Sirens, And The Evolution Of Their Folklore

As demonstrated in the most recent Pirates Of The Caribbean flick, the idea of Sirens has evolved over the years. Most pictures of them depict a watery woman - a beautiful mermaid of sorts, made to lure sailors into the sea and drown them. That is definitely the more favoured form of Sirens in any case, as demonstrated by Johnny Depp and co - while the mermaids in that film weren’t sirens, they were an amalgamation of mermaid and siren - beautiful singing creatures quickly turning to monstrosities when the chance came to feed. In ways though, this is a huge divergence from what Sirens once were - and how they have changed over thousands of years of history. 

When the myth first arose, Sirens were aesthetically at least something entirely different - not offshoots of merpeople but women instead with the feathers of birds. Still beautiful, and still luring sailors onto the rocks with their singing - but instead of the seas they lived on flowery islands off the shore. First created in Greek story, they were said to be the daughters of the Greek river god Achelous, and before you go wondering how much sex Achelous must have had with birds, not as much as you might think - there were two to three Sirens named by some writers in those days - Peisinoe, Aglaope, and Thelxiepeia, and many more names besides. 

The Sirens trying to tempt Odysseus, from 480-470bc.

Another story is that the three Sirens were at first human - handmaidens of the demi-god Persephone, herself daughter of the God Of Harvest, Demeter. One day, according to the ancient greek tales, Persephone was kidnapped by the god of the underworld Hades. Demeter, obsessed by the search for her daughter, enlisted these handmaidens to find her, gifting them the bodies of birds in order to fly. As across the world plant life began to die while Demeter (who looked after these things) obsessed over finding her daughter, the handmaidens gave in. They retreated to the island of Anthemoessa - there cursed by Demeter to remain half birds, and thus exiles from the world. 

While Demeter eventually got her daughter back thanks to help from Zeus and Hermes, the Sirens' curse was to worsen. The sirens in another twist of cruel fate lost their ability to fly after losing a singing contest against heavenly muses (held by the goddess Hera), their feathers and wings being torn away to use for clothing for the muses.

Trapped on an island with no passage, other stories say the Sirens succumbed to a prophecy saying that they would die if any man sailed by while resisting their singing charms. In another greek tale, Odysseus did just this - commanding his men to tie him to the mast and plug their ears with beeswax. Though he was entranced by the singing from the sirens as his ship sailed by, his crew would not let him go - and so he escaped the Sirens. Stricken by this, the Sirens supposedly threw themselves into the sea and drowned. 

Odysseus And The Sirens by Herbert James Draper, 1909.

As strange and contrived an ending as that sounds, (you can just imagine the writer finishing with 'and then they fell in the sea and died the end!), you can understand where darker forms of this tale have come from. You can imagine three woman, trapped on a deserted island turning to say, cannibalism if they had no food and no way off the island. Maybe they use their songs to try and bring a ship to the coast for rescue, having had their feathers and wings stripped from them on the behest of a cruel god. Maybe the ship is destroyed on the cliff rocks - maybe everyone aboard dies and the cargo is lost, leaving the sirens to eat what little they can - including human flesh. 

Maybe this is how the handmaidens of Persephone, the daughters of a river god, turned from servants into monsters. Pushed to this end by cruel and angry gods. In any case, soon enough the Romans would begin interpreting the legends in their own ways. One writer said that the Sirens were from India, and that they would lull their victims into sleep before tearing them to pieces. Others said that they were literally prostitutes from the coasts of Sicily, who would charm sailors and then drain them of money and possessions. 

In any case the bird-woman mythos began to fade. While there are few artworks that relate back to the

Sirens as birdpeople, there are plenty that look to the sirens as simply being women - charmingly dressed - preying on the ships of men, or singing down to drowning sailors at the base of a cliff. From the sirens swimming at sea, it isn't a far leap to imagine them being similar to the mermaids. They share some of the same characteristics, even before the mythical change of sirens - mermaids and sirens both has a mystical beauty to them, both a wonder and an attraction to sailors long at sea, without a woman to be seen. So it isn't a far stretch to combine the two into a darker type of mermaid - one of joy, beauty and hypnotic singing turning into a monster once they have their prey in reach.

Both versions of the myth have their potency - I love the backstory of the original bird sirens, and the cruel manner in which they were pushed toward their fate. 

But in the present, it is the underwater sirens that quietly sing on the waves. For now anyway.