Episode 56: Peak District Mermaids

“She calls on you to greet her, combing her dripping crown, and if you go to meet her, she ups and drags you down”

If you like muddy holes and wet fishy women then this is the podcast episode that you’ve been waiting for.

I’ve also done a bit of a deep dive on the history of the stories of mermaids in the peak district and you can find that below for when you’ve listened to the episode, or even if you don’t want to listen to that and just want to know more about Peak District mermaids.

The history of Peak District Mermaid legends

As covered in the discussion section of my episode I took a more lengthy look at the evidence for stories of the Peak District mermaids than I usually do to try and get the chronology of them correct in my own head, as there are many good sources on the internet but few that tie them all together.

Obviously there are spoilers for the episode here.

The below is a summary of sources I have found for the various mermaid legends of the peaks organised by pool and dat, with some speculation on what this might mean for how the stories developed over time.

Nothing I say below is certain – I make suppositions and my “earliest source” in all cases are just waiting for someone to contradict me. If you can add anythingt hen please let me know!

I give my usual disclaimer that these are only the sources we have, which even if I’ve found them all are at best a very imperfect representation of oral tradition and possibly quite separate from it. It is not just likely but near certain that oral traditions existed in the local area which have been lost. However given the print and digital heavy nature of the past century and half by now the stories that circulate about these pools are the ones that have developed below. below.

I am indebted to the work of Dr Simon Young for the early references to Mermaid’s Pool. He has done a lot of work on mermaid’s place names that can be found here: Young, ‘Mermaids, Mere Maids and No Maids: Mermaid place names and folklore in Britain’ and here A Gazetteer of British Mermaid Place-names

To give an overview of the peak district mermaids there are three locations and three different mermaids at each.

At Mermaid’s Pool on the Kinder Scout sources from the 19th century tell of a spirit or naiad or mermaid who appears only occasionally in the pool and grants immortality when you see her. In most accounts she is peaceable though if she is a mermaid as typically understood is up for debate.

At Blackmere sources from the mid-19th century talk of a much darker figure who has gone through a few incarnations – in her forms earliest she mostly warns of destruction, but thereafter she actively drowns men. There are wildly different accounts of her origin that develop in the 20th century, and she may be linked to earlier stories (and possibly fact) of murders at the pool.

At Doxey Pool a nightmarish creature that can be barely be called a mermaid dates from 1974 and thereafter typically called Jenny Greenteeth.

And there is a tantalising hint at a fourth lost mermaid pool at Chapel-en-le-Frith (though it’s probably a mistake)…

The Mermaid’s Pool (Kinder Scout)

Summary: Variously referred to as the Mermaid(‘s) bath, pool, love or well the “mermaid” name first appears on a map in 1840 with versions of her legend cropping up frequently from the 1870s onwards. The mermaid usually appears either once a day to bathe, or once a year on Easter Sunday – variously at midnight, dawn or some time between.

Her distinguishing feature is that to see her grants immortality to a man (always a man who sees her!). Some say she hides from you if she doesn’t want you to have it. Some 21st century stories add a detail that say if she doesn’t like you she’ll instead drown you.

Sometimes she is not a mermaid as we’d understand it – but a woman who lives in the side of the hill. Otherwise the story remains the same. Here mermaid might be understood to be a description of a woman swimming, but in this case a somewhat enchanted female spirit woman. Several soures back this up – suggesting she has legs. There are examples of lake/river maidens of this type across Europe, including the naiads from Greek legend and much nearby Welsh lake ladies, she may well have fitted better into this category in earlier stories than mermaids as we know them today.

The story seems almost certainly related somehow to the Rostherne Mere mermaid who appears on Easter Sunday. More tentatively I’d suggest that the legend is linked to the tradition of watching the Sun dance on Easter Sunday – themes of water, going up to hills early on Easter Sunday and immortality all common amongst them. Feels possible that the sun dancing tradition and associated practises influenced the form of this rather unusual legend.

Chronology featuring some key sources

1840: Pool first named as Mermaid’s pool on map 1840 (Simon Young)

1869, First reference to the legend of a mermaid I can find, a poem in “The Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeologist“. However it is a very unusual one – it says that she appears at Midsummers Eve and that she lures men to her destruction by singing. I think even though the earliest reference it is likely just using the name of the place as a setting for a standard literary mermaid tale rather than giving folklore to the area.

1870, Glossop-Dale Chronicle: First reference to the legend of the Mermaid being seen on Easter and says that people went to have a look. No reference to immortality granting.

This account does suggest some link between a beetle-like witches familiar and the mermaid, but it’s not very clear. In the podcast episode I kind of gloss over this but since I’ve become more convinced that while it might not be related to the mermaid it may be more important to the earlier folklore of the pool in general (See clarification below in 1891 section)

1872, Glossop Times Immortality granting story told for the first time – florid account of English Hamadryad who comes to the pool daily, also tells the story of the man from Hayfield who met her gave his watch and became immortal. It does refer to her as a beautiful woman who lived in the side of the hill, NOT a mermaid.

1872 Onwards – After this period some combination of the Easter sighting, bathing daily and Immortality legends is repeated all over the place, featuring one or all of these features. it’s fairly common in the daily versions to not refer to her as a mermaid but a beautiful woman or nymph or similar (e.g. in the Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England where she is a mountain nymph).

At some point genuine local figure Aaron Ashton who died in the 1830s is often added to the story – saying he went to the pool each Easter and lived to the age of 104, e.g. in the Highways and byways in Derbyshire; 1905 version

1891 – An account of a witch “Jenny Crum” being drowed at Mermaid’s Pool is included in the novel “The History of David Grieve” by the incredibly interesting Mary Augusta Ward. No indication this is meant to be genuine local folklore [See Errata below!]. This doesn’t make its way into the general tales of the Mermaid’s Pool but may have influenced Blackmere Pool.

(Errata/Clarification: Dec-25. An article has since been published by Simon Young that touches on this and reveals a source I didn’t have: Augusta Ward’s notes. In this she says that there is a legend that a Reverend laid a witch there – this chimes well with the article from 1870 about the weird beetle thing and the witch. Taken together it suggests there was local folklore of a witch laid here dating from earlier despite what I say above and on the podcast. This may once have been a more important part of the mermaid pool folklore that’s largely lost to us now. However it should also be noted that a laying is very different than a witch drowning, so I still feel that Ward likely invented the drowning folklore.)

20th century – Most accounts from here on out draw on the already established traditions though the watch element of the story crops up rarely and almost never is the bather/swimmer now referred to as anything else but a mermaid, except in some earlier accounts where she is called a naiad.

21st Century – While I’ve not tried to pin its origin down by the 21st century a new element has sometimes been added to the story – that you must take the mermaid’s proferred hand to get your immortality. And that at that point she can either grant you it. Or drown you. See Haunted Britain and Ireland for an example.

Blakemere/Blackmere Pond

Summary: There are references to Blakemere being eerie from 1679 and that it has a reputation of animals not wanting to pass over it/drink from it and that it is bottomless from 1686. By this point it also has strong associations with stories of women being murdered.

By c.1860 there is a Mermaid’s Inn nearby and it is known sometimes as Mermaid’s Pond and by 1860 there is a story about a mermaid who warns that if the pond is emptied it will flood nearby towns.

Later on in the nineteenth century the mermaid appears more sinister and by the 1930s she is explicitly luring and drowning men, fairly standard mermaid fare.

There are two legends of her origin that first appear afterwards: in 1950s – that she is a ghost of a witch/accused witch drowned after a false accusation by Joshua Linnet, and much later in the 2000s that she was brought there by a sailor from Thorncliffe who left her there. These two are the key stories told about her today.

The warning of flooding seems to be a variaton a very old and common legend involving flooding towns due to engineering troubles or hubris, though a very close form of the legend crops up in the much larger Aqualate mere, also in Staffordshire where a mermaid warns of flooding. Seems very likely the two are connected.

The sailor story is very short and has no direct parallel, though I’ve seen similair explanations for inland mermaids in modern sources on them but not so much in old sources, where the question of why there is a mermaid in the pool seems to far less asked.

The witch story seems to be pretty unique to explain a mermaid. As I go into below it may be partially inspired by an 1891 novel about the other mermaid’s pool.

Chronology featuring some key sources

Possible 13th century – Laus Sapientie Divine, 1213. Almost don’t want to include this here but it might be connected. A number of later sources refer to a section of this work “De Lacu Staffordae” – A Lake in Stafford as being about Blackmere. An English translation is:

“A lake that with prophetic noise does roar,
Where beasts can ne’er be forced to venture o’er.
By hounds, or men, or fleeter death pursued,
They’ll not plunge in, but shun the hated flood.”

But William Camden who quotes this poem in 1586 says that “the place [of this lake] is uncertain” (according to the English translation). So I’m not totally sure why they have been connected, excepting that Dr Plot later records a similar tradition (see below).

No mermaid at this stage but might have a bad reputation.

1679 – There is an account of a woman being murdered and her body thrown into Blackmere. In this account it is described as a “strange deep black water-pond of a very prodigious depth and colour, differing from most ordinary waters.” Her murderer is captured and executed after arousing suspicion in a clever maid. I’m unsure if this really happened – it has suspicious similarities to other stories about murderers discovered by some slip up but nothing about it that means it has to be untrue.

1686 – Dr Plot, Staffordshire historian and likely super-villian gives an account of a visit to Blackmere in his notable work The Natural History of Staffordshire. His description is worth reading in full but he says that it is famed for being Bottomless, that cattle will not drink from it and that birds will not fly over it. He adds the wonderfully sniffy bracketed disclaimer about these claims “(all of which I found false)”.

He is also the first source of a story about an attempted murder at the pool – a man from Leek going up to the Blackmere of Morridge on a dare on a stormy dark night finds a villain ready to kill his pregnant lover. Our Leek hero quick thinkingly calls “Tom, Dick, Jack, here are the rogues we are looking for”, to make it appear he is not alone. This does the trick – the would be murderer flees and the woman is saved.

At this point there is no mention of a mermaid.

Between 1686 and 1862 – To my mind it’s reasonably likely that a mermaid legend doesn’t exist in the 1680s as I’d expect one of the above authors to have mention it if it was around. By 1860 clearly one arises. While we can’t know I think there’s a couple of obvious possibilities.

1) I’m wrong and the legend existed previously but the 17th century authors didn’t pick up on it. This seems pretty likely.

2) The mermaid story appears at the same time as the Mermaid Inn (so named in the 1850s sometime) rather than the Inn being named after it – Mermaid Inns aren’t at all uncommon and while its place inland is unusual it’s easy to imagine people/the inn’s owners/workers explicitly making a connection between the known creepy pool down the road and the pub name to attract business or just for fun.

3) The mermaid legend grew up connected to the stories of murder and attempted murder of women at the pool. Mermaid as a term for a woman swimming was pretty common and easy to see how these metaphorical mermaids could give rise to a name the mermaids pool and with it mermaid legends. We have at least one similar example elsewhere. One argument against the association with drowned women is that this implies a rather sinister dark mermaid, and the first stories of her (see below) don’t seem to fit that vibe.

Ultimately a combination of these could be right or none of them could be. This is all just idle speculation for funsies.

1862 – The first evidence I can find of both the mermaid and the nearby Inn being called the Mermaid Inn nearby. Occurs in a footnote of an article that’s mostly a reprint of Dr Plot’s in “A History Of The Ancient Parish Of Leek“.

The story given here says simply that a mermaid appeared to an “astonished rustic, and having prognosticated that, should the waters ever burst their bounds, all Leek and Firth would be deluged, thereby disappeared”.

1863 – The Black Mere of Morridge in notes and queries in the Reliquary asserts that it is also called “Mermaid Pool” and gives the bare bones of the story that the mermaid gave her warning of the drowning of Leek when the pool was partially let off.

From here on inThis story of flooding regularly crops up and is expanded on/has separate variants in later versions.

1880 – Also the reliquary gives the first overt description I can find of the mermaid as much more violent. In tales it says have been around for generations the mermaid lures wayfarers and loiterers to destruction

1894 – The Leisure Hour description of the Blackmere mermaid is much more spooky. Though it doesn’t explicitly say she drowns people it heavily implies it:

“Her strange form has been seen gliding over the surface of the dark waters, and woe betide any luckless mortal who chances to pass that way after midnight.”

It also includes a much more detailed version of the draining the pool tale. I’m quite tempted to say that the high levels of detail in both of these accounts were written specifically for this article even if the stories were clearly existing before hand.

1900s-1932

Thereafter there aren’t quite as many accounts of the mermaid and most of those repeat the story though there are additions: A letter in the Derbyshire advertiser in 1922 describes her as half horse half fish – a description not repeated elsewhere, while a 1920 account in the same paper has her as a regular death omen – if you see her rise from the pool’s black depths you won’t survive twelve months more.

1932 – A poem is published in Punch On Morridge (North Staffordshire) that goes on to be quoted in pretty much every account of the mermaid thereafter (my own included). It’s actually a few verses long, and I’ve included the text on the right, but the oft quoted bit is:

“She calls on you to greet her, combing her dripping crown,
And if you go to meet her she ups and drags you down.”

This poem truly establishes her as the seductive murderous type above all else.

1955 – An article in the Staffordshire Sentinel “The Strange Legend of the Mermaid Pool” first establishes the accused witch origin story, which appears in full. Joshua Linnet unjustly accuses her, she is drowned but with her dying breath she curses him, and a few days later he is found there drowned face torn to pieces (huzzah!).

It also makes reference to the idea of the mermaid producing but one shapely beckoning arm from the pool which is repeated in later accounts, and discusses a strange light seen on the pool, which is typically not.

I do not know if it is here where the Joshua Linnet story was invented but I’m tempted to say not – that there’s a missing intermediary print source or an oral source. This is just because the article is mostly, like myself, rehashing already known legends and so an inserted totally new story would seem odd. But I can’t be certain either way.

I also retain a strong suspicion that this unique origin story owes something to the witch drowning incident at the other mermaid’s pool in the novel the History of David Grieve (see above). However they aren’t that similar. In the earlier story there’s no Joshua Linnet, no revenge, no transformation into a mermaid. However two witch drownings in mermaid pools so close together seems an odd coincidence.

Remainder of 20th century – The story is now well established and has the same beats, though as always with stories there are flourishes here and there, e.g. in this 1988 account the mermaid is said to “walk alongside travellers”.

2008 – The earliest reference I can find to the last element of the story that seems to crop up regularly in accounts of it today: Imagining Staffordshire – The Mermaid of Black Mere Pool. I’m basing this date solely off of the archive date capture so it’s probably published earlier, and I also have no reason to believe this is original source of this story, which is given here very briefly:

“There are various legends concerning the origin of the mermaid. In one, a sailor from nearby Thorncliff fell in love with her and brought her back from sea.”

And that brings us up to date with Blackmere – most modern accounts tell some combination of the above and today she is usually a dark dangerous figure, though her warnings of floods are usually mentioned as well.

But from the latter of the twentieth century she is now also a figure with a tragic past – which makes you think that maybe her murdering of men is sort of justified. And you know I love a justified murderess on this podcast.

Doxey Pool

For Doxey there’s a lot less to discuss. The pool has clearly had a reputation as a bit of an unusual place for some time. There are discussions in various places of its name being linked to a Highwayman (or his daughter) and general descriptions of it seem to suggest it’s a bit eerie, and that it has some strange qualities that may make it bottomless. E.g the description in the 1894 Leisure hour which calls it “sombre” and says “a gloomy but romantic tarn, whose dark waters never, even in the driest season, vary in their level.”

However it seems ignored in terms of folklore compared to the rocky ridge known as the Roaches on which the pool sits and which attracts a lot more weird legends.

This changes in 1974 with the publication of a work by Florence E. Petitt Shrines of psychic power : a spiritual pilgrimage. This book is an autobiographical account of her trips around various different numinous places.

While not named precisely she gives an account of somewhere that must be Doxey Pool in which she says the following:

“When alone, I stripped off and was just about to enter the water when a great ‘thing’ rose up eng the middle of the lake. It rose very quickly until it was twenty-five to thirty feet tall. Seeming to be part of the slimy weeds and the water, yet it had eyes and those eyes were extremely malevolent. It pointed its long bony fingers menacingly at me so that there was no mistaking its hostility. I stood staring at the undine, water spirit, naiad or whatever it was, while my heart raced. Its feet just touched the surface of the water, yet it was at one and the same time part of the water, the weeds and the air. I stepped backwards on to the bank and dressed shakily. When I dared to look again the creature was dissolving back into the elements from which it had been formed”

I am very impressed by the composure she shows in getting dressed rather than immediately fleeing in terror.

Now this story seems to form the basis of all subsequent mermaid tales at Doxey Pool, though by at least 1999 this has been mixed up with Jenny Greenteeth (e.g. Book of Britain’s Walks) – a very widespread name for a murderous water spirit in England who previously had no connection with the pool I can find and this continues up to the modern day. Which is great as it’s a very strange creature indeed and I like it a lot.

Another Mermaid’s Pool?

When researching I found one tantalising reference to another peak district mermaid legend.

It’s in a work called the Legendary Lore of the Holy Wells of England from 1893 by Robert Charles Hope. It specifically lists the Mermaid Pool at Kinder Scout and alongside, another mermaid Pool at mill hill Chapel en-le-frith, mill hill. The section about the Chapel-en-le-frith onepool is very short it says: 

“On Easter Eve, at twelve o’clock, when Easter Day is coming in, if you look steadfastly into the pool, you will see a mermaid. “

Now given that this is the same story as the Kinder Scout/Hayfield Mermaid Pool and given the proximity of Mill Hill and the kinder scout – they are very close together – if I had read this anywhere else I would definitely conclude it is referring to the Kinder Scout mermaid’s pool. Except that in this case Hope specifically lists them as different places, even including the two next to each other. He clearly believed they were two different places.

This is the only reference I have to this – I think the overwhelming likelihood is that there has been a confusion and Robert Hope got confused. But maybe… just maybe… there may have been a fourth pool and on Easter you could you taken your pick – and maybe even sea a mermaid without risking that pesky double edged sword of immortality.

One last Peak District Mermaid…