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I do not gather—at least from my studies in this direction—that these mermen are related to the mermaids. A literal-minded Swede has indeed feigned that the merman is the mermaid’s husband, but on no better ground than the circumstance of having seen a male and a female amicably swimming about together. I do not mean to say that the merman, being always found alone, is a proof that he is a bachelor, but it is hard to reconcile the terrestrial and even marine customs of Nature with the pairing of such a divinity as the mermaid with such a horrid, drunken object as the merman. No; if the mermen wive at all they go for their spouses to the dugongs. The mermaids seek elsewhere for lovers than amid the ranks of fishes’ tails merging into drunken old men. The sailors know her as a dainty creature that floats upwards to the surface like a beam of golden light.

“Upstarted the mermaid by the ship,

Wi’ a glass and a kame in her hand,

Says, ‘Reek about, reek about, my merry men;

Ye are not very far from land.’”