Today I found out that, apparently, mermaids in Russia actually had legs, and asking about a tail would get you tickled to death or drowned in the nearest pond. A specific characteristic was tousled blond hair, hence the name and the phrase from Dal, “walks like a mermaid.”
And the tail actually came from sea maidens (mermaids). Sea maidens are an invention of coastal people. Overall, how mermaids in our perception merged with them is unclear, but it happened relatively recently.
Though there is one suggestion. In Andersen’s tale, the little mermaid is literally a sea maiden (Den Lille Havfrue). But in the Russian translation, it was called The Little Mermaid.
Lermontov has a poem titled The Mermaid from 1831, where she swims in the river. Surely, the modern reader imagines a tail. There’s also a fairy tale by Orest Somov, where the mermaid runs away from her mother and tickles a soldier to death.
Illustrating with paintings “Mermaids” by Prushkovsky from 1877 and the eponymous painting by Ivan Kramskoy from 1871. With legs. A tail would have been quite a surprise for them.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 