Overview

Mermen? Yes. Long before mermaids emerged to people our inner seas, long before they established their restless, inviting niche in human fantasy, there was the merman. Born of the human need to dominate the great fruitful oceans, to control the vast destructive seas, to regulate the healing rains, to understand the tides, the merman emerged. The merman was water personified. The imposing water gods could be wheedled, cozened, implored, but--in the end--they were never fooled. How often were Poseidon or Neptune, Lir, Njord and the rest pictured riding the waves along inhospitable shores, shaking their magical tridents or spears or fists at the weak, imploring humans on land? The sea gods called up storms or quieted waves. They flooded the lands. They drowned the unwary. Yet despite the importance of early fish-tailed gods such as Ea-Enki and Dagon; despite the preponderance of mermen in the mythologies of Babylon, Greece, the British Isles, the Scandinavian peninsula, Germany; despite the mermen ranging along Slavic shores and inland seas; despite the mermen found in Chinese and Japanese lakes, along Polynesian island coasts, and in the lore and literature of the Middle East, the merman has become Legend's Forgotten Man. With its 27 stories from around the world, this volume reconstructs the unnatural history of the Merman.

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9781566563901

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The amazingly prolific Jane Yolen, has been called ""America's Hans Christian Andersen."" She is the distinguished author of over 300 books, including Fairy Tale Feasts, Jewish Fairy Tale Feasts, Owl Moon and Devil's Arithmetic. She lives on an old farm in western Massachusetts with numerous moles who do not seem to be afraid of anything. She enjoys taking walks along the river near her house and visiting people, including her editors--in fact, she wrote this book in the office of one of them. Shulamith Levey Oppenheim is the award-winning author of many books, including Iblis, a retelling of the Islamic version of the fall from Eden, and, with Jane Yolen, The Fish Prince, a collection of Mermen folktales, and The Sea King. She lives in Massachusetts. George Juhasz is an artist, designer, sculptor, filmmaker, and illustrator who lives in Vancouver, Canada. He was born in Hungary where he received his art training and has lived and worked in Switzerland, Spain, France, Germany, England, and Canada. He has worked on over 100 animation projects, including The Yellow Submarine, The Selfish Giant, The Happy Prince, Young Robin Hood, and Joseph and his Brothers, and he also illustrated Pacific Tree Frogs.

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