Sirens

Sirens, sea-nymphs in Greek Mythology who sat on the shores of an island between Circe's isle and Scylla, near the south-western coast of Italy, and sang with bewitching sweetness songs that allured the passing sailor to draw near, but only to meet with death. In Homer there are two, in later writers three, Ligeia, Lenkosia, and Parthenope, or Aglaopheme, Molpe, and Thelxiepeia. If any seaman could resist the enticements of their magic music they themselves were doomed to die, but Ulysses or the Argonauts alone succeeded in doing so. In the Odyssey we read how Ulysses, by the advice of Circe, stopped the ears of his companions with wax, and lashed himself to a mast, until he had sailed out of hearing of the fatal songs. The Argonauts got safely past because Orpheus protected them by the stronger spell of his own singing, whereupon the sirens threw themselves into the sea and were transformed into rocks. The Latin poets give them wings, and in works of art they are often represented as birds with the faces of maidens, and are provided with musical instruments. According to J. P. Postgate (Cambridge Journal of Philology, vol. ix.), the original meaning of the word is 'bird.' In later days they are represented on tombs as singers of dirges for the dead, and more generally as symbolising the magic power of eloquence and song. Parallel conceptions are the Mermaid (q.v.) of western Europe and the Lorelei (q.v.) of the Rhine. See Miss Harrison's Myths of the Odyssey in Art and Literature (1881).