Mermaids and things

My sister, who lives in Warsaw, today sent me some notes on legends surrounding mermaids. Why? Because the mermaid is the mascot of Warsaw, and she knows that days prior to my arrival I especially get interested in things surrounding my home town.




But you have to ask yourself why a mermaid would be the city’s mascot. As someone pointed out, Warsaw is some 300 kilometers away from the sea. What sense does it make to give a mermaid a shield and a couple of good looking breasts and place her on every moving piece of public transportation, to say nothing of stamps and municipal buildings, supplemented by a couple of monuments honoring her?



And mermaid legends are a little bit unreal. Typically they go something like this: a fisherman finds her, falls in love, rescues her or she him and then either he is forever satisfied with a mermaid in his chambers or she turns out to be, in real life, a lovely, wealthy princess, with her lower body then suddenly transformed as she becomes readily available for marital consumption in all ways – as opposed to the mermaid who has to satisfy and be satisfied basically with her top torso, with perhaps a smack of the tail thrown in for those who love a little pain on the side.

Warsaw’s mermaid has been around for centuries. Currently, her monument resides in the center of the Old Town Square, and there is another, bigger version by the river. I grew up in her shadow. I liked her sword raised high, I liked that she was a woman, I liked that she belonged to Warsaw, and not, say, to inferior Krakow (there is great rivalry between the two cities: it has been an ongoing sibling thing for some 1000 years; I don’t know if Americans can appreciate that, given the baby status of all urban centers here).

So, a mermaid it is: right there, in the center of the Old Town of Warsaw, with her bottom covered but her top exposed. She’s awesome, even if a little out of place. Warsaw’s protector in some spiritual sense. Triumphant and …mermaid-like.