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It is gratifying to find old Bailey in his “Dictionarium Britannicum” (1730), defining the word mermaid with a very sober and sturdy leaning in favour of the real existence of these ladies. “Whereas,” says he, “it has been thought they have been only the product of the painter’s invention, it is confidently reported that there is in the following lake fishes which differ in nothing from mankind but in the want of speech and reason. Father Francis de Pavia, a missionary, being in the kingdom of Congo in Africa, who would not believe that there were such creatures, affirms that the Queen of Singa did see in a river coming out of the lake Zaire many mermaids, something resembling a woman in the breasts, hands, and arms; but the lower part is perfect fish, the head round, the face like a calf, a large mouth, little ears, and round, full eyes. Which creatures Father Merula often saw and eat of them.” Which, I may add, does not say much for Father Merula’s manners and tastes, unless it is meant figuratively, as in the sense of the saying in the comedy, “Six weeks before I married her I could have eaten her, and six weeks after I was sorry I didn’t.” As to the face like the calf, the large mouth, and so forth, let it be remembered that the place Father de Pavia wrote of was the kingdom of Congo, where, to be sure, we should not expect to find even mermaids beautiful. But that these sea-nymphs, with their golden hair, their shining shapes, their teeth of pearl, their eyes of the liquid blue of their own glorious element, full of ocean mystery and the spirit of the unfathomable starless world in which they live—that they are as beautiful as dreams among shores from whose silent rocks neither the voice of a De Pavia nor a Merula has ever fetched an echo, who can doubt?