Seemann.

[13] W. N. Humphry’s “Coin Collector’s Manual.”

[14] “Modern Painters,” vol. iii. ch. 8.

[15] “Historical Devices, Badges, and War Cries,” p. 10.

[16] “Iconography of Christian Art.”

[17] “Orlando Furioso,” iv. 18, 19.

[18] “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians.”

[19] W. Noel Humphry’s “Coin Collector’s Manual.”

[20] Book x. ch. 2.

[21] Guillam’s “Display of Heraldry.” The same is also related in the Latin “Bestiarium,” Harl. MSS. 4751; and by Albertus Magnus, Camerarius, &c.

[22] “Cassell’s Natural History.”

[23] Bk. viii. ch. 17.

[24] Harl. MSS. 6085.

[25] Hist. Dev. 260.

[26] “Natural History,” x. 67, xxix. 4.

[27] Tylor’s “Primitive Culture.”

[28] Armorie of Honour, 62.

[29] “Coin Collector’s Manual,” Bohn.

[30] Book ix. ch. 13.

[31] The sign was also used by printers: John Rastall, brother-in-law to Sir Thomas More, “emprynted in the Cheapesyde at the Sygne of the Mermayde; next to Powlsgate in 1572.” Henry Binnemann, the Queen’s printer, dedicated a work to Sir Thomas Gresham, in 1576, at the sign of the Mermaid, Knightrider Street. A representation of the creature was generally prefixed to his books.—“History of Sign-boards,” p. 227.