‘RESPECTABLE’ WITNESSES

MANY19THCENTURY ACCOUNTSWERE LOST BECAUSE THEYWERE THE EXPERIENCES OFTHE GREAT UNWASHED

Could there have been a small mermaid colony in northern Scotland c. 1800? Certainly, there were an unusual number of mermaids reported at Reay on the northern coast at Caithness. Two letters written in 1809 describe sightings (see FT357:56-57 for their possible influence on writer Thomas Love Peacock).

In the first, a young woman, her cousin and three other locals had watched a mermaid splash around for an hour in the sea. At one point the mermaid drove a bird away with its hand: something that is difficult to account for with reference to the usual suspects in mermaid sightings (seals with salmon in their mouths, stray walruses, and so on).

In a second letter a local man reported how, some years before, he had seen a mermaid in the same parish. He had watched a woman on a rock combing her hair only to realise that this ‘woman’ was a mermaid. He came so close, he claimed, that he was able to see the colour of her eyes (blue) – a detail that I have my doubts about!

What is particularly interesting here is that both the young woman and the man claimed that many others had seen mermaids in the same place. So why did these two sightings float to the top of the pile?

The simple answer is that the letter writers were ‘respectable’: the daughter of the local minister and a local schoolteacher. Forteans today look for ‘reliable’ witnesses. By this, they mean members of the police, pilots, military personnel – men and women who, by virtue of their profession, might be expected to observe calmly and well. In the 19th century, ‘reliable’ witnesses meant people who came from the right social class: this snobbery comes up again and again in the voluminous writing from the 1800s on the Reay case. The fact that one of the mermaids had been seen by a girl who had grown up in a manse mattered far more than the fact that there were four other witnesses that day!

It is a reminder that many 19th-century accounts were lost because they were the experiences of the great unwashed. Typically, the only time we hear about their supernatural experiences is when authors or newspapers consider their stories funny enough to print.

The Caithness mermaid story of 1809 briefly saw people take mermaids seriously: there was interest in an unknown marine mammal. Two other mermaid sightings, one from the Hebrides and one from Grimsby, followed the Reay mermaids almost immediately into the news pages. The witnesses were simple fishermen. They would never have been reported had not a schoolmaster and a vicar’s daughter led the way.

Simon Young’s new book, Magical Folk: British and Irish Fairies (Gibson Square), is out now.