Sirens

This is a post following off a comment made to this post here which featured Borges’ analysis of sirens in mythic lore and history in his The Book of Imaginary Beings. The post triggered my own probe into possible antecedents to the siren myth.  
Borges restricts himself to providing an account of the representation and possible origin of sirens and provides no information on the symbolic significance sirens held in mythic lore. Though, sirens being the kind of fantastical creatures that usually adorn a pillar or a gateway in a temple somewhere, were probably seen as little more than adornments by the casual devout visitors who usually frequented the temples with their fruit baskets, their wreathed foreheads and their low-bent eyes following the trailing toga of their priests. Ahem.

Any way, to begin with Ovid, he treats of the transformation of sirens as part of his Fifth Book with the section following the Rape of Proserpine, 

But, o ye nymphs that from the flood descend
What fault of yours the Gods cou’d so offend
With wings and claws your beauteous forms to spoil
Yet save your maiden face and winning smiles

Ovid claims the sirens fly in search of Proserpine, that when their search over land was spent in vain, they prayed to the Gods to provide them with wings so they can cross the “pathless main”. A prayer that was answered with a gift of golden wings. This tale links the sirens to Proserpine, the Greek goddess of the Underworld, the third face of the Triune Mother Goddess, the face of the Crone. It is no wonder that later the song of the sirens would have fatal consequences.

Homer has a penchant for being grim and dramatic. Where Ovid’s sirens are romantic souls who have condemned themselves to a fruitless search for their Mistress Death, Homer shows them to be vengeful, bloodthirsty seductresses sitting on a little patch of an island cooing at wandering sailors, luring them in and chewing the meat right off their bones. Or as Homer puts it in Circe’s (no mean enchantress herself who would’ve eaten of the porcine flesh of Odysseus’ followers herself if she’d had her way) warning to Odysseus:

You will come first of all to the Sirens, who are enchanters
of all mankind and whoever comes their way; and that man
who unsuspecting approaches them, and listens to the Sirens
singing, has no prospect of coming home…
…They sit in their meadow, but the beach before it is piled with boneheaps
of men now rotted away, and the skins shrivel upon them.
You must drive straight on past, but melt down sweet wax of honey
and with it stop your companions’ ears, so none can listen;
the rest, that is, but if you yourself are wanting to hear them,
then have them tie you hand and foot on the fast ship, standing
upright against the mast with the ropes’ ends lashed around it,
so that you can have joy in hearing the song of the Sirens;

The sirens are still beautiful and their music still seductive, however there is a fatal twist to it that Ovid does not speak of, that Ovid perhaps has no reason to speak of. It is strange however how the daughters of river goddesses could descend to this sort of barbarism. Guess you just roll with the role you’re dealt by your writers. (They probably saw it as adding some much-needed depth to their character sheets. Seeing how few of their sister naiads ever made centrestage in lore, this was probably a wise if compromising choice on their part. *cough*)

Of course, Homer’s account precedes Ovid’s by centuries. The description of sirens as being surrounded by the bones of the dead marks them as creatures closely associated with death and violence.

Apollonius of Rhodes, in his Argonautica, mentions the sirens as daughters of Achelous and the muse Terpsichore:

And soon they saw a fair island, Anthemoessa,
where the clear-voiced Sirens, daughters of Achelous, used to beguile
with their sweet songs whoever cast anchor there, and then destroy him.
Them lovely Terpsichore, one of the Muses, bare, united with Achelous;
and once they tended Demeter’s noble daughter still unwed, and sang to
her in chorus; and at that time they were fashioned in part like birds
and in part like maidens to behold. And ever on the watch from their
place of prospect with its fair haven, often from many had they taken
away their sweet return, consuming them with wasting desire;

Apollonius was writing some time in the 3rd century BCE which makes his account more ancient than that of Ovid. He does mention that the sirens were once attendant to Persephone and were later fashioned into their half-bird forms. He also mentions that the sirens do not so much kill their prey directly as inspire a “wasting desire” in them. If anything, Apollonius’ account establishes that the sirens have always been associated as the assistants, the handmaidens of Persephone, goddess of the Underworld.

There are other eponymous bird-maiden in Norse lore, the Valkyrie, who are led by the consort of Odinn, Freya. They are tasked to ride over the battlefield at the end of the battle and collect the souls of fallen heroes and nudge them towards Valhalla where they will spend the rest of their days swilling mead, spitting boar and fondling wenches. All this and more till Ragnarok happens and they all die again brutally to Loki’s fanged/horned/clawed demons and demonettes, never to rise again. So it goes. This function of the valkyrie is however more closely associated with one of the three Norns, the Fates of Norse mythos. As mentioned in the Voluspo

An ash I know, | Yggdrasil its name,
With water white | is the great tree wet;
Thence come the dews | that fall in the dales,
Green by Urth’s well | does it ever grow.

Thence come the maidens | mighty in wisdom,
Three from the dwelling | down ‘neath the tree;
Urth is one named, | Verthandi the next,–
On the wood they scored,– | and Skuld the third.
Laws they made there, and life allotted
To the sons of men, and set their fates.

These Norns were known to be giantesses. Apart from these primary Norns, there were also a series of secondary Norns who were born from dwarves or elves or humans as mentioned in the Fáfnismál. Now, of these Norns, Skuld in old Norse implies “debt” or “future” (for this I’ll rely on Wiki being accurate). If the Norse Norns can be seen as playing the same role as the Fates in other cultures, Skuld can be associated with the Crone. Skuld is also shown as a Valkyrie in another section of the Voluspo:

On all sides saw I | Valkyries assemble,
Ready to ride | to the ranks of the gods;
Skuld bore the shield, | and Skogul rode next,
Guth, Hild, Gondul, | and Geirskogul.
Of Herjan’s maidens | the list have ye heard,
Valkyries ready | to ride o’er the earth.

While Valkyries do not serve the same purpose as Sirens, it can’t be denied that both are tied with the realms of death and violence. Both have similar associations, the Sirens have been shown as handmaidens of Persephone and the Valkyrie serve Freyja in Her capacity as Goddess of the Dead where she chooses who among those chosen by the Valkyrie will join Othin and who, her own service. As mentioned in the Grimnismol:

The ninth is Folkvang, | where Freyja decrees
Who shall have seats in the hall;
The half of the dead | each day does she choose,
And half does Othin have.

There remains the connection with the sea or water which is not directly apparent in the case of the Valkyrie. Valkyrie are commonly found in swan’s garments though and the only place in the Poetic Edda where there is any mention of Valkyrie as swan maidens is in the Volundarkvitha where three swan maidens are found by three warriors who marry these maidens and live with them for all of seven years before the girls get bored and run off seeking war and plunder in foreign lands. This also shows the seductiveness of Valkyries which is apparent from their connection to Freyja.

To return to Freyja, she was more commonly revered as the wife of Odhinn and a Goddess of love and riches. As mentioned in the Gylfaginning in the Prose Edda:

Her hall Sessrúmnir is great and fair. When she goes forth, she drives her cats and sits in a chariot; she is most conformable to man’s prayers, and from her name comes the name of honor, Frú, by which noblewomen are called. Songs of love are well-pleasing to her; it is good to call on her for furtherance in love.

She was also known as a Goddess of fertility invoked at childbirth as from this passage from the Lament of Oddrun spoken by a damsel Borgny after a particularly complicated delivery of twins:

“So may help thee
All helpful things,
Fey and Freyia,
And all the fair Gods,
As thou hast thrust
This torment from me!”

A similar less bloody connotation can also be drawn towards Valkyrie who officiate as mead-bearers and as described in the introduction to the Volundarkvitha, they have been known to marry and lead a domestic life at times too. In the Helgakviða Hundingsbana, the hero Helgi successfully woos and wins the affections of a Valkyrie Sigrún.

If we dig a little farther back into myth, in Sumerian lore, there is the myth of Gilgamesh and the huluppu tree. As briefly sketched here, Inanna (the Sumerian Ishtar) had planted and nurtured in her garden in Erech. When it had grown too tall for her to water, little princess that she was, she decided to make a couch out of it. However, in this time, a snake had made its house at the base of the tree, a lilitu (referred to in the translation as Lilith) demon had settled down in the middle and a Zu-bird hatched eggs right at the top. Inanna sat down and wept. Gilgamesh was a hero who knew exactly what made crying little goddesses happy and cut the snake in half. The bird and the demon decided to find other quarters. Princess Inanna got a new couch. End of Story.

Now, from the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (available here), the word lilitu is a female form of the word lilu which refers to a family of, what is referred to in the Dictionary, as l-demons. Now, one of the sample quotes against the entry has a reference to Inanna as “Istar LIL.LA ina [bit] ameli i-[...]” which translates as “Ishtar will [...] a l-demon in the house of that man”. The excerpt is from cuneiform text taken from Babylonian tablets. The inference is that the l-demons were in the control of Ishtar, or Inanna. The myth itself can be seen as one wherein the lilitu demon represents one of the faces of Inanna, the dark, violent face while Inanna herself represents the goddess of love and fertility. One of the interpretations of the l-demons is “which rage about incessantly about the plain.” testifying to their flight and their fury. Then, there is The Devil
by Jeffrey Burton Russel which speaks of the lilitu demon as

…a frigid, barren, husbandless “maid of desolation” who roamed the night attacking men as a succubus or drinking their blood”

. A description that fits Homer’s sirens well, except for the singing bit.

A better, though slanted, analysis of the huluppu tree myth is provided here. What is interesting here is the development of the lilitu demon and Inanna as having the wings and talons of an owl. Also, Inanna herself is the Proserpina of the Sumerian world, who spends half the year in the Underworld as Geshtinanna and half her year in the realms above when her husband Dumuzi takes her place. (From the myth of Inanna’s descent into the underworld as translated here). Considering the lilitu demons as her attendants may not be far off the mark as Inanna is also known as the Goddess for Warfare as seen in this hymn addressed to her:

Her wrath is ……, a devastating flood which no one can withstand. A great watercourse, ……, she abases those whom she despises. The mistress, an eagle that lets no one escape, ……, Inana, a falcon preying on the gods, Inana rips to pieces the spacious cattle-pens. The fields of the city which Inana has looked at in anger ……. The furrows of the field which the mistress …… grass. An opposes her, ……. Setting on fire, in the high plain the mistress ……. Inana ……. The mistress …… speeding …… fighting, …… conflict.

I guess I’ll stop here for now. My attempt was to chart the way the attendants on death and violence had a common thread through different cultures, while also partaking of regional dissimilarities. So the sirens of Greece were not sisters to the valkyries of Iceland who were not sister to the lilitu demons of Babylon and Sumer, but there are commonalities between them sufficient to establish the common bonds they share with the sinister aspects of their own respective Mother Goddess archetypes.