Post by Tia Dalma ~Calypso~ on Aug 12, 2007 0:06:46 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]Pirate Myths & Legends.[/glow]
Here be a few examples of pirate myths & legends, some of which are true legends, others are just myths created by books, films, stories & the like…
Black Spot:
The Black Spot is probably a creation of Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island. The Black Spot is a summons given to a pirate as a warning of impending action. Typically it would be a notice to the captain that he was about to be "deposed" or replaced as captain. The Black Spot is pure fiction created by Stevenson. It is a terrific bit of pirate lore these days but probably did not exist during the Golden Age of Piracy. Real pirate captains tended to be deposed by being shot in their sleep, thrown overboard, or marooned (Ahem…Barbossa marooned Jack twice as far as we know…). In some case a pirate captain would be deposed by election, but there are more cases of violent revolts documented than smooth transitions of power.
In POTC Captain Jack has the Black Spot placed on his hand by Davy Jones to remind him that it was time for him to pay his debt & give Davy his soul...
Calypso:
A Greek sea nymph, she was a daughter of Atlas. She was the Goddess of Silence. Being a bored lass she made it her point in life to make sure people did not complete their tasks. She was also known as the goddess of deception because of her ability to distract sailors with her beauty only to lead them to ruin and destruction because they failed to pay attention to what they were suppose to be doing.
A new back story is created for Calypso in POTC. It is revealed that Tia Dalma is actually Calypso, bound into human form, by the nine Pirate Lords, and that she is actually more powerful than she first appeared. It is also revealed that she is the estranged lover of Davy Jones, and still carries the locket she and Jones both own to remind them of their love. When they have a brief encounter Calypso tells Jones she still feels deeply for him and explains why she failed to meet him on the appointed day of his arrival back on land, saying that Jones never would have loved her if not for her uncontrollable and unpredictable nature.
The Code (The Pirate Code)
Was there a real Pirate Code? To be honest, at best it really was more like guidelines! The pirate code really is pure literary fiction and was developed from ship's articles found on some pirate ships. There was no written Pirate Codex as portrayed in POTC.
The Code refers to the Ship's Articles and some of the false bravado portrayed by pirates to scare their enemies. For instance it was reported at several trials that pirates declared they would blow up their ship and all go to hell before being captured and hanged. Few pirates ever did so (if any), however a few tried, often being stopped by other pirates…so much for keeping to the code! Still the threat was known well enough to make naval offers fear boarding a pirate ship.
Other than these boasts and ship's articles, there was no real pirate code. Furthermore, from the few surviving ship's articles their is evidence that not every ship was ran the same way which leads one to believe that no universal code existed and if it did, it was not followed.
Davy Jones Locker:
Davy Jones' Locker is a nautical term that dates back to at least 1751 (first known written reference to the word). It is quite possible that the term existed orally among pirates before this date. Since its first historical mention, the meaning of Davy Jones has changed very little. Davy Jones was pirate slang for the Devil or other evil spirits of the ocean. Davy's Locker or Davy Jones' Locker was the deep ocean's bottom. To be sent to Davy's Locker was to perish at sea. To send someone to Davy Jones was to kill them. It should be understood that a person going to Davy Jones was not going to Heaven, but to spend an eternity in doldrums.
The phrase Davy Jones appears in much of the popular nautical literature. There is no reason not to assume the term was common among pirates for many years.
Other variations of Davy Jones' Locker are:
* To be in Davy's Grip: To be close to death, or frightened.
* To have the Davies or the Joneseys: To be frightened
* To see you to Davy Jones: To threaten to kill some one
* Awaken Davy or Awaken Davy Jones: To cause a storm
POTC, gives a back story for the creation of Davy Jones. This is a piece of original fiction created for the movie and not part of the myth over the years. Davy Jones wasn't the Captain of the Flying Dutchman or Black Pearl. The story was excellently created by the screen writers. We also get a glimpse of what the Locker might have been like when Jack gets sent there & is left to deal with every aspect of his character!
Flying Dutchman:
The Dutchman is a ghost ship that can never return to port. The reason for this was unknown until POTC created the love story between Calypso & Davy Jones. By becoming the Captain of the Dutchman, it was Davy’s duty to ferry the souls of the deceased to the ‘other side’. In return he would remain immortal by giving his heart to the ship, and is only permitted to return to port once every ten years. (A fantastic story I do believe!)
Its original origins are unclear, being traced back to a novel, a play, short story and an opera. Most people attribute the ship to a Dutch Captain named Bernard Fokke. Old Bernie had a habit of breaking his own speed records while sailing between Holland and the Dutch East Indies. People claimed he must have made a pact with the Devil in order to make his trips so quickly.
Well ol' Bernie ran into a tempest as he was rounding the Cape of Good Hope (tip of Southern Africa) but refused to give into the storm. As the storm worsened his crew begged him to turn around but he swore an oath and said he would sail through the storm even if it took him until judgement day. Needless to say the ship was lost with all hands aboard. (Which makes you wonder who managed to pass on the story about Fokke issuing the oath?...Dead men tell no tales after all…) The story dates from as early as 1641.
Green Flash:
The green flash is a naturally occurring phenomenon where there is sudden flash of emerald green light as the sun sets. This can happen when the horizon and the sky are both crystal clear. It is more common over the ocean but happens over land as well.
Well documented cases of date back to the 1600s but it became more common with longer sea voyages and polar exploration. One of the biggest myths of the green flash was created by Jules Vernes. He claimed it to be an old Scottish legend that 'if one were to peer in the light of the green flash they would gain the power to read the very souls of other people they met'. There was no Scottish myth. Other people claim that the Ancient Egyptians wrote story about mystical powers of the green flash.
But as we would know more about, in POTC the green flash only happened when a soul had come back from death, back from Davy’s Locker. We see it in the film when Captain Jack & his crew flip the Black Pearl over underwater at sun set to return from the locker. When the ship reappears again in real life, it is now sun rise.
Kraken:
The Kraken dates back to at least 1752 and probably earlier. The word came to the English from Norwegian (as Pintel correctly mentioned in Dead Man’s Chest). The Norwegians called the Kraken, sykraken, sjökrakjen or sea-kraken. The Kraken is an enormous monster capable of pulling a ship and its crew under the sea in a single jerk. The Kraken has been around in movies for a while but it was not called a kraken in any of the movies until Dead Man's Chest, in which it was Davy Jones who had control over the monster by commanding it to take down whichever ship he pleased.
The kraken was always described as giant squid or octopus. Ancient whalers saw evidence of the kraken when they harvested sperm whale and saw suction cup marks similar to those of octopus or squids on the side of the whales. The kraken was always considered mythical, typically measuring as much as 200 or 300 feet in length.
Today we know there may be real kraken in the ocean; however they do not reach lengths of 200 feet. The giant squid is believed to be a living example of a kraken. While the giant squid could not pull down a man-o-war(*see pirate talk), it would be big enough to capsize or sink a small boat and could easily kill a man if it chose to do so. Real krakens are giant squids reach a length of perhaps 46 feet.
Despite their tremendous size, Sperm whales seem to like to eat giant squid. It is possible that some of the early specimens of the kraken were those found in the stomachs of sperm whales after whalers had harthingyed and gutted them. Imagine the terror of finding bits of giant squid in the belly of sperm whale? Imagine sailors assuming the sperm whale ate the squid after a terrific battle. Knowing how many men sperm whales had killed while men hunted them, the sailors could only imagine the worst when seeing the remains of this horrific giant monster found within the whale.
Lusca:
Everyone knows of the Kraken. But around the Caribbean the giant squid like critter is known as the Lusca.
Some claim it is the cross between a giant shark and an octopus. Others say it more like a cross between giant squid and an eel. No matter how you describe this giant cuttlefish, it is believed to haunt the waters of the Caribbean. They lurk in the blue holes, a vast network of underwater caves, and they come out of them to feed on unsuspecting victims that wander to close or happen to startle their rest. They are especially active around the Bahamas but supposedly exist throughout the Caribbean Sea.
Few people survive an attack by the lusca. This vicious animal attacks a ship from below. The first sign of the attack is the whirlpool that forms under the ship. Then the lusca’s tentacles wrap around the ship and with a jerk it pulled into the depths of the ocean. As the whirlpool subsides, all that is left is what the lusca didn’t digest; perhaps a bit of wood or a sail or other items that would float to the surface. Lucky be the pirate who survives the Lusca! Or so the myth goes.
This would be an excellent idea for the writers to add to POTC 4!! Lol!!
Mermaids:
An imaginary, partly human sea creature with the head and trunk of a woman and the tail of a fish or cetacean. The word itself is Middle English (mere = sea and maid = young girl) is a legendary aquatic creature. Originally it seems there were just mermaids but as time passed we have counterparts for both sexes. The male are mermen and the collective noun is for these half fish/half humans is merfolk. Originally the Sirens of Greek mythology were simply beautiful women but later portrayals show them as mermaids. In some languages the word sirena is used interchangeably with mermaid.
By the 18th century, most people with any type of education considered tales of mermaids as nothing more than the work of over active imaginations, stories the old sea dog would tell to a young whelp to see if he would swallow the bait, so to speak. Yet some of the more superstitious and unschooled sailor may have fallen for the story.
As we enter the Caribbean, Pirates may have heard the legends of the natives of the islands. Among the islands, mermaids were known as Aycayía, (the girl with the beautiful voice). The legends in the Caribbean are similar to those from other places of the World. Sometimes Aycayía was good and other times she was bad.
In the earlier legends, Mermaids would seduce or lure men to their death. Sometimes this was done on purpose and other times by accidents. At other times sailors were killed while mermaids tried to save their lives.
Probably the best known story of mermaids is the Little Mermaid written by Hans Christian Andersen. The original has a less than happy ending.
As early as the 1500s there was conjecture that manatees were the source of the mermaid myth. Manatees like to float along the ocean surface in relatively shallow water and are not overly scared of humans or large ships. In fact there slow peaceful existence has led to their endangerment as a species. And a close relative of the manatee, the stellar sea cow is now extinct.
Despite this explanation, there is no solid evidence that pirates would have mistaken the manatee for a mermaid. From a side by side comparison, one would assume, it would take a very drunk pirate to mistake a manatee for a beautiful mermaid! It is more likely that the manatee-mermaid connections were speculations made far after most learned men had discounted mermaid sighting as just another "fish story". Still, it is part of the mythos.
Sea Spright (also Sprite):
A ghost of the sea. The word usually refers to disembodied spirit, a ghost; a supernatural being, goblin or fairy. They haunt ships that have troubled pasts, such as mutinies or perhaps a ship that had a cruel master who was murdered or was believed to be in league with the Devil. Some people consider former slaves ships to be haunted because of their past cargo. Some sprights haunt spots where ships had sunk, basically creating "haunted waters”. Occasionally a spright will bring warning of impending doom or warn sailors to stay out of the waters but most tend to be vengeful and or troublesome. The word spright dates back to the 1500s and is an alliteration of the word "spirit".
Pirates would often offer a blessing to men they marooned or tossed a man overboard in an effort to bring rest to the soul of the condemned. If the person's soul did not find rest, it was feared they would return from Davy Jones as a sea spright. This was a reason why some ships would not return to islands where men had been marooned or to waters where murderous mutinies occurred or men were thrown overboard.
Here be a few examples of pirate myths & legends, some of which are true legends, others are just myths created by books, films, stories & the like…
Black Spot:
The Black Spot is probably a creation of Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island. The Black Spot is a summons given to a pirate as a warning of impending action. Typically it would be a notice to the captain that he was about to be "deposed" or replaced as captain. The Black Spot is pure fiction created by Stevenson. It is a terrific bit of pirate lore these days but probably did not exist during the Golden Age of Piracy. Real pirate captains tended to be deposed by being shot in their sleep, thrown overboard, or marooned (Ahem…Barbossa marooned Jack twice as far as we know…). In some case a pirate captain would be deposed by election, but there are more cases of violent revolts documented than smooth transitions of power.
In POTC Captain Jack has the Black Spot placed on his hand by Davy Jones to remind him that it was time for him to pay his debt & give Davy his soul...
Calypso:
A Greek sea nymph, she was a daughter of Atlas. She was the Goddess of Silence. Being a bored lass she made it her point in life to make sure people did not complete their tasks. She was also known as the goddess of deception because of her ability to distract sailors with her beauty only to lead them to ruin and destruction because they failed to pay attention to what they were suppose to be doing.
A new back story is created for Calypso in POTC. It is revealed that Tia Dalma is actually Calypso, bound into human form, by the nine Pirate Lords, and that she is actually more powerful than she first appeared. It is also revealed that she is the estranged lover of Davy Jones, and still carries the locket she and Jones both own to remind them of their love. When they have a brief encounter Calypso tells Jones she still feels deeply for him and explains why she failed to meet him on the appointed day of his arrival back on land, saying that Jones never would have loved her if not for her uncontrollable and unpredictable nature.
The Code (The Pirate Code)
Was there a real Pirate Code? To be honest, at best it really was more like guidelines! The pirate code really is pure literary fiction and was developed from ship's articles found on some pirate ships. There was no written Pirate Codex as portrayed in POTC.
The Code refers to the Ship's Articles and some of the false bravado portrayed by pirates to scare their enemies. For instance it was reported at several trials that pirates declared they would blow up their ship and all go to hell before being captured and hanged. Few pirates ever did so (if any), however a few tried, often being stopped by other pirates…so much for keeping to the code! Still the threat was known well enough to make naval offers fear boarding a pirate ship.
Other than these boasts and ship's articles, there was no real pirate code. Furthermore, from the few surviving ship's articles their is evidence that not every ship was ran the same way which leads one to believe that no universal code existed and if it did, it was not followed.
Davy Jones Locker:
Davy Jones' Locker is a nautical term that dates back to at least 1751 (first known written reference to the word). It is quite possible that the term existed orally among pirates before this date. Since its first historical mention, the meaning of Davy Jones has changed very little. Davy Jones was pirate slang for the Devil or other evil spirits of the ocean. Davy's Locker or Davy Jones' Locker was the deep ocean's bottom. To be sent to Davy's Locker was to perish at sea. To send someone to Davy Jones was to kill them. It should be understood that a person going to Davy Jones was not going to Heaven, but to spend an eternity in doldrums.
The phrase Davy Jones appears in much of the popular nautical literature. There is no reason not to assume the term was common among pirates for many years.
Other variations of Davy Jones' Locker are:
* To be in Davy's Grip: To be close to death, or frightened.
* To have the Davies or the Joneseys: To be frightened
* To see you to Davy Jones: To threaten to kill some one
* Awaken Davy or Awaken Davy Jones: To cause a storm
POTC, gives a back story for the creation of Davy Jones. This is a piece of original fiction created for the movie and not part of the myth over the years. Davy Jones wasn't the Captain of the Flying Dutchman or Black Pearl. The story was excellently created by the screen writers. We also get a glimpse of what the Locker might have been like when Jack gets sent there & is left to deal with every aspect of his character!
Flying Dutchman:
The Dutchman is a ghost ship that can never return to port. The reason for this was unknown until POTC created the love story between Calypso & Davy Jones. By becoming the Captain of the Dutchman, it was Davy’s duty to ferry the souls of the deceased to the ‘other side’. In return he would remain immortal by giving his heart to the ship, and is only permitted to return to port once every ten years. (A fantastic story I do believe!)
Its original origins are unclear, being traced back to a novel, a play, short story and an opera. Most people attribute the ship to a Dutch Captain named Bernard Fokke. Old Bernie had a habit of breaking his own speed records while sailing between Holland and the Dutch East Indies. People claimed he must have made a pact with the Devil in order to make his trips so quickly.
Well ol' Bernie ran into a tempest as he was rounding the Cape of Good Hope (tip of Southern Africa) but refused to give into the storm. As the storm worsened his crew begged him to turn around but he swore an oath and said he would sail through the storm even if it took him until judgement day. Needless to say the ship was lost with all hands aboard. (Which makes you wonder who managed to pass on the story about Fokke issuing the oath?...Dead men tell no tales after all…) The story dates from as early as 1641.
Green Flash:
The green flash is a naturally occurring phenomenon where there is sudden flash of emerald green light as the sun sets. This can happen when the horizon and the sky are both crystal clear. It is more common over the ocean but happens over land as well.
Well documented cases of date back to the 1600s but it became more common with longer sea voyages and polar exploration. One of the biggest myths of the green flash was created by Jules Vernes. He claimed it to be an old Scottish legend that 'if one were to peer in the light of the green flash they would gain the power to read the very souls of other people they met'. There was no Scottish myth. Other people claim that the Ancient Egyptians wrote story about mystical powers of the green flash.
But as we would know more about, in POTC the green flash only happened when a soul had come back from death, back from Davy’s Locker. We see it in the film when Captain Jack & his crew flip the Black Pearl over underwater at sun set to return from the locker. When the ship reappears again in real life, it is now sun rise.
Kraken:
The Kraken dates back to at least 1752 and probably earlier. The word came to the English from Norwegian (as Pintel correctly mentioned in Dead Man’s Chest). The Norwegians called the Kraken, sykraken, sjökrakjen or sea-kraken. The Kraken is an enormous monster capable of pulling a ship and its crew under the sea in a single jerk. The Kraken has been around in movies for a while but it was not called a kraken in any of the movies until Dead Man's Chest, in which it was Davy Jones who had control over the monster by commanding it to take down whichever ship he pleased.
The kraken was always described as giant squid or octopus. Ancient whalers saw evidence of the kraken when they harvested sperm whale and saw suction cup marks similar to those of octopus or squids on the side of the whales. The kraken was always considered mythical, typically measuring as much as 200 or 300 feet in length.
Today we know there may be real kraken in the ocean; however they do not reach lengths of 200 feet. The giant squid is believed to be a living example of a kraken. While the giant squid could not pull down a man-o-war(*see pirate talk), it would be big enough to capsize or sink a small boat and could easily kill a man if it chose to do so. Real krakens are giant squids reach a length of perhaps 46 feet.
Despite their tremendous size, Sperm whales seem to like to eat giant squid. It is possible that some of the early specimens of the kraken were those found in the stomachs of sperm whales after whalers had harthingyed and gutted them. Imagine the terror of finding bits of giant squid in the belly of sperm whale? Imagine sailors assuming the sperm whale ate the squid after a terrific battle. Knowing how many men sperm whales had killed while men hunted them, the sailors could only imagine the worst when seeing the remains of this horrific giant monster found within the whale.
Lusca:
Everyone knows of the Kraken. But around the Caribbean the giant squid like critter is known as the Lusca.
Some claim it is the cross between a giant shark and an octopus. Others say it more like a cross between giant squid and an eel. No matter how you describe this giant cuttlefish, it is believed to haunt the waters of the Caribbean. They lurk in the blue holes, a vast network of underwater caves, and they come out of them to feed on unsuspecting victims that wander to close or happen to startle their rest. They are especially active around the Bahamas but supposedly exist throughout the Caribbean Sea.
Few people survive an attack by the lusca. This vicious animal attacks a ship from below. The first sign of the attack is the whirlpool that forms under the ship. Then the lusca’s tentacles wrap around the ship and with a jerk it pulled into the depths of the ocean. As the whirlpool subsides, all that is left is what the lusca didn’t digest; perhaps a bit of wood or a sail or other items that would float to the surface. Lucky be the pirate who survives the Lusca! Or so the myth goes.
This would be an excellent idea for the writers to add to POTC 4!! Lol!!
Mermaids:
An imaginary, partly human sea creature with the head and trunk of a woman and the tail of a fish or cetacean. The word itself is Middle English (mere = sea and maid = young girl) is a legendary aquatic creature. Originally it seems there were just mermaids but as time passed we have counterparts for both sexes. The male are mermen and the collective noun is for these half fish/half humans is merfolk. Originally the Sirens of Greek mythology were simply beautiful women but later portrayals show them as mermaids. In some languages the word sirena is used interchangeably with mermaid.
By the 18th century, most people with any type of education considered tales of mermaids as nothing more than the work of over active imaginations, stories the old sea dog would tell to a young whelp to see if he would swallow the bait, so to speak. Yet some of the more superstitious and unschooled sailor may have fallen for the story.
As we enter the Caribbean, Pirates may have heard the legends of the natives of the islands. Among the islands, mermaids were known as Aycayía, (the girl with the beautiful voice). The legends in the Caribbean are similar to those from other places of the World. Sometimes Aycayía was good and other times she was bad.
In the earlier legends, Mermaids would seduce or lure men to their death. Sometimes this was done on purpose and other times by accidents. At other times sailors were killed while mermaids tried to save their lives.
Probably the best known story of mermaids is the Little Mermaid written by Hans Christian Andersen. The original has a less than happy ending.
As early as the 1500s there was conjecture that manatees were the source of the mermaid myth. Manatees like to float along the ocean surface in relatively shallow water and are not overly scared of humans or large ships. In fact there slow peaceful existence has led to their endangerment as a species. And a close relative of the manatee, the stellar sea cow is now extinct.
Despite this explanation, there is no solid evidence that pirates would have mistaken the manatee for a mermaid. From a side by side comparison, one would assume, it would take a very drunk pirate to mistake a manatee for a beautiful mermaid! It is more likely that the manatee-mermaid connections were speculations made far after most learned men had discounted mermaid sighting as just another "fish story". Still, it is part of the mythos.
Sea Spright (also Sprite):
A ghost of the sea. The word usually refers to disembodied spirit, a ghost; a supernatural being, goblin or fairy. They haunt ships that have troubled pasts, such as mutinies or perhaps a ship that had a cruel master who was murdered or was believed to be in league with the Devil. Some people consider former slaves ships to be haunted because of their past cargo. Some sprights haunt spots where ships had sunk, basically creating "haunted waters”. Occasionally a spright will bring warning of impending doom or warn sailors to stay out of the waters but most tend to be vengeful and or troublesome. The word spright dates back to the 1500s and is an alliteration of the word "spirit".
Pirates would often offer a blessing to men they marooned or tossed a man overboard in an effort to bring rest to the soul of the condemned. If the person's soul did not find rest, it was feared they would return from Davy Jones as a sea spright. This was a reason why some ships would not return to islands where men had been marooned or to waters where murderous mutinies occurred or men were thrown overboard.