A trio of mermaids – two small, one medium – were the first ones I saw. They were sitting on the edge of the second level of a table at the auction house, two with their tales hanging below them. They were perched next to a cast-iron pig that seemed to be laughing heartily at a very funny joke.
I noted the mermaids (which appeared to be cast iron) but didn’t linger because I had no use for them. They wouldn’t work in my back-yard garden or on a table on my patio.
So I continued my rounds of the other tables at the auction house to see if there was anything that grabbed my eye. Soon, I came face to face with another mermaid perched on the edge of another table ledge.
Moving on, I saw another with seashells covering her bosom and her head thrown back as if she were savoring the sun (on a day that was cloudy for us humans). Like the others, she was no more than 12 or so inches tall – a table-topper.
Certainly, this was the last of them, I thought. Wrong. Still another accosted me as she sat on the bottom level of a table that above-head held framed photographs. She seemed to be as tall as me, her tail nearly touching the floor. She must have been nearly 5 feet tall. She was the scariest-looking one of them all.
What gives with all the mermaids, I wondered.
Since they were positioned in various spots in the auction house, I knew that they were not likely from the same owner. Checking, I saw that they had different consigner or lot numbers. So, a lot of somebodies had a thing for mermaids.
It seems that we’ve always been fascinated by these mythical part fish-part woman creatures; they’ve made their way into songs, tales and movies in cultures all over the world. The most famous of them all – not discounting Disney’s – is apparently a bronze statue in the harbor in Copenhagen, Denmark. She is the “Little Mermaid,” donated to the city back in 1913 by a local brewer.
He commissioned the statue after seeing a ballet based on the 1836 Hans Christian Andersen story about a mermaid who gives up her life in the sea to be with the man she loves on land.
Copenhagen’s little mermaid – she’s four feet tall and weighs 385 pounds – turned 100 years old last year. Over the years, she has lost her head and an arm, been splashed with paint and exploded from her perch by vandals. That has not deterred visitors, a million of whom drop by each year to see and photograph her.
At the auction, I was curious to see how much the not-so-famous mermaids would sell for. I knew they’d be sold, because practically everything is. The smallest mermaids went for about $10 and the medium ones for about $25. I wasn’t around when the 5-footer sold.
