The Mermaid of Zennor

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Sea-faring men, who understood most about mermaids, regarded their appearance as a token that bad luck was near at hand. For a more poetic outlook on the story, one must look to Vernon Watkins’ poem from the 1960s, The Ballad of the Mermaid of Zennor. In the office building next to my bedroom there is some building work going on, so I can’t get rid of this sound, but hopefully it’s not too bad. Hop on a boat from St Ives round to Zennor and within fifteen minutes you’ll pass two wrecks visible from the surface.

It is aimed primarily at children, as it is their young minds who take most keenly to the existence of mermaids. Our school is only 20 minutes away from Zennor, we brought the story to life with a class visit to the village! It is believed to have been constructed from old bench ends, and its ornate carved sides are believed to be around 600 years old. 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.A local squire's son named Matthew Trewhella was a member of the church choir and was known for his pure singing voice. Growing up in Cornwall, my Dad remembers every assembly at school seemingly came with a warning about the sea and rivers like Hayle.

Some people like to carve the name of themselves and their lover into a tree and carve a heart around it. It is thought to stand on a site of significance; a cell, founded by the 6th Century Saint Senara, whose name has altered over the centuries to become Zennor. After a service one Sunday, the lady had smiled at Mathew Trewella so he had decided to follow her as she made her way off and towards the cliffs. Welcome to Easy Stories in English, the podcast that will take your English from OK to Good, and from Good to Great. Her green eyes looked back calmly at the villagers, who were staring, for newcomers were rare in that far-flung parish; her tawny-gold hair flowed down over her back, wild and untrained; the long dress she wore swept the ground like a bride’s train, and was made of some material that no one there had ever seen, for it shimmered like the sea on a sunny day.

Much of his poetry centres on Cornish stories, such as ‘The Ballad of Charlotte Dymond’, which narrates a notorious murder in Bodmin in 1844.

One Sunday morning a vessel cast anchor about a mile from Pendower Cove; soon after a mermaid came close alongside and hailed the ship. It was to commemorate the strange events and as a warning to other young men of the dangers of merrymaids that the mermaid was carved into the church pugh. And as any explorer of folklore will tell you, generally the more recent the version of the tale, the smoother the story runs.Mathew is stealing god’s show and St Senara’s was becoming more concert hall than earnest, Protestant house of worship. She asked him if he would be so kind as to raise his anchor as it was resting upon the doorway of her house. With that Mathew picked up Morveren and ran into the sea never to be seen by the folk of Zennor again. An earlier book by Robert Hunt in 1865, ‘Popular Romances of the West of England’ mentions other Cornish mermaids but not our own ‘Morvoren’.