Travel, Adventures and Days Out

[Dee]

This is a fascinating story! Thank you so much for telling it, Moonchime. It's certainly a cautionary tale against greed. It reminds me of a brilliant song (more like a story told over music) by Gorillaz.



Regarding the end of the story, shame on the Europeans for shaving the priest's head, but I can't help thinking he has done rather well to survive till 100. Personally I would make my peace with that.

[Moonchime]

Thank you for that amazing song Dee - I've never heard it and, yes, I can see why it reminded you of the Maori story.
Of course I don't know that they were actually being that greedy - seems to me it was an obvious way forward, but then I don't really know that much about their religious beliefs at the time. They still hold a lot of natural sites -lakes and mountains and such - as sacred - as do many of the Nepalese people with the Himalaya but they still take people up it. I suppose it's very hard to resist and not everyone feels the same way.
As for cutting the Tohunga's hair - I don't know why they did - whether it was intentional or not.

[Moonchime]

The Doom Bar Cornwall

The Doom Bar before it is covered by a high tide.



From Wiki:
The Doom Bar (previously known as Dunbar sands, Dune-bar, and similar names) is a sandbar at the mouth of the estuary of the River Camel, where it meets the Celtic Sea on the north coast of Cornwall, England.

Legends of how it came to be - of course there are mermaids which is why this story must swim here:



Tristram Bird and the Mermaid of Padstow, from Enys Tregarthen's North Cornwall Fairies and Legends


From Wiki:
According to local folklore, the Doom Bar was created by the Mermaid of Padstow as a dying curse after being shot. In 1906, Enys Tregarthen wrote that a Padstow local, Tristram Bird, bought a new gun and wanted to shoot something worthy of it. He went hunting seals at Hawker's Cove but found a young woman sitting on a rock brushing her hair. Entranced by her beauty, he offered to marry her and when she refused he shot her in retaliation, only realising afterwards that she was a mermaid. As she died she cursed the harbour with a "bar of doom", from Hawker's Cove to Trebetherick Bay. A terrible gale blew up that night and when it finally subsided there was the sandbar, "covered with wrecks of ships and bodies of drowned men".[55]

The ballad, The Mermaid of Padstow,[56] tells a similar story of a local named Tom Yeo, who shot the mermaid mistaking her for a seal.[57] John Betjeman, who was well-acquainted with the area, wrote in 1969 that the mermaid met a local man and fell in love with him. When she could no longer bear living without him, she tried to lure him beneath the waves but he escaped by shooting her. In her rage she threw a handful of sand towards Padstow, around which the sandbank grew.[58] In other versions of the tale, the mermaid sings from the rocks and a youth shoots at her with a crossbow,[59] or a greedy man shoots her with a longbow.[60] Mermaids were believed to sing to their victims so that they could lure adulterers to their death.

The mermaid legend extends beyond the creation of the Doom Bar. In 1939 Samuel Williamson declared there are mermaids comparable to Sirens who lie in the shallow waters and draw in ships to be wrecked.[61] In addition, "the distressful cry of a woman bewailing her dead" is said to be heard after a storm where lives are lost on the sandbar.[55]

[Dee]

Thank you so much for sharing this, Mz MC. What sad stories. Poor murdered mermaids.

And the difference between Mermaids and Sirens is very interesting, something worth investigating further?