Fishermen’s tails
IN 1638, THE ENGLISH travel writer and explorer John Josselyn heard that a merman had been sighted off New England. “There are many stranger things in the world,” he declared, “than there are to be seen between London and the Stanes [Staines].” Josselyn need only have ventured a little further to learn that the Maine merman was far from extraordinary.
According to Gervase of Tilbury, writing in the age of King John, the English coast was home to a myriad of merpeople. Bewildered fishermen captured one in 1187 resembling “in shape a wild or savage man” and interred him in Orford
