|
"I believe this legend is based on some historical facts.
The Earliest Recorded Legend of the Pascagoula River
History of Louisiana, Volume 1, page 384-386, by Charles Gayarre
During the summer of 1827, Governor Perier, leaving New Orleans, visited the first settlements of the French at the Bay St. Louis, at Biloxi, Pascagoula and Mobile.
While among the Pascagoula, or bread-eaters, he was invited to go to the mouth of the river of that name, to listen to the mysterious music which floated on the waters, particularly on a calm moonlight night, and which to this day, excites the wonder of visitors. It seems to issue from caverns or grottos in the bed of the river, and sometimes ascends from the water under the very keel of the boat, which contains the inquisitive traveler, whose ear it strikes as the distant concerts of a thousand Eolian harps.
On the banks of the river, close by the spot where the music is heard, tradition says that there existed a tribe different in color and in other peculiarities from the rest of the Indians.
Their ancestors had originally emerged from the sea, where they were born, and were of a light complexion. They were a gentle, gay, inoffensive race, living chiefly on oysters and fish, and they passed their time in festivals and rejoicings. They had a temple in which they adored a mermaid. Every night when the moon was visible, they gathered around the beautifully carved figure of the mermaid, and with instruments of strange shape, worshipped that idol with such soul-stirring music as had never before blessed human ears.
[Editor’s Note: Were these people of Portuguese descent? Was the mermaid similar to a ship’s masthead, possibly saved after a shipwreck or other circumstance? Was the mermaid actually a carved image of the Virgin Mary? [1]]
One day, a short time after the destruction of Mauvila, or Mobile, in 1539 by Soto and his companions, there appeared among them a white man, with a long gray beard, flowing garments, and a large cross in his right hand. He drew from his bosom a book, which he kissed reverently, and he began to explain to them what was contained in that sacred little casket.
Tradition does not say how he came suddenly to acquire the language of those people, when he attempted to communicate to them the solemn truths of the gospel. It must have been by the operation of that faith which, we are authoritatively told, will remove mountains. Be it as it may, the holy man, in the course of a few months, was proceeding with much success in his pious undertaking, and the work of conversion was going on bravely, when his purposes were defeated by an awful prodigy.
One night, when the moon, at her zenith, poured on heaven and earth, with more profusion than usual, a flood of light angelic, at the solemn hour of twelve, when all in nature was repose and silence, there came, on a sudden, a rushing on the surface of the river, as if the still air had been flapped into a whirlwind by myriads of invisible wings sweeping onward.
The placid water was immediately convulsed; uttering a deep groan, it rolled several times from one bank to the other with rapid oscillations, and then gathered itself up into a towering column of foaming waves, on the top of which stood a mermaid, looking with magnetic eyes that could draw almost every thing to her, and singing with a voice which fascinated into madness.
The Indians and the priest, their new guest, rushed to the bank of the river to contemplate this supernatural spectacle. When she saw them, the mermaid tuned her tones into still more bewitching melody, and kept chanting a sort of mystic song, with this often-repeated ditty…
“Come to me, come to me, children of the sea,
Neither bell, book, nor cross shall win ye from your queen.”
The Indians listened with growing ecstasy, and one of them plunged into the river to rise no more. The rest, men, women and children, followed in quick succession, moved, as it were, with the same irresistible impulse. When the last of the race disappeared, a wild laugh of exultation was heard; down returned the river to its bed as with the roar of a cataract, and the whole scene seemed to have been but a dream.
Ever since that time, is heard occasionally the distant music which has excited so much attention and investigation. The other Indian tribes of the neighborhood have always thought that it was their musical brethren, who still keep up their revels at the bottom of the river, in the palace of the mermaid.
Tradition further relates that the poor priest died in an agony of grief, and that he attributed this awful event, and this victory of the powers of to his not having been a perfect state of grace when he attempted conversion of those infidels.
It is believed also that he said on his death bed, that those deluded pagan souls would be redeemed from their bondage and sent to the kingdom of heaven, if on a Christmas night, at twelve of the clock, when the moon shall happen to be at her meridian, a priest should dare to come alone to that musical spot, in a boat propelled by himself, and should drop a crucifix into the water. But, alas, if this be ever done, neither the man nor the boat is to be seen again by mortal eyes. So far, the attempt has not been made; skeptic minds have sneered, but no one has been found bold enough to try the experiment.
[1] The Portuguese sailing ships each had a carved figurehead, an ancient custom of decorating bows to invoke guiding spirits to dwell in the ship. Figureheads were animals, birds, dragons, sometimes a woman or mermaid. The Christian Portuguese always carried an image of the Virgin Mary. In 1497, “Vasco da Gama was in his usual place for this time of evening: on the quarterdeck of his flagship São Gabriel. Mustered before him were the sailors and the military, the convicts and the cooks, the fidalgos, priests, and pilots, all chanting the evening hymn before the image of the Virgin Mary.” Men, Ships and the Sea, New Edition, by Capt. Alan Villiers and other adventurers on the sea, copyright 1973 National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C."
Information provided by Else Martin, historian of the MSMC
| 
