The Lure of Sirens

         Throughout history artists seem to have struggled with a lot of confusion over the nature of sirens.  It’s enough to make you wonder how many of these artists had ever even seen a siren!  But let’s start with what we know: sirens sing so beautifully that sailors are lured to their deaths.

        That’s it.  That’s all that’s certain.  Everything else is a mishmash!

        How many sirens are there?  Homer said 2, other ancient writers suggested up to 8, later artists depicted whole bevies, and some writers suggested 0, either because they didn’t believe in sirens or because they thought that the sirens all killed themselves after Odysseus passed by them without succumbing.

        Where do sirens live?  Early writers said they were in flowery meadows, and only later did they come to live on cliffs by the sea.  Later still they were plunged right down into the ocean.

        What do sirens look like?  Homer didn’t describe their appearance - it was their song that mattered - and as for everyone else?  Whew, take your pick…  Sirens generally began as human-bird hybrids, but how much bird could range from everything-except-the-face, all the way to nothing-except-the-wings.  

At some point sirens began to gain piscine traits as well, generally in the form of a fish tail that could be either instead of or in addition to any avian traits.  And finally in the nineteenth century many artists made them look like straight-up sexy human women, because nineteenth century artists were always looking for excuses to paint sexy women.  So if you’d like to design your own siren, make your choices from this handy guide:

• Face - human, most often female, occasionally male, (or in the case of one medieval illuminator included here, with the addition of a beak)

• Limbs - choose any combination of the following

        wings - 0 or 2  (you can also choose whether to place wings at the shoulders or the waist)

        arms - 0 or 2

        legs - 0, or 2 human, or 2 bird, or 2 sort of beast-looking

        tail - 1 bird, or 1 fish, or 2 fish

• Accoutrements - choose from the following

        fish - 1 or 2

        mirror

        comb

        club

        musical instrument - most often lyre, kithara, aulos, or flute

        empty bottle - according to one (and only one) medieval author, if you throw a siren an empty bottle she will be distracted playing with it, thus giving you a chance to escape

• Apparel - choose nothing, OR a diaphanous scarf or 2, OR complete head to toe outfit

        I’ve selected a variety of siren depictions for you, including a couple from ancient Greece showing various proportions of bird vs human.  I had a tough time narrowing down my choices from the medieval era because they’re so diverse and often so amusing.  I’ve started with one that gives the story in two panels: the singing first, followed by the attack on the sailors once they’ve been lulled to sleep.  This artist has picked a surprisingly popular strategy of refusing to make a decision about the nature of sirens and showing one with bird parts and the other with fish parts.  I also picked an illumination in which the

sirens play musical instruments, and one that includes a male as well as a female siren.  I included one showing a double fish tailed siren, in which I especially like the way the man in the boat is gazing so adoringly at the temptress.  I’ve included one with a nice depiction of the transparent water (and more sleeping sailors), that funny beaked siren, and a throwback to the mostly-bird version, who’s looking quite scary.  I also include one who looks purely mermaid, complete with comb and mirror, but who is nevertheless living in a meadow like the earliest versions of sirens.  (By the way, the mermaids’ love of mirrors and combs originated with their siren cousins.)

        Moving on to the Romantic era, I’ve got three depictions of Ulysses’s encounter with the sirens.  Etty’s 1837 sirens are among the first to be pure human, but they’re kneeling among the corpses of their victims.  Waterhouse’s 1891 painting bucks the modern trend for naked maidens to depict the sirens much like that original Green vase painting from about 475 BCE.  And in 1909 Draper has used the medieval trick of including different forms of siren rather than picking just one - although in his case it’s fish and pure human rather than fish and bird.

        When I went to make my own version, I rejected the fish tail outright, because we have mermaids for that.  I initially tried to make my siren with more of an avian back half and the legs and feet of a bird, but my artistic skills just couldn’t pull off a bird behind looking alluringly yearning as she gazes over the sea.  So I fell back on copying the Romantics’ version of a nubile young woman, but gave her wings (and feathers in her hair, although that’s not as clear as I’d hoped).  I also considered adding a more modern boat to take her out of ancient myth, but since the story this piece will be illustrating talks about the first time sailors heard her, I figured I’d better stick with the historical view.

        Although I find the confusion of form amusing, one of the things I find most interesting about the depiction of sirens is their degree of physical beauty.  The earliest depictions were quite clear that the temptation was purely auditory and the appearance of the sirens was irrelevant.  Certainly there was nothing alluring about their looks.  During the medieval era artists seemed to be torn between making their sirens beautiful to emphasize the dangers of worldly temptation, and making them downright ugly to emphasize their evil nature.

        One last note: the word siren came into English from French in the mid-14th century.  (The Greek word seiren from the Odyssey might come from roots meaning “binder, entangler,” but then again, maybe not.)  The devices that make warning sounds were first called sirens in 1879, starting with the klaxons on steamboats and later extended to refer to air raids, emergency vehicles, and so forth.  It is not at all clear to me why a blaring alarm would seem suggestive of a sea nymph, unless it’s just the idea of a sound that indicates danger in some way.  But whatever the reason, it does give rise to one of my absolute favorite examples of faulty Google Translate: In case of volcanic eruption, you will hear mermaids.  Do not ignore the mermaids; they are there for your safety.  Oh no; while it’s wise to pay heed to the singing of mermaids, children, always remember that you should absolutely most definitely ignore the sirens!

[Pictures: Odysseus and the sirens, red figure stamnos by the “Siren Painter,” ca. 475-470 BCE (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Pentelic marble funerary statue of a siren, ancient Greece, 370 BCE (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Sirens attack a boat, illumination from the Queen Mary Psalter, 1310-20 (Image from the British Library);

Sirens, illumination from Bestiary, ca. 1225-50 (Image from Bodleian Libraries);

Sirens and a boat, illumination from psalter, 1303-08 (Image from Münchener Digitalisierungs Zentrum);

Siren and sailor, illumination from De physionomia liber, Franciscus Asculanus, 14th century (Image from Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana);

Sirens, illumination from Bestiary, 1226-1250 (Image from Bodleian Libraries);

Siren, illumination from Livre des proprietés des choses by Barthélemy l’Anglais, 15th century (Image from Bibliothèque nationale de France);

Siren, illumination from Rothschild canticles, ca. 1300 (Image from Yale Beinecke Library);

Siren/Harpy, wood block print from Ortus sanitatis by Johann Prüss, 1499 (Image from Boston Public Library);

Siren, illumination from Bestiary, ca. 1275-99 (Image from Bibliothèque nationale de France);

The Sirens and Ulysses, painting by William Etty, 1837 (Image from Manchester Art Gallery);

Ulysses and the Sirens, oil painting by John William Waterhouse, 1891 (Image from National Gallery of Victoria);

Ulysses and the Sirens, painting by H.J. Draper, ca. 1909 (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Siren Song, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]