The Mermaid of Zennor

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Legend has it that many, many years ago a richly dressed and beautiful lady occasionally attended the church at Zennor. Shortly after a storm blew up wrecking several ships and throwing up the huge sandbank known as the Doom Bar. In many tales, if a human was to obtain this cap or skin, the mermaid would be trapped on land with them for evermore. So you cast anchor, you drop the anchor, into the water, and the anchor stops the ship from moving because it is very heavy. As a Trewhela (my lot dropped the extra l and changed the pronunciation somewhere along the line), it’s always been a source of pride that my ancestor fell in love with a mermaid.

There are two reasons this MPA is not “protected”, which illustrate the hollowness of Gove’s promises overall.It has a lovely path that goes around the coast, so you can walk on the cliffs and see the sea and feel the wind in your face. Many have said that it’s like sitting down to drink a coffee with me, although I’ll have a tea, I think!

As a harsh punishment he had her nailed into a barrel and cast out to sea, where she eventually washed up on the Cornish shore. Nobody knew who she was or where she came from, but her unusual beauty and lovely voice made her the subject of much discussion. At first, she listened only from the rocks at Pendour Cove, a small inlet of land along the rugged coastline barely a stone’s throw from the village.The ‘Mermaid Chair’, which sits alone in a darkened corner of the church, is a seat made from two medieval bench ends. The story supposedly solves the mystery of the missing choir boy, Matthew Trewhella, but another mystery remains; did the carving on the bench-end come first and inspire the story, or did the story lead to the carving? When Zennor folks learnt that a mermaid dwelt near Pen-dower, and what she had told the captain, they concluded—it was, this sea-lady who had visited their church, and enticed Trewella to her abode.

The Mermaid of Zennor story centres on St Senara’s Church in the village, which is worth a visit in its own right. As with all old folk tales, the story differs slightly each time it is told, but the basic framework of the legend is always the same. Trips to “Seal Island” (the Carrack Islands, really just a craggy outcrop of boulders breaking the surface a mile or two east of Zennor) chug out of St Ives any dry day of the school break.

Although it was as quiet as a whisper Mathew stopped and turned - Morveren's eyes were shining, and the net had slipped from her head and her hair was wet and gleaming - It was love at first sight. Every week she would leave the depths of the sea to listen to the lad, who finally fell for her scaly ways with a mermaidy flick of her tail and an equally alluring song. And with a swish from her long gleaming tail she was gone, diving down to the sea-bed and her family.

Zennor folks tell the following story, which, according to them, accounts for a singular carving on a bench-end in their Church. We’d already had some really important conversations to have in a relationship before, so when we were together, we could just really enjoy the time.

People thought that he must have run away with the beautiful woman, and nobody heard from him again. Thanks to Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid, in the popular imagination we now assume there are rules and limiting conditions on a mermaid assuming human form, however as is demonstrated here, in many folk traditions there are no magical pacts and spells needed for a merfolk to walk on land among us, and no occult strictures on this power of transformation. This does not have to be achieved by forming a deal with an octopus-legged sea witch, as in the 1989 Disney film The Little Mermaid, but derives from some magical power which the mermaid herself possesses.