Women of Water and Hidden History – Lí Ban and Melusine-
January 27th, The Feast Day of Ireland’s Mermaid: Lí Ban, Saint Muirgen of the Sea
Yesterday (January 27th) marked one of Ireland’s most haunting and little-known feast days: that of the Mermaid of Ireland, remembered in early medieval tradition as Lí Ban, later known as Saint Muirgen, “born of the sea.”
Her story sits at a shimmering crossroads of Christian hagiography, and a far older, submerged memory echoed in Melusine’s story.
Across medieval Europe, certain women were remembered not for obedience, but for survival and transformative abilities. They did not fit neatly into the accepted categories culture demanded of them… Two of the most poignant of these figures are Lí Ban of Ireland and Melusine of Western Europe and the British Isles.
Ireland: Lí Ban, Survivor, Singer, Saint:
In Irish tradition, Lí Ban was once a woman of the land. When a catastrophic flood overwhelmed her world, she survived beneath the waters of Lough Neagh, transformed into a being part woman, part fish.
For three hundred years, she lived between worlds.
She sang beneath the waves, her voice carrying memory and service rather than temptation. Eventually brought to land, she was baptized and renamed Muirgen, “born of the sea,” and remembered as a saint.
Ireland did something remarkable here. Rather than casting its mermaid as a siren or monster, it allowed her to become holy or acceptable… Muirgen was remembered by those who understood her nature and who acted in her memory for the benefit of civilization itself.
Western Europe & Britain: Melusine, Dynastic Mother, Hidden Guardian:
Across the seas in France, Melusine is remembered very differently…
Melusine was never baptized. Instead, the troublesome faery queen became a miracle-builder, credited with the construction of castles and churches.
Bound by a taboo that forbade her husband from seeing her true form on Saturdays, Melusine lived as a noblewoman, bearing sons who would become the founders of great European houses.
When her secret was violated and her serpent form revealed, she transformed into a dragon and was driven into exile. When in danger, she still warns her descendants, in her dragon form, calling out in flight, while circling the tower of Castle Lusignan… Danger is near…
France did not make Melusine a saint…
She became the hidden mother of bloodlines, the silent guardian of dynasties, remembered in heraldry, art, and whispered legend. Where Lí Ban’s story ends in peace, Melusine’s ends in exile and secret tradition.
They are not fairytale mermaids. They are repositories of continuity and tradition in a world repeatedly reshaped by conquest and catastrophe.
A Carved Memory Beneath England:
Across the seas from Ireland and France, within lands once ruled by the Plantagenets, a carved woman waits in darkness beneath the chalk at Royston Cave.
Long identified as a Queen of England, she bears familiar markers: a crown, a tail long gone unnoticed for hundreds of years… (Please see my other posts) a body shaped by purposeful transformation rather than modesty. Her vassals know who she is…
Eleanor of Aquitaine IS Melusine, and no siren of ruin. She is a woman of deeper wisdom, causing some to back away in fear and others to come closer in admiration…
Through her maternal line, Eleanor is Melusine… Carved into the walls of Royston Cave…
Meant to be a secret chamber of transformation for those who had the capacity of understanding…
Eleanor dwells next to women of deep waters and inherited wisdom, carried through centuries of tradition, alongside Ireland’s little-known Saint Muirgen – Lí Ban…
by Gretchen Cornwall ©
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