International holidays - International Mermaid Day

March 29 is International Mermaid Day These mysterious creatures are depicted as beautiful women with fish tails The Slavs considered mermaids to be natural spirits who looked after ponds, forests and fields Images of sea maidens are also found in the legends of European peoples Creatures with a female body and a tail instead of legs are found not only in oral traditions of various peoples of the world H Columbus described in 1492 in a ship's log a meeting off the coast of Haiti and Cuba with mermaids - creatures with a human head and rooster plumage The navigator noted that the appearance of the creatures was far from the appearance attributed to them, because "their faces had some masculine features" This is interesting: Mermaids have the ability to intoxicate with their songs and other magical qualities Their gaze enchants a person so that he becomes weak-willed and does everything that the tailed seductress orders However, the mood of mermaids is changeable They could tickle a passerby to death, or they could help the traveler find his way home from the forest John Smith, one of the founders of the first English settlement in the United States, met a real mermaid off the coast of Newfoundland in 1614 The sailor was fascinated by a woman with large eyes, a thin nose, and long green hair, and did not immediately notice that from the waist down she was a fish A little later, in 1608, Henry Hudson, after whom the strait, river and bay are named, also saw a mermaid with the sailors of his crew A strange creature swam up to their ship, passing by Novaya Zemlya The woman "with a tail like a porpoise or a dolphin, but shiny like a mackerel" had long black hair and very white skin She swam close to the ship and carefully examined the sailors This is interesting: In the bestiary, a medieval collection of stories about animals, sea maidens were called mermaids, and the heroines of Slavic legends were called rusalka In the Dutch East Indies, in the South Pacific, arriving there in the 18th century Europeans saw not only strange plants, but also exotic creatures One of them was a mermaid, which was painted by the artist S Fallurs His painting from 1718 shows a woman with a tail instead of legs, which made up 2/3 of her body The mummy of a mermaid was shown to everyone in 1830 at the British Museum, 2 stuffed sea divas were kept until 1940 at the Royal College of Physicians This and other evidence suggests that mermaids may be real creatures Hydrobiologist of the mid-twentieth century A Hardy put forward the version that at a certain stage of human development, his ancestors lived in water And some could well have remained there, living in the depths of the world’s oceans to this day This is interesting: In Russian folklore, mermaids are called kupalkas, crackers, mavkas, rags and waterworts In Greek mythology, there is a similar character - sweet-sounding sirens, half-woman, half-bird Odysseus and the crew of his ship met them on the way to Ithaca According to legend, waterworts, like sirens, sing with delightful voices, seducing men and dragging them into the water with them Since ancient times, the Slavs celebrated Rusalia The week of celebrations began on June 19 and ended with Ivan Kupala Day Our ancestors left offerings to the mermaids - scraps of clothing, balls, threads Wormwood was thrown into the fires at Kupala, which, together with protective spells, was supposed to scare away the water maidens and protect travelers from meeting them Mermaids from myths and legends became characters in fairy tales by GH Andersen and AS Pushkin, cartoon and TV characters On March 29, 2018, the American series “Siren” about a mysterious blue-eyed girl with a tail premiered The tradition of celebrating International Mermaid Day is connected with this film, namely with the release of episode 1 of Siren And now, every year on March 29, a funny but unusual holiday, International Mermaid Day, is celebrated