From The Plymouth Journal. -- The following is an extract of a letter received on Sunday last from our Correspondent at St. Columb:-- "Within these last two or three days there have been several mermaids seen on the rocks at Trenance, in the parish of Mawgan. I will state the particulars at length, as I have been enabled to collect them, and which are from undoubted authority, and you can make what extracts you think proper. One evening this week, a young man who lives adjoining the beach at Mawgan Porth, had made an appointment to meet another person on the beach to catch sprats with him. He went out about ten o'clock at night, and coming near a point which runs into the sea, he heard a screeching noise proceeding from a large cavern which is left by the tide at low water, but which has some deep pools in it, and communicates with the sea by another outlet. He thought it was the person he had appointed to meet, and called out to him, but his astonishment is not to be described when on going up he saw something in the shape of a human figure staring on him, with long hair hanging about it. He then ran away, thinking, as he says, that he had seen the devil.
The next day, some men being on the cliffs near this place, saw three creatures of the same description. the following day five were seen. The persons who saw the last five describe them in this manner:
The mermaids were about forty feet below the men (who stood on the cliff), and were lying on a rock, separated from the land some yards by deep water; two of them were large, about four feet and a half to five feet long, and these appeared to be sleeping on the rock; the other small ones were swimming about, and went off once to sea and then came back again. The men looked at them for more than an hour, and flung stones at them, but they would not move off. The large ones seemed to be lying on their faces; their upper parts were like those of human beings, and black or dark coloured, with very long hair hanging around them; their lower parts were of a bluish colour, and terminating in a fin, like fish. The sea would sometimes wash over them and then leave them dry again. Their movements seemed to be slow. the hair of these mermaids extended a distance of nine or ten foot.
In The Dublin Evening Mail, 9th July 1827.
The Mermaids.
We have received a letter from St. Coulumb, stating, that the persons on whose authority the appearance of the mermaids near Padstow has been asserted, continue to declare that the account in the Plymouth Journal which we copied last week, and respecting which we felt some hesitation, is perfectly correct, except that the colour of the bodies of these animals is "exactly like that of a Christian;" that one of the men did not observe that the animals had arms, but that another saw short ones, resembling fins, and that all saw the long flowing hair, &c. &c. --West Briton.
In The Globe, 16th July 1827.
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| Mawgan Porth. CC image Nilfanion |
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