Folk Tales - England

 

I think it will be good to look more at the relationship people have with the sea and how it changes their way of life, I found this book about folktales in England. Because England is an island nation I want to see if I can find any folktales in it that may be about the sea and give me a better understanding of the relationship with it in the past.

Within the book, I only really found two examples of folktales that were about the sea which was pretty annoying but anyway. The first one I found was called The Sea Morgan and The Conger Eels where a mysterious creature called a "sea morgan" would sing and draw people out into the mudflats once the tide had gone out. Once out there the victims would be sucked down into the mud and eaten by eels, the creature is killed by a deaf boy who goes out on the mud in a sled to kill the "sea morgan". This story reminded me a lot of the sirens and mermaids I had been reading about however a Sea Morgan was never mentioned.


Doing some quick searching for what a Sea Morgan was I found a wiki post for a Sea Morgen, in the wiki it says that the creature shows up in British and Welsh methodology and is often associated with fishermen and fishing villages. It's really interesting seeing these sorts of creatures pop up over and over again in myths surrounding the sea, they lure people into the sea or towards dangers in the sea to ultimately kill them. The sea is exactly like this promising so much but with lots of danger as well.

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