Legend of the Mermaid
Description
The Legend of the Mermaid is well known and told with different forms and endings in all the oral tradition of peoples linked to the sea, from Denmark to the Spanish coast there are references in Europe to this beautiful tale.
It was first told just before the year 1000 by a Portuguese knight, Lord Barcelos, illegitimate son of the poet king Dionis. Years later it was written down by a lady, a brilliant writer, Lady Emilia de Marineda, Countess of Pardo Bazan and then glossed by Torrente Ballester.
We people from Galicia are people of the sea, with three of the four provinces in Galicia bordering the sea and it is in the sea that we find food to nourish our bodies and our imagination. And as the sea is home to many creatures, among its fascinating collection, a knight from Vilaxoan found one of those mermaids
"A knight from Vilaxoan was walking one day by the sea when he slipped and fell in. His armour was so heavy he couldn't swim and just as he was about to drown a mermaid appeared and rescued him. They both fell in love and their relationship lasted for some time and they had four children. The knight, when his children were growing up, asked the mermaid to let him take them to land to educate them in the arts of knighthood. Unhappily, the mother gave her consent, but imposed the following condition: from each generation born of her descendants, the mermaid would reserve a boy for herself, one that had blue eyes and scales on his thighs.
The knight accepted but with no intention of fulfilling his promise. However, generation after generation beautiful boys were born with blue eyes and scales on their thighs. It did not matter who they married, their peculiar feature would emerge generation after generation, and it didn't matter what doctor they went to, their rare "illness" was unknown.
The mermaid and the knight were never heard of again, unlike those with the surname Marino (the surname adopted by the strange lineage), because misfortune accompanied them, they would always lose one of their sons at sea.
No matter how careful they were, even forbidding their sons to go near the sea or not allowing them to work in any profession connected to the sea, they were so fascinated by the sea that when they went near it, they would disappear without trace". This legend explains why there is a mermaid on the Marino de Vilaxoan coat of arms.