When I was little my mother used to tell me about a story she had written in high school. It was called "One is the Loneliest Number" and it was about a girl named Jenny who has lost her mother and hopelessly wanders the beach near her home. One day she meets a boy who has come from the sea and they fall in love. Similar to Ariel in Disney's "The Little Mermaid" he has been given legs for a short time to explore life on land. When it is time for him to return to his city beneath the sea, Jenny begs him to take her with him, but he refuses, knowing she could never survive. The boy leaves and Jenny, after a moment's pause, follows him anyway. That is where the story ends.

Mermaids, a term which literally translated means "sea maiden", are mythological and/or legendary creatures who are half-human and half-fish. Sirens, their counterpart in Greek mythology, were said to entrance sailors by singing to them, drawing them closer and closer until they walked off the ship and drowned or caused the ship to crash. Mermaids, on the other hand, have earned a reputation for saving men who were on the verge of drowning by breathing air into their mouth from their own lungs, like in the Tom Hanks movie "Splash". In 1492 Christopher Columbus reported that he saw mermaids as his ship sailed towards the New World, although it is more likely that he was seeing manatees or dugongs, which carry their babies cradled in their arms like a human, and with which he was unfamiliar. According to wikipedia.org, "It has even been posited that the traditional image of a mermaid with long flowing hair could be attributed to manatees breaking the ocean surface underneath patches of seaweed, and giving the unfamiliar observer the impression of having long hair."

The earliest mermaid tale comes from Assyria and dates back to approximately 1000 BCE. The goddess Atargatis fell in love with a mortal shepherd and accidentally killed him. Tortured by guilt, she leapt into a lake in an attempt to turn into a fish but she was so powerful and divine that the waters could not fully complete the transformation. She ended up half-fish on the bottom but remained human on top. Throughout literature and folklore, accounts of mermaids vary greatly. Sometimes they are seen as bad luck, signaling or even causing disasters at sea. Usually they are vain, preoccupied with admiring their great beauty but often they are innocent as well, falling in love with mortal men and craving a relationship that can never be consummated. Invariably, their tales end in tragedy. Mermaid tattoos, first seen among seamen (and a common Sailor Jerry design) are still a popular choice today.