Islandology: Geography, Rhetoric, Politics by Shell Marc

Author:Shell, Marc [Shell, Marc]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2014-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

ILLUSTRATION 66 Rhine Maidens with Alberich Postage Stamp. Alois Kolb, 1933. The stamp was issued by the Reichspost of the German Empire. Permission granted by Collection Selechonek.

Both the tragedy of Tristan and Isolde and that of The Rhine Gold recall the English Alfred, in which an English farmer falls into “the deep Atlantic / Midst Equinoctial gales,” driven there by the sirens. The Englishman marries the mermaid and there’s an end of it:

My comrades and my messmates,

Oh, do not weep for me,

For I’m married to a mermaid,

At the bottom of the deep blue sea.

Refrain:

Singing Rule Britannia,

Britannia rules the waves

Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.40

The British, it would seem, are part mermen. Certainly the Orkney and Shetland islanders have their selkies: “I am a man, upo’ da lan’ / An’ I am a silkie I’ da sea.”41 Although the Germans likewise have their mer-wives,42 for Wagner there is no such exogamous (trans-species) marital bliss.

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