The Washington Romance Writers’ retreat is less than a month away, which will mark the anniversary of this crazy bunch of writers getting together and forming this blog. How cool is that?

I’m already getting excited for our blog birthday so I wanted to share a few cool mermaid-related items and factoids from around the globe. All the pictures are from one of my addictions, Etsy, and if you click on the pic, you’ll go right to the item’s page. All the factoids come from Wikipedia – so take your mermaid knowledge with a grain (or more) of salt.

SheppardHillDesigns

“Suvannamaccha (golden mermaid) is a daughter of Ravana that appears in the Cambodian and Thai versions of the Indian Ramayana. She is a mermaid princess who tries to spoil Hanuman’s plans to build a bridge to Lanka but falls in love with him instead.”

GingerKellyStudio

“The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria, ca. 1000 BC. The goddess Atargatis, mother of Assyrian queen Semiramis, loved a mortal shepherd and unintentionally killed him. Ashamed, she jumped into a lake to take the form of a fish, but the waters would not conceal her divine beauty. Thereafter, she took the form of a mermaid-human above the waist, fish below.”

Graphique

“Julnar the Sea-Born and Her Son King Badr Basim of Persia” is an Arabian Nights tale about mermaids. When sailors come the mermaids sing, and some men are led straight to their doom. If they follow the mermaids’ lovely and beautiful voices, they do not know what they are doing or where they’re going.”

Mermaidincali

“The Norman Chapel in Durham Castle, built around 1078 by Saxon stonemasons has what is reputed to be one of the earliest artistic depictions of a Mermaid in England. Mermaids were noted in British folklore as unlucky omens – both foretelling disaster and provoking it.”

theFiligree

“In some ancient fairy tales of China, the mermaid was a special creature whose tears could turn into priceless pearls. Mermaids could also weave an extremely valuable material, translucent and beautiful. Because of this, fishermen longed to catch them, but the mermaids’ splendid singing could simply drag them down into a coma.”