Where did you see the myths associated with a woman combing her hair?
Mostly I drew from the Clancy Brothers' song "The Mermaid"
'Twas Friday morn when we set sail,
And we had not got far from land,
When the Captain, he spied a lovely mermaid,
With a comb and a glass in her hand.
Chorus
Oh the ocean waves may roll,
And the stormy winds may blow,
While we poor sailors go skipping aloft
And the land lubbers lay down below, below, below
And the land lubbers lay down below.
Then up spoke the Captain of our gallant ship,
And a jolly old Captain was he;
"I have a wife in Salem town,
But tonight a widow she will be."
But it turns up in a lot of places. Here in a play called "The Roaring Girl":
SIR ALEXANDER
This wench we speak of strays so from her kind
Nature repents she made her. 'Tis a mermaid
Has toll'd my son to shipwreck.
TRAPDOOR
I'll cut her comb for you.
SIR ALEXANDER
I'll tell out gold for thee then; hunt her forth,
Cast out a line hung full of silver hooks
To catch her to thy company: deep spendings
May draw her that's most chaste to a man's bosom.
http://www.tech.org/~cleary/roar.htmlHe's gaen up to the tapmast,
To the tapmast sae hie;
He luikit around on every side,
But dry land he couldna see.
He luikit on his youngest son,
An the tear blindit he ee;
Says, I wish you had been in your mother's bowr,
But there you'll never be.
"Pray for yoursels, my merrie young men,
Pray for yoursels an me,
For the first landen that we will land
Will be in the boddam o the sea."
Then up it raise the mermaiden,
Wi the comb an glass in her hand:
"Here's a health to you, my merrie young men,
For you never will see dry land."
http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~z ... trick.html(toward the bottom of the page)
Melusina, when she leaves the castle of Lusignan, becomes a Banshee; and it has been a common superstition among sailors, that the appearance of a mermaid, with her comb and looking-glass, foretokens shipwreck, with the loss of all on board.
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/ ... chap9.html[/quote]
Apologies for the long post.
Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2003 5:07 am
