Creature Feature: Suddenly Sirens!

Creature Feature created by Michael is a feature that focuses on the wonderful world of fantasy, science fiction, and horror creatures. 

Sirens:

Last week, I discussed mermaids and told you that sirens are different than mermaids. Yes, many times these 2 different sea creatures seem to get intertwined. But these 2 creatures have vastly different beginnings. Sirens are dangerous creatures, who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and singing voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island.

Sirens are half woman and half bird. What?! You mean fish right! No, I mean bird. You got to be kidding me. No, I am not. In Greek art, Sirens were represented as birds with large women's heads, bird feathers, and scaly feet. Wow, that doesn't sound pretty.

O that is ugly! Yes unlike mermaids which are typically beautiful and fish like. Sirens aren't very pretty and started off more bird like. They started off in Greek mythology in the story of Demeter cursing the Sirens for failing to intervene in the abduction of Persephone. Demeter cursed them with wings and banished them on rocks. And now the sirens sing beautiful songs that cause sailors to crash their ships into rocks or to jump from ships and drown. Though some stories state that the men become so entranced by their song that they don't leave and the sirens are unable to provide them food so the men starve.

Just like merfolk there are also supposed accounts of sirens.

Wikipedia states: 

 First-century Roman historian Pliny the Elder discounted Sirens as pure fable, "although Dinon, the father of Clearchus, a celebrated writer, asserts that they exist in India, and that they charm men by their song, and, having first lulled them to sleep, tear them to pieces." In his notebooks,  Leonardoda Vinci wrote of the Siren, "The siren sings so sweetly that she lulls the mariners to sleep; then she climbs upon the ships and kills the sleeping mariners." 

So how did the sirens become mixed up with the mermaids? That seems to be hard to pin down to what exactly caused these 2 separate creatures into one. Maybe because both were at sea and some confused or mixed up versions of the myths into a mixture of both. Perhaps it had to do with the advent of Christianity which discourages the myth telling so people forgot. Either way, I still think of these 2 in separate forms and not the combined creature they sometimes are portrayed.

Sirens have appeared in a lot of different media

Books include The Odyssey by Homer, Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan, To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo, and the Siren series by Tricia Rayburn. 

TV and movies Ulysses (1954), Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters, Siren tv series, and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

I have only seen 1 episode of Siren so far but I think Ryn is my favorite Siren. She only wants to find her friend and she is one tough little sea creature. Don't mess with her.