Tracking the Mermaids of Staithes: Curses, Egg-Broth, and Inundation in a Yorkshire Legend

Peverley, S ORCID: 0000-0002-6178-3163 and Middleton-Metcalfe, C ORCID: 0000-0001-9781-3822 (2025) Tracking the Mermaids of Staithes: Curses, Egg-Broth, and Inundation in a Yorkshire Legend Folklore United Kingdom, 136 (2). pp. 232-249. ISSN 0015-587X, 1469-8315

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Abstract

The vengeful tale of the mermaids of Staithes is well known locally along the north-east coast of Yorkshire, England. Concerning the capture and escape of two mermaids, who speak enigmatically about egg-broth and curse the community that hurts them, the tale has notable parallels with other mermaid stories from Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, all of which were recorded in print from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries, except the Staithes story. Through deductive source analysis, this article identifies the oldest verbal and published versions of the legend on record (from January and March 1924, respectively) and identifies analogues to the egg-broth motif, which may attest to the story’s emergence much earlier in the eighteenth century. By situating the tale’s publication in context, it is also possible to connect its first occurrence in print to recurrent inundations and the economic decline of Staithes’s fishing industry in the early twentieth century.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Curse, Egg-Broth, Egg-Lore, Eggs, Fishermen, Fishing, Flooding, Folk Legend, Folktale, Inundation, Legend, Mermaid, Mermaids, Ocean, Sea, Staithes, Storytelling, Water, Witches, Yorkshire
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	13 Aug 2024 08:26
Last Modified:	24 Jan 2026 04:59
DOI:	10.1080/0015587X.2025.2461869
Related Websites:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3183627
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