The Cornish folk tale, The Mermaid of Zennor, tells the story of a young man, Mathey Trewella, who runs away with a mysterious and beautiful visitor to his local church where he sang in the choir. There is small pew carved with a mermaid in Zennor Church dating from the fifteenth century.
Zennor Song
He was just the pretty boy who loved
the pretty girls with combs and hair;
she the beguiler in the pews,
who loved beauty in her mirror.
But when she heard him sing the note
that opened gateways to the sea,
then she awoke from fevered dreams
of singing sailors to their deaths,
of men still lashed to shattered masts
ripped clean from keels of solid oak,
clinging to spars, a broken oar,
drowned in the shallows
of some lonely shore.
She stood, disguises fell away,
her double nature then revealed-
sunlit waves, caves of mystery-
and harmonised him like a gale
in stays and shrouds of dying ships.
They left behind the weeping world,
and off they went to fathoms deep,
to nevermore be seen again
in any church or field or house.
Maid and man, both unbeguiled,
she loved the pure in him,
he loved her wild.