5. Merfolk, People of the Sea, and Landsmen

    Merchildren don’t have classrooms the way children on land do. They sit around older merfolk and learn from them. Since the merfolk usually live three hundred years, they gain much more learning than most teachers on land.

     For the six mermaid princesses, school consisted of learning from their grandmother. Oh, how they enjoyed listening to their grandmother’s stories!

That’s the form that education usually took. Instead of studying geography from books, they listened to grandmother’s stories about other places and the people who lived there. They eagerly listened, asked questions, and discussed what grandmother told them.

     Oh, and history wasn’t some dull litany that involved memorizing who did what, when, and where. Oh, no! It was oral tradition; it was the stories of people of every sort in every known culture on land, on the sea, or beneath the sea. It was the stories of struggles and triumphs and failures and moral lessons to guide merchildren to responsible futures.

     Whenever possible, biology lessons involved hands-on, interactive experiences with real plants and real animals. When it wasn’t possible, the merchildren would listen to Grandmother’s stories.
     In short, education consisted of field trips, stories, first-hand experiences, and discussions. The six mermaid princesses eagerly listened, participated, and asked questions about the world around them and the world beyond them.

     When the mermaid princesses were small, they had thought that there were only three kinds of folk in the world: cetaceans, who live in the sea and have bodies similar to fish; merfolk, who have lower bodies like fish, live in the sea and could breathe underwater as well as in the open air; and people with legs, who lived on land and could not breathe underwater. You probably thought the same. Grandmother taught them otherwise.

     Oh, there were cetaceans, merfolk, melusines, undines, river nymphs, Moken, amas, bayou dwellers, and landsmen.

     Cetaceans, like people and mermaids, are mammals. They include whales, dolphins (including freshwater dolphins), and porpoises. Unlike fish, cetaceans breathe only air; but they can hold their breath underwater for many minutes. For the most part, cetaceans are gentle creatures; and dolphins are the noblest of them all. Dolphins are helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, cheerful, and brave. Just as people on land consider it a compliment to be called true ladies or gentlemen, merfolk consider it a compliment to be compared to dolphins.

      You already know about mermen and mermaids, but let me correct one mistaken belief about mermaids. The merfolk aren’t really half man (or woman) and half fish. That would be quite impossible, and it’s just a fairy tale. The lower half of a mermaid’s body is like that of a cetacean.  A mermaid's tail sways up and down like a cetacean's tail rather than side to side like a fish's tail. 

     Melusines are very much like mermen, except that they live in fresh water. A melusine can change herself (or himself) into a person with legs, but only temporarily. If a melusine marries a human, she becomes fully human and can remain human until death. 
     An undine has two legs, lives in the sea, and can breathe underwater as well as in the open air. 
     A river nymph is like an undine, except that it lives in rivers, creeks, and other fresh-water areas. 
     Moken live in boats on the sea.   They’re not able to breathe underwater, but, like cetaceans, they are able to hold their breath for many minutes at a time. 

  Many of the Moken have no country, and they only occasionally set foot on land. When they do, it’s only to harvest shallow-water clams, seaweeds, and other things they need to survive. They don’t associate with landsmen any more than they must.

      An ama sleeps on land at night but spends most of her days in the sea and under the sea. Like Moken, amas are able to hold their breath for surprisingly long periods of time. 

     Amas are always women because women can resist the colder temperatures of the water better than men can, and they can hold their breath longer. Their men folk usually operate boats or help the amas in other ways.
     Sometimes amas are seen carrying small wooden buckets to the sea. The buckets are left to float on the water while the amas dive underwater in search of foodstuffs or other items to harvest.
       When they go farther out to sea, they sometimes attach weights to help them to sink, and ropes to get back to their boats.  
     At the end of each day, they wash the salt water off their bodies and return to their homes in villages on land.

      Bayou dwellers live in swampy areas on or by creeks, and they get much of their food from the hunting and gathering of fish, crawfish, and land animals. Many of them live in floating houses on the creeks. Like the merfolk, they’re generally peaceful.
      You know, of course, about the people who live entirely on land. Many of them try to set themselves apart from nature and even above nature. As a result, they’re the greediest and most warlike of the creatures grandmother could describe.

     Many of the landsmen, of course, are harmless. Nonetheless, Grandmother cautioned her precious mermaid princesses to beware of them.

      The land does have nobler creatures than men, and the land does have other man-like creatures. On the land, one can find dogs, horses, and elephants, which are far nobler than men.      
     The land is also home to great apes and Sasquatches, which, unlike men, tend to be more responsibly behaved, generally having a live-and-let-live way of regarding their neighbors and surroundings.

     These other land creatures, though, are another lesson for another time.