We first meet the siren early in Greek mythology, where it is a flesh-eating part-bird, part-human demon. It happily ignores the question of which bit is which, and what gender the whole should be called. In slightly later stories it’s persuaded to be a beautiful woman with the body of a bird from the waist down. This allows it to make sweet music and lure in handsome men sailing by. Life is good, especially since, as we hear from Vergil and Ovid, it gets to live on Anthemoessa, an island whose name means ‘flowery’. The siren and its sisters are either the daughters of the river god Achelous or the sea god Phorcys, and are well-established in Greek literary monuments such as the Odyssey in the eighth century B.C. and the Argonautica in the third century B.C. No problems there so far. Admittedly all the sirens commit suicide in despair at failing to trap either Odysseus or Jason of the Argonauts, but let’s not talk about that. - [Author]

Language: English