Sirens of the Great Pond

Following with that apparent, unnoticed but symbolic triumph of paganism, and without leaving, at least for the moment, that genuine magic of attraction of water and its associated creatures, it is good to stop for a moment and think about those stories sung by the great bards of the Path.

One of them was, undoubtedly, that restless and traveler mindoniense chronicler, Álvaro Cunqueiro -which, between his prolific prose, gave life to the fascinating novel Merlin and family, set in his wonderful Galicia- through whose chronicles and reflections , one always remembers that the Way - and I insist again on what I mentioned earlier, regarding the sources - is a place of unusual encounters, prodigious events and more or less certain signs, where we can recover the venerable mediativity of the old myths that have always accompanied humanity as a second shadow.

As old as the myths of Creation, the theme of the mermaids, likewise, has always awakened the most conflicting of fantasies, to the point that enlightened men, like Father Benito Feijoo - that regardless of whether it is debatable, Credulity does not have to be synonymous with ignorance or culture-he believed in them at face value, like Ulysses whose ears would have been eternally dazzled by the passion generated by his intoxicating and irresistible songs.

But the subject is still symbolically fascinating, because - in fact, it picks up one of the endless myths associated with that art so related to the roads, which was the Romanesque, which generates so much passion today, but has so vilely been beaten by incomprehension and ignorance over the centuries - if we meditate on it from the point of view of that vision of Cunqueiro, when he tells us about the enchanted Ayfir, mermaid of water, and then raises the question key to the origin of the myth: 'will not water be taken to the air, to dwell there those seven years when it is like a bird?' (1).

At this point, I recognize that I am not very much a pilgrim in my city - maybe I am a better prophet in a foreign land - although, nevertheless, it is true that sometimes, leaving the bundle at home but hanging my cameras on my shoulder with no other company than my friends. more faithful companions of way, that are not others that the pen and the notebook, I approach until that corner where the fantasy inhabits, the park of the Retirement - I believe that never a name has been more appropriate for a park, if we excepted that other one of the Capricho, where the Madrid nobility satiated his hunger for fantasy by hitting the checkbook - and approaching me to the Great Pond, I look melancholy at those miserable mermaids that a curse turned into bronze for all eternity.

And when this happens -attack me if you want to manners- I remember that, observing his infinite sadness, I always ask myself the same question: will not it be by longing for that absolute freedom that they had when they were birds?

Notes:
(1) Álvaro Cunqueiro: 'The other roads', Tusquets Editores, S.A., 2nd edition, Barcelona, July 2004.

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NOTICE: the post was originally published in my blog MEMORIES OF A PILGRIM. Both the text, as the photographs, and the video (except music, reproduced under a YouTube license), are my exclusive intellectual property. The original entry can be found at the following address: https://jc347.blogspot.com.es/2015/07/sirenas-del-gran-estanque.html