A mermaid captured at Bangor, on the shore of Belfast Lough, in the 6th century, was not only baptized, but admitted into some of the old calendars as a saint under the name of Murgen (Notes and Queries, Oct. 21, 1882); and Stowe (Annales, under date 1187) relates how a man-fish was kept for six months and more in the castle of Orford in Suffolk. As showing how legendary material may gather round a simple fact, the oft-told story of the sea-woman of Edam is particularly interesting. The oldest authority, Joh. Gerbrandus a Leydis, a Carmelite monk (d. 1504), tells (Annales, &c., Frankfort, 1620) how in 1403 a wild woman came through a breach in the dike into Purmerlake, and, being found by some Edam milkmaids, was ultimately taken to Haarlem and lived there many years. Nobody could understand her, but she learned to spin, and was wont to adore the cross. Ocka Scharlensis (Chronijk van Friesland, Leeuw., 1597) reasons that she was not a fish because she could spin, and she was not a woman because she could live in the sea; and thus in due course she got fairly established as a genuine mermaid. Vosmaer, who has carefully investigated the matter, enumerates forty writers who have repeated the story, and shows that the older ones speak only of a woman (see “Beschr. van de zoogen. Meermin der stad Haarlem,” in Verh. van de Holl. Maatsch. van K. en Wet., part 23, No. 1786).
The best account of the mermaid-myth is in Baring-Gould’s Myths of the Middle Ages. See also, besides works already mentioned, Pontoppidan, who in, his logically credulous way collects much matter to prove the existence of mermaids; Maillet, Telliamed (Hauge, 1755); Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, i. 404, and Altdän. Heldenlieder (1811); Waldron’s Description and Train’s Hist. and Stat. Acc. of the Isle of Man; Folk-lore Society’s Record, vol. ii.; Napier, Hist. and Trad. Tales connected with the South of Scotland; Sébillot, Traditions de la haute Bretagne (1882), and Contes des marins (1882).
MEROBAUDES, FLAVIUS (5th century A.D.), Latin rhetorician and poet, probably a native of Baetica in Spain. He was the official laureate of Valentinian III. and Aëtius. Till the beginning of the 19th century he was known only from the notice of him in the Chronicle (year 443) of his contemporary Idacius, where he is praised as a poet and orator, and mention is made of statues set up in his honour. In 1813 the base of a statue was discovered at Rome, with a long inscription belonging to the year 435 (C.I.L. vi. 1724) upon Flavius Merobaudes, celebrating his merits as warrior and poet., Ten years later, Niebuhr discovered some Latin verses on a palimpsest in the monastery of St Gall, the authorship of, which was traced to Merobaudes, owing to the great similarity of the language in the prose preface to that of the inscription. Formerly the only piece known under the name of Merobaudes was a short poem (30 hexameters) De Christo, attributed to him by one MS., to Claudian by another; but Ebert is inclined to dispute the claim of Merobaudes to be considered either the author of the De Christo or a Christian.
The “Panegyric” and minor poems have been edited by B. G. Niebuhr (1824); by I. Bekker in the Bonn Corpus scriptorum hist. Byz. (1836); the “De Christo” in T. Birt’s Claudian (1892), where the authorship of Merobaudes is upheld; see also A. Ebert, Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlande (1889).
MEROE, the general name (as Island of Meroe) for the region bounded on three sides by the Nile (from Atbara to Khartum), the Atbara, and the Blue Nile; and the special name of an ancient city on the east bank of the Nile, 877 m. from Wadi Halfa by river, and 554 by the route across the desert, near the site of which is a group of villages called Bakarawiya. The site of the city is marked by over two hundred pyramids in three groups, of which many are in ruinous condition. After these ruins had been described by several travellers, among whom F. Cailliaud (Voyage à Méroé, Paris, 1826–1828) deserves special mention, some excavations were executed on a small scale in 1834 by G. Ferlini (Cenno sugli scavi operati nella Nubia e catalogo degli oggetti ritrovati, Bologna, 1837), who discovered (or professed to discover) various antiquities, chiefly in the form of jewelry, now in the museums of Berlin and. Munich. The ruins were examined in 1844 by C. R. Lepsius, who brought many plans, sketches and copies, besides actual antiquities, to Berlin. Further excavations were carried on by E. W. Budge in the years 1902 and 1905, the results of which are recorded in his work, The Egyptian Sūdān: its History and Monuments (London, 1907). Troops were furnished by Sir Reginald Wingate, governor of the Sudan, who made paths to and between the pyramids, and sank shafts, &c. It was found that the pyramids were regularly built over sepulchral chambers, containing the remains of bodies either burned or buried Without being mummified. The most interesting objects found were the reliefs on the chapel walls, already described by Lepsius, and containing the names with representations of queens and some kings, with some chapters of the Book of the Dead; some steles with inscriptions in the Meroitic language, and some vessels of metal and earthenware. The best of the reliefs were taken down stone by stone in 1905, and set up partly in the British Museum and partly in the museum at Khartum. In 1910, in consequence of a, report by Professor Sayce, excavations were commenced in the mounds of the town and the necropolis by J. Garstang on behalf of the university of Liverpool, and the ruins of a palace and several temples were discovered, built by the Meroite kings. (See further Ethiopia.)
Meroe was probably also an alternative name for the city, of Napata, the ancient capital of Ethiopia, built at the foot of Jebel Barkal. The site of Napata is indicated by the villages of Sanam Abu Dom on the left bank of the Nile and Old Merawi on the right bank of the river. New Merawi, 1 m. east of Sanam Abu Dom and on the same side of the river, was founded by the, Sudan government in 1905 and made the capital of the mudiria of Dongola. (D. S. M.*)
MEROPE, the name of several figures in Greek mythology. The most important of them are the following: (1) The daughter of Cypselus, king of Arcadia, and wife of Cresphontes, ruler of Messenia. During an insurrection Cresphontes and two of his sons were murdered and the throne seized by Polyphontes, who forced Merope to marry him. A third son, Aepytus, contrived to escape, and, subsequently returning to Messenia, put Polyphontes to death and recovered his father’s kingdom (Apollodorus ii. 8, 5; Pausanias iv. 3, 6). The fortunes of Merope have furnished the subject of tragedies by Euripides (Cresphontes, not extant), Voltaire, Maffei and Matthew Arnold. (2) The daughter of Atlas and wife of Sisyphus. She was one of the seven Pleiades, but remained invisible, hiding her light for shame at having become the wife of a mortal (Apollodorus i. 9, 3; iii. 10, 1; Ovid, Fasti, iv. 175).
MEROVINGIANS, the name given to the first dynasty which reigned over the kingdom of the Franks. The name is taken from Merovech, one of the first kings of the Salian Franks, who succeeded to Clodio in the middle of the 5th century, and soon became the centre of many legends. The chronicler known as Fredegarius Scholasticus relates that a queen was once sitting by the seashore, when a monster came out of the sea, and by this monster she subsequently became the mother of Merovech, but this myth is due to an attempt to explain the hero’s name, which means “the sea-born.” At the great battle of Mauriac (the Catalaunian fields) in which Aetius checked the invasion of the Huns (451), there were present in the Roman army a number of Frankish foederati, and a later document, the Vita lupi, states that Merovech (Merovaeus) was their leader. Merovech was the father of Childeric I. (457–481), and grandfather of Clovis (481–511), under whom the Salian Franks conquered the whole of Gaul, except the kingdom of Burgundy, Provence and Septimania. The sons of Clovis divided the dominions of their father between them, made themselves masters of Burgundy (532), and in addition received Provence from the Ostrogoths (535); Septimania was not taken from the Arabs till the time of Pippin, the founder of the Carolingian dynasty. From the death of Clovis to that of Dagobert (639), the Merovingian kings displayed considerable energy, both in their foreign wars and in the numerous wars against one another in which they found an outlet for their barbarian instincts. After 639, however, the race began to decline, one after another the kings succeeded to the throne,
