Talk:Mermaid of Zennor

Why a mermaid?

The current article gives no explanation of why the church contains a carving of a mermaid. An explanation of its significance as a mediaeval religious symbol is here, and I'm sure that more reliable sources can be found giving a similar explanation. There is also a wide range of information and references - here, for instance - which I'm surprised haven't yet been incorporated into the article. (Before anyone says "Do it yourself", I would, but I'm preoccupied with non-WP life at the moment.) Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:29, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

--- The article is about the local myth and the chair is mentioned as a likely source for the Myth. You are right however that William Bottrell references the chair in his text.

"Zennor folks tell the following story, which, according to them, accounts for a singular carving on a bench-end in their Church."

and also states that the chair was created to commemorate the event.

"To commemorate these somewhat unusual events they had the figure she bore—when in her ocean-home—carved in holy-oak, which may still be seen."

Seeing that the evidence suggests that William Bottrell created the myth having seen the chair, it is likely the chair predates the myth rather than the other way around. There is interesting research on the chair which actually associates it with earlier pagan traditions. The page should probably be updated to reflect that the myth states the chair was created to commemorate the myth. The chair should probably have it's own page. Jon Milet Baker 11:18, 15 June 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Miletbaker (talk • contribs)

--- Just to add to your other point, the article has only just been created. Hopefully further trusted sources and other texts that support the story will be added over time. Like you my time is limited and I have added what I could find quickly at the time that was either an established and accepted source of the myth or that referenced their sources back to trusted sources. --Jon Milet Baker 11:30, 15 June 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Miletbaker (talk • contribs)

"The chair should probably have its own page." I disagree. The idea that new articles need to be created on everything under the sun is a "myth" created by certain editors here. What is needed is to improve the encyclopedia, not necessarily to expand it through more and more, ever-smaller, articles in the way you are suggesting. There is absolutely no reason not to include specific references to the history and meaning of the chair itself in the article on the church and in this article - but very little reason to generate yet another stubby little article, on an item of furniture. If you intend this article to be just about the "myth" (a 19th century piece of fiction, apparently, not what I would call a "myth"), it should really be retitled, as it could equally well be argued that what readers expect to see in an article about the "Mermaid of Zennor" is an article about the carving. Sorry for the rant, but, having just come off an exercise where one of the main purposes seemed to be to create as many articles as possible, just for the hell of it, and scraping the bottom of the barrel of notability, I find that approach mistaken and irritating. PS: To indent your comments, please use these ... : ... and to sign them, use four of these ... ~ Ghmyrtle (talk) 11:45, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Source for contention that story was invented by Bottrell

William Bottrell presented this story as authentic folklore of west Cornwall, in a collection of such stories he collected and published in three volumes. This was at a period when popular stories and legends were disappearing and first being recorded by men such as Bottrell. I think we need to take his explanation at face value, unless some compelling evidence exists that he fabricated the story. Mr. Pritchard's self-published analysis of the story on his own website doesn't really constitute such evidence, particularly as even he only presents his ideas as speculation: "I began to wonder if the story of the Mermaid of Zennor was put together by Bottrell for his book rather than being an existing one. I certainly can't find any reference to its existence before Bottrell published it."

The reasons for Mr. Pritchard's speculations are not compelling evidence. The argument seems to go thusly:

1. In his 1865 book of folk tales, "Popular Romances of the West of England," Robert Hunt mentions other Mermaid stories from Cornwall, but not in connection with Zennor. One of these he relates, explaining that he heard three versions of it in different places, and has harmonized them for the reader.
2. In his 1870 collection, Traditions and Hearthside Stories 0f West Cornwall, William Bottrell doesn't mention the Mermaid of Zennor, although he relates another mermaid story from Cornwall, which Hunt had previously related. The Mermaid of Zennor only appears in Bottrell's second volume of stories, published in 1873.
3. The Mermaid of Zennor is today the most famous mermaid story of Cornwall (I'm not sure of the basis for Mr. Pritchard's contention on this point).
4. If Mr. Hunt didn't mention the Mermaid of Zennor, it must have been because he hadn't heard of it.
5. If Mr. Hunt hadn't heard of the most famous mermaid story of Cornwall, it must not have existed when he wrote his book.
6. If Mr. Bottrell didn't relate the most famous story of a mermaid in Cornwall in his 1870 collection, it must not have existed yet.
7. If the story didn't exist until after 1870, and did in 1873, then Bottrell probably made it up.

As supporting evidence, Mr. Pritchard explains that Bottrell toured the church at Zennor, which he described in a third volume of folk tales, published in 1880. Mr. Pritchard also says that the Trewhella or Trewella family doesn't appear in the parish records of Zennor, but does in the neighboring parish of Towednack. A Mathew Trewella was born October 3, 1679, and no marriage or burial for him could be found in the records there. I can't actually see the relevance of this, since there's no evidence that the Matthew Trewhella of the story was a real person (after all, it was a folk tale) and not a name borrowed equally well by Bottrell or by an unnamed storyteller from whom he heard the tale.

But even if we pretend that he might have been an actual person, he'd hardly have had to be baptized at Zennor in order to have attended church there at some point in his life. Besides which, baptismal registers may prove that a person was baptized in a certain parish, but they're not comprehensive and can't be used to show that someone wasn't baptized there. We certainly wouldn't expect to find a marriage or a burial record if in fact he married a mermaid. And if, as in the case of Mr. Hunt's mermaid stories, the same legend is often told in different villages with some variations, and it was acceptable practice to harmonize them for the reader, then it wouldn't prove much to suppose that Mr. Bottrell had done the very same thing with the stories he'd heard.

I don't think we can read anything into the fact that Bottrell saw the church at Zennor and its famous mermaid chair. Nothing about that suggests that he made up the story, since you'd expect a collector of folk-tales to visit sites of interest with possible connections to the stories he's collecting. If he'd written about his visit to the church in his first or second volume, and only later written about the story of the mermaid, then at least it would be reasonable to hypothesize that he could have invented the story after seeing the chair. There would still be no evidence, but at least it would make more sense than relating the legend in volume 2, and then his visit to the church in volume 3.

If none of this amounts to a logical basis for concluding that Bottrell made up the story himself, we're left with nothing besides the fact that Hunt hadn't mentioned the story eight years earlier, and Bottrell hadn't included it in his first volume. But that really makes little sense, unless you suppose that Mr. Hunt intended his book to be a compendium of all the folk tales known or told in the west of England in 1865. How he would have ensured that he'd heard them all is unclear to me. Nor do I see why Bottrell should have had to relate the story in his first volume in order for it to have been an authentic folk tale. Surely there must have been hundreds of local stories and legends that neither Hunt nor Bottrell heard or published. They didn't have endless time to search for them or endless space to print them. The fact that the Mermaid of Zennor is now Cornwall's most famous (perhaps) says nothing about how widespread or interesting to collectors of folklore the story was in the period from 1865 to 1880. Its fame is due almost entirely to the fact that Mr. Bottrell published it in 1873, but the fact that he did so tells us nothing about the origin of the story.

We don't know what Mr. Pritchard's qualifications are for evaluating the authenticity of William Bottrell's folk tales. Is he a folklorist, or a historian, or a scholar of literature? Does he hold any degrees that might be relevant to the question he raises? Is he willing to state as a fact that Mr. Bottrell probably made up the story, or is he merely positing a guess? If we can't tell, then why is he cited as evidence that the story was fabricated by William Bottrell? If Mr. Pritchard's speculation about the story isn't found anywhere but his own website, is that really evidence that we can or should cite in this article? I think that without concrete statements by acknowledged experts in permanently-recorded sources (i.e. printed books or scholarly articles on folklore), we shouldn't venture into these waters. I propose we remove references to the story being made up by Bottrell from the article. P Aculeius (talk) 00:40, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Deleted the paragraph. The only source for the contention that Bottrell made up the story mischaracterized the author's conclusions. According to author's the web site, he was only speculating about that possibility. Moreover, there was no extrinsic evidence showing the author's expertise or qualifications to speculate on the origin of the story. Without that, it remains mere speculation, and fails to demonstrate why it belongs in the article (not every theory about the subject of an article is significant; scholarly articles by experts in the field, published by third-party sources might be, but that's clearly not the case here). Similarly, an unsourced argument that said author was wrong and that Bottrell did not make up the story is also unnecessary. P Aculeius (talk) 03:35, 20 October 2012 (UTC)