You know: the ones that lure men (sailors) close to them with their singing and then drown them.
But how would we ever know? If anyone has actually seen a siren, they couldn’t have lived to tell the tale.
I thought the song only affected men. It’s 2013, we allow women on boats and ships now, as long as they don’t get uppity. There’s your witnesses. (Also, boats have radios, video cameras, etc. that could record such a thing.)
Until contradictory evidence is presented, I’d say that sirens fall in the same category as dragons, werewolves, fairies, unicorns and a good lay for my next Saturday night who will leave early in the morning without clinging. Or, in other words, a big myth.
Quite a few sirens have lured men into destitution in Thailand’s red-light areas. A sucker born every minute, that’s for sure.
Odysseus pointed the way to a scientific experiment: just plug your ears.
One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble, not much between despair and ecstasy…
And as for luring sailors to their doom, that could probably describe the situation in Pattaya, site of many a fleet shore leave for the US Navy. I don’t know if the Navy nowadays tries to keep their movements secret anymore like maybe in the Cold war, but everyone in Pattaya always knew when the fleet was coming, because the sailors would always send word ahead to their girlfriends. The bars and brothels were all made shipshape for the sucker … er, I mean sailors.
How do we know that that invisible pink unicorn in your garage isn’t really a siren?
Seeing sirens isn’t the problem.
Actually he was tied to the mast; his men had their ears plugged, but he wanted to hear the song.
Despite the lyrics to that song by Mumford and Sons, you only need to do one or the other, not both.
Since the factual answer to this is “no,” let’s move this over to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
So how have you heard of them?
It’s just like how there are no records of anyone being attacked by dolphins. When they do attack, they leave no witnesses.
Their victims sleep with the fishes.
In his book, Adventures in Unhistory, Avram Davidson addresses this question. His theory is that what sailors thought were the songs of sirens were actually the sounds of seals. The reason that ships were wrecked by hearing them was, “If you sailed along uncharted waters and shores and were close enough to hear the seals, well, sonny, you were too close…You vessel may strike those rocks.” (He also thought that it might have been shore bird calls.)
This is a great book, by the way. He explains possible origins for stories about the phoenix, unicorns, and other mythical creatures. The above quote comes from the chapter “The Prevalence of Mermaids.”
By the same argument, how do we even have a concept or name for something called ‘sirens’?
Chihuahuas too, I hear.
They used to.
However, ever since Hollywood invented the Casting Couch, they have so heavily interbred with Studio Executives that they only exist in a hybrid form, the* Assistant Producer*, whose song “Do you wanna be a star or not, Baby?” lures former Midwestern High School Cheerleaders to their beds.
Exactly. Maybe there is some entity out there that will instantly kill anyone who encounters it, but any such creature that has been described by a living person must, by definition, be imaginary.
Yes. Yes they do.