The Feejee Mermaid, and Japanese Mermaid folklore
This post is a bit belated - it’s transferred over from my Substack, Puppets and Primates. I wrote it in October 2024 following a day at Brighton’s Booth Museum, where myself and my partner Ulysses Black were filming for an upcoming puppet project, which we really hope to share in the next few months.
edit: You can buy my zine about Feejee Mermaids here where I go into the following blog post in more depth and with more art work!
This is a booklet/ zine all about the legendary Feejee Mermaid - a Victorian hoax made famous by PT Barnum in the 1800s. The feejee mermaid was, in fact, a handmade curiosity, made by sewing together a mummified monkey and a fish!
The blurb reads: “We have of course all heard of mermaids; water dwelling, often hybrid beings between humans and fish. But have you heard of the Feejee Mermaid? This strange curiosity - a sort of cross between a fish and a monkey - painted quite a different picture to the romantic western idea of mermaids. The scaly, shrivelled little creature stirred up quite the sensation when she arrived in New York City in 1842, presented by non other than the infamous showman, P.T. Barnum…
This book takes you on a voyage through the Feejee Mermaid’s history, while uncovering some of the folklore connected to her creation along the way…”
Written and illustrated by me - Daisy Jordan, and featuring parts of a poem, The Feejee Mermaid’s Tale, by Lynne Thomas and Daisy Jordan.
The book is paper back, with 32 stapled pages. It is printed in full colour on matt heavyweight paper. The cover has a satin finish.
Also includes two pull out sheets of illustrated monkeys and fish, which you can cut up and sew together to make your own feejee mermaids!
[Please note - Some products may be subject to import taxes and custom duty fees after arriving in the country of destination. Whilst I do my best at my end to avoid these, all import duties and taxes are the responsibility of the buyer, so please be aware of this when buying internationally!]
Thanks so much for visiting and I hope you enjoy my shop! :)
Daisy x
Following a day at Brighton’s Booth Museum filming some footage for an upcoming puppet project with Ulysses Black (more about that soon!) I thought I’d write a post about the Feejee Mermaid (also known as the Fiji Mermaid).
The Feejee Mermaid was a Victorian hoax - a strange object exhibited by P.T. Barnum in 1842, presented as a real mermaid, caught near the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific.
In reality, this little, sinister-looking siren was a composition of the head and torso of a monkey and the tail half of a fish.
This “original” Feejee Mermaid was bought by an American sea captain called Samuel Barrett Edes from Japanese sailors in 1822. It is believed that this specimen was one of many created commercially by Japanese fishermen, probably in the early 1800s. The reason for their manufacture is unclear. It’s possible that the fishermen were having a laugh, or that the fake mermaids may have even been used for religious ceremonies. They were certainly made for sale at Asian markets, where they were very popular with Victorian tourists in the late 1800s.
The Ningyo
It does seem that mermaids in traditional Japanese lore were quite different to the beautiful, alluring and feminine ones of the Western imagination. There is a creature in Japanese folklore called the ningyo (the Japanese word is comprised of the characters for “human” and “fish”). The ningyo is described as quite an eccentric and creepy creature - a sort of human-fish with the mouth of a monkey. It is thought that these human-fish stories arrived in Japan via China, where various lore around the ningyo can be traced back to as early as the fifth century BCE. An old belief in Japan was that eating a ningyo would grant you eternal life. The most famous Japanese folklore about this is the yaoya bikuni legend where a girl eats the flesh of a ningyo and lives for 800 years.
Ningyo were also believed to bring misfortune and storms, and a washed up Ningyo was considered a bad omen signalling war and calamity.
Over time, depictions of the ningyo were apparently quite varied - some with four limbs, some with just two arms and both the head and body of a fish, some more like the “classic” western idea of an attractive human woman or man with the tail of a fish.
One woodblock shows the ningyo as a frightening looking fish creature with a human face and red devil-like horns, and long black hair. The specimen is described as being 10.6 metres long!
Mōri Baien's Baien gyofu (“Baien’s Catalogue of Fishes, 1825) contains illustrations of a ningyo, representing the “stuffed” fake ningyo, known as the Feejee Mermaid in the West:
And, you can see from the illustration that the pose of the ningyo is very similar to the illustration of the “original” so-called Feejee mermaid, purchased by the aforementioned Edes:
The “mermaid”, following her attainment by Edes, went on quite the journey via London to New York, where she ended up in the hands of P.T. Barnum (who had her on loan from Boston showman Moses Kimball). Amusingly, Barnum advertised the Feejee Mermaid with this image:
One can only imagine the surprise of the excited public on seeing the shrivelled little monstrosity with a skull-like head and tiny, razor-like fangs.
For the next twenty years the Feejee Mermaid split her time between Kimball's museum in Boston and Barnum's museum in New York. Following a tour of London in 1859, she returned to Kimball’s museum. This was her last known location - the original Feejee Mermaid was never seen again. It is thought that she was destroyed when Kimball’s museum burned down in the early 1880s. There have been many replicas made since, with people even trying to claim today that theirs is the “original” Feejee Mermaid - many fakes of the original fake mermaid. One replica can be found at the Booth Museum (pictured below… more about this and an upcoming puppet film with Ulysses Black in an upcoming post…).
In late 2014, I did a short show about the Booth Museum’s Feejee Mermaid with my dear friend Lynne Thomas, who died last year. We performed it at the wonderful Booth Museum, then later at Brighton Museum. We played the roles of two charlatans trying to “sell” the idea that they have a real life mermaid to show the audience.
An image from my zine about Feejee Mermaids, found in my store
Here is an excerpt of the poem Lynne and I wrote for our performance ten years ago. It’s full of creative licence, as anything to do with the Feejee Mermaid should surely be. The full poem can be found in my book.
The Feejee Mermaid’s Tale, 2014
…
The sea holds the key to all hope and despair
For the brave men who venture to lands strange and fair
In search of adventure they rush from their homes
Leaving sweethearts and mothers to weep all alone
For some their reward is a watery grave
Where they lie unremembered beneath the salt waves
Some who live haunt our streets like pale ghosts in a dream
For the horrors they’ve witnessed cannot be unseen!
Those who resist the dark call of the siren
Can gain boundless riches and rival Poseidon
And be known by all sailors as kings of the sea
Who swim amongst mermaids in sweet harmony
We know that you think that mermaids are fable
Like Santa Claus, giants… a babe in a stable!
But these maidens we speak of, are in fact a truth
For those still in doubt tonight we’ve got proof!
Friends I implore you, please remain still and calm
Beauty is fragile and must not be alarmed
So now all is quiet, without further delay,
We present to you…. Our Fiji mermaid!
Our story begins in the fair Fiji Isles
With a fisherman who all the while
Cast his net into the ocean deep
And dreamt of the fishy rewards he might reap.
The simple old man gasped in shock and surprise
As he hauled in his net to claim his prize
For there, tangled in seaweed, he found her –
A mermaid, trapped between ray and flounder.
Her new life began on a small market stand,
Beside bodies of fish with whom she’s once swam
With the lower part of her body, whilst the upper –
Because of our kinship – saved her from supper!
The old man was kind and kept her in good health
He knew she was key to his impending wealth.
And along came the answer to his silent plea –
- Captain Samuel Barrett Eades!
In memory of Lynne Thomas, 1955-2023.
This is a booklet/ zine all about the legendary Feejee Mermaid - a Victorian hoax made famous by PT Barnum in the 1800s. The feejee mermaid was, in fact, a handmade curiosity, made by sewing together a mummified monkey and a fish!
The blurb reads: “We have of course all heard of mermaids; water dwelling, often hybrid beings between humans and fish. But have you heard of the Feejee Mermaid? This strange curiosity - a sort of cross between a fish and a monkey - painted quite a different picture to the romantic western idea of mermaids. The scaly, shrivelled little creature stirred up quite the sensation when she arrived in New York City in 1842, presented by non other than the infamous showman, P.T. Barnum…
This book takes you on a voyage through the Feejee Mermaid’s history, while uncovering some of the folklore connected to her creation along the way…”
Written and illustrated by me - Daisy Jordan, and featuring parts of a poem, The Feejee Mermaid’s Tale, by Lynne Thomas and Daisy Jordan.
The book is paper back, with 32 stapled pages. It is printed in full colour on matt heavyweight paper. The cover has a satin finish.
Also includes two pull out sheets of illustrated monkeys and fish, which you can cut up and sew together to make your own feejee mermaids!
[Please note - Some products may be subject to import taxes and custom duty fees after arriving in the country of destination. Whilst I do my best at my end to avoid these, all import duties and taxes are the responsibility of the buyer, so please be aware of this when buying internationally!]
Thanks so much for visiting and I hope you enjoy my shop! :)
Daisy x
A wooden laser cut brooch designed and hand-painted by me! This one is a tiny Fiji Mermaid (or Feejee mermaid) - a Monkey-Fish hybrid. She is painted with acrylic and finished with shellac. She has two butterfly clasps on the back. Please choose whether you'd like the metal or rubber clasps. Perfect little gift!
Fiji Mermaids were made famous by PT Barnum, who exhibited the first one which was created from the torso of a mummified monkey and a fish! Legend told that the Fiji Mermaid was caught near the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific.
It measures approximately 4.5cm in height. As all the brooches are painted by hand, individually, some very small, minor variations in detail might occur.
Will arrive in a little box.
Thank you so much for visiting and I hope you enjoyed my shop! :)
Daisy xx
