Talk:Melusine

Heraldry and vexillology

Melusine may be within the scope of the WikiProject on Heraldry and Vexillology. Article is not primarily a heraldry or vexillology article. Bejnar 16:51, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Just a note here; does the description of the heraldic melusine not sound almost exactly like the logo for Starbucks® Coffee? I don't know how to reference that into the article as per the standards of Wikipedia, though.  :( While the description seems obvious to me, I think that would make the conclusion "original research" and, so, debarred. Otoh, I think it is info worth noting in the Wikipedia article. Please, someone give some guidance on how to do this in the proper fashion. Thanks.

The melusine crops up in some of my post-doctoral studies, in context with Luxemburg legends forming part of late mediaeval belief systems in the general area of Wallonia and surrounding areas. I think you have things just a little back-to-front: in legend, the mélusine is distinguished from the mermaid by having two tails, which are sometimes serpentine. The mermaid is maritime, the mélusine is found exclusively in freshwater rivers. Whether the one supposed real-life instance, the wife of one of the Counts of Luxemburg, was a case of ichthyosis, is an open question of suppositional hypothesis. Other specific legendary candidates were a subject of fascination to several German composers in the neo-Gothic movement in the mid 19th Century, as the general Rhine-based legendary mythologisation (Das Rheingold, for instance) also includes the Lorelei (the subject of works by Clara Schumann and Franz Liszt).

The question of the Starbucks logo is a moot point. Although the Company tries to disassociate itself from the possibility of covert imputations from the wider satanic symbolicism of the subject (just as Proctor and Gamble do), https://www.starbucks.co.uk/ explicitly shows a female with two tails, and some of the legends and slightly harder mediaeval creed elements stretch that into areas of para-paedophilia. I am personally of the opinion that if you pick a logo which brings baggage with it, then you only have yourself to blame if the connotations are unhelpful to your marketing objectives, I rather object to the mindless self-exculpatory nature of irresponsible marketing offering an escape route to criminals. The source of the logo was clear, so if they were too lazy to check, thats their look out.

Generic or Idiosyncratic

OK, I don't get why the author(s) of this article chose to refer to "melusine" as a generic word for two-tailed mermaids. From what I've seen, Melusine is always a proper name and should be treated as such, with a capital letter. I've not heard of people referring to two-tailed mermaids as melusines before. Someone have a reference for this, or is it original research/name-making? DreamGuy 10:02, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Additional already-published details, with sources, in the article should quell any authentic concerns. Nothing original here. --Wetman 12:24, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

OK, looks like a fair amount of changes to this since I posted... but I've read it, and I don't see anything to support it in the new additions either. I still want to know if there is any actual source referring to a small letter M "melusine" as a generic word for a range of creatures of this type. I don't remember any books I've read using the word as a descriptor instead of a name, and I've read most of the standard references on this character. From looking through the article here and the linked websites I don't see reference to any source using a small m version. Instead of insinuating that my concerns aren't authentic, would you mind explicitly pointing out references that would support the small M usage? DreamGuy 15:21, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

If Lady Melusine flop flop flopped her wet way from Brittany and Poitou to Luxembourg Poland and Silesia, she was one busy girl indeed! When someone says "From what I've seen" without mentioning what that is, my skepticism is always raised. This User has a contributions history that has made him notorious. --Wetman 15:56, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Mythological and legendary characters often have stories told in different areas, that doesn't mean they are considered a race of beings deserving of a generic descriptor. The "flop flop" comment is nonsensical, because we aren't talking about a real person, but different stories. Stories move around and get localized without anyone thinking that there was a whole bunch of these creatures running around, they just think theirs is right and others are wrong. You made the claim that "melusine" is a generic term for two-tailed mermaids, you should provide the source to back it up. I can't prove a negative, all I can say is that my memory of all the standard sources and all the pages with links on this article all show you as being incorrect here. You may well be right, but you haven't shown that to be the case. I don't know why you persist on making personal attacks instead of responding to my concern. Please provide a scholarly reference that backs up your usage. DreamGuy 09:26, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

I am taking Melusine off my watchlist, knowing that, without an atmosphere of contention User:DreamGuy will quickly lose interest in a subject where this self-confessed "Eclectic scholar, published author, and all around nice guy" has not as of Dec 15 2004 contributed one word (see Page history}. A glance at this User's own User contributions reveals his normal concentration on contentious Talk pages, and reversions and deletions of other work as "irrelevant" etc.. There are few contributions from [User:DreamGuy]]. Any damage he does here can be repaired in a few months anyway.--Wetman 09:50, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

So... what you are saying is that you have no reference to support your side and all you can do is make more insults and false accusations...? My list of contributions are extensive for my short time here as a registered user, and while I do end up patrolling articles where people keep trying to put their bias in (like people trying to change the Deluge (mythology) page to advance their religion, or those who believe that any mention of a controversy over someone's life is negative and doesn't belong), that's not due to a love of conflict, it's a dedication for having things done objectively. I will not damage this article, I was simply asking if anyone could support the claims that are made within it. Since you cannot, and what you say is contrary to the sources I have read on the topic (as well as the sites that have links on this page), I am going to fix it. If you come back with a reference to support your side, great. If you come back in a few months and try to "repair" it by reintroducing opinions that you don't have references to support, then you will be the one trying to damage it. I'm sorry if my asking for a reference to support your opinion has offended you, but then it's not my fault if you choose to take offense to the idea of having a scholarly basis for what you write. DreamGuy 17:06, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

Aaaanyway, I wondered if the use of Melusina in A.S. Byatt's Possession was worth adding to the article. --Nick Douglas 04:02, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've come across references to Melusine/Melucine in historical novels, particularly those of Sharon Penman, in which she is claimed to be Lucifer's daughter, from whom the Counts of Anjou and England's Plantagenet dynasty descend. does anyone have any info on this? Nudge67 (talk) 05:45, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

No actual verifiable info, of course, since this is all legend, but that is part of the legend in its broadest form. The Lucifer reference is clearly an attempt to bring a pre-Christian myth into the Christian sphere and connect it with evil. There are (what you might call) nutty people of European descent who claim to have Dragon Princess blood or heritage even in the present day. Most of this (including fantasy/historical novels) is best ignored in wikipedia. I'd like to see the dates in the article reconciled to make it clear that the Melusina of the 700's was the source of the legend of Melusina in Scotland in the "time of the Crusades", or was it an independent legend of the same folkloric nature, because the article suggests that the Scots Melusina, (or the Melusina of Guy of Lusignan (c. 1150 – 18 July 1194)?) went back to the mainland, or somehow went back in time and when "Count Siegfried of the Ardennes bought the feudal rights to Luxembourg in 963, his name became connected with the local version of Melusine." This is all very confusing. 72.177.123.145 (talk) 19:16, 4 June 2013 (UTC) Eric

In Sabine Baring-Gould's Curious Tales of the Middle Ages, the core Melusine myth (and the one common to all other records of it) is "Melusine is seen by a nobleman, they marry - after the nobleman swears never to look in on her in her bath, the nobleman breaks his oath, and Melusine leaves".

A significant number of these stories have her sprouting wings and flying away, at least one has her taking an entirely different form - becoming a dragon. So she's also one of the shapeshifters of human myth. While some cultures link that to evil, "daughter of Satan/Lucifer/the Devil" doesn't appear in Baring-Gould's chapter on Melusine. The different tales of Melusine common to each nation argue for a separate melusine (the generic form not capitalized) but I'm choosing to defer, while editing our article, to speak simply of "Melusine" unless we have more than one authoritative, reliable source who says there are more than one.

Baring-Gould lists merfolk myths from aboriginal North America to Japan, sufficiently different from Melusine as she is described in the Poitou/Luxembourg myths they certainly deserve separate mention (if we mentioned them at all). I'd feel better about putting the idea of more than one melusine in the article if we could find more than one source attesting to it, and admittedly, I have not read the other sources. It's a project I'll undertake soon.

Likewise, if we can find a good reliable source referring to Melusine myth depicting her as the daughter of Lucifer/Satan/the Devil, fine. That belongs at this point, however, in the section "Literary versions", because that's where we find published mention of her Satanic heritage. The closest I can come so far is mention of some of the ur-sources for the mermaid myth being linked with Moloch. If I'm wrong, please give the published source that cites this as an actual myth, not the invention of a novelist. I'll be looking on this end, too. Patricia de Chenier (talk) 22:51, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Mendelssohn's Overture 'The Fair Melusine'

Hi, thanks for the page on Melusine. In case anybody want to add it to the article, Mendelssohn wrote an Overture (Op.32) based on the Melusine myth, called Die Schöne Melusine or The Fair Melusine (composed 1833 for the Philharmonic Society, London, revised 1834-5 for performance in Leipzig) Orlando Jopling

To my knowledge, there are not many available English language texts of Melusine. A rough translation of Coudrette's Melsuine can be found here: http://www.isnull.com/bathesis/

Melusine disambiguation

I created a page about the Belgian comic book series Mélusine today, so I guess a disambiguation page is needed? Because as far as I can see, Melusine is the name of both a mythological creature and a comic book character, AND the partial name of an asteroid? Since I'm new to Wikipedia (at least the editing part), I was wondering how to go about setting that up? Would it be best to rename this page Melusine (mythological) or something like that? Anyway, I thought it was best to ask here - if any of you could help, it'd be much appreciated! - Bender of spoons 21:01, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I've created a disambiguation page. Since this usage predates the others by far, I've made this the main article with a link to the disambiguation page. On the disambiguation page, I've created a link to this article and the Mélusine (comic) page. I couldn't find the asteroid page, so you should make that edit on the disambiguation page. Val42 15:35, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

See also

This topic is (ISTM) clearly closely related to Wagner's Rhinemaidens and nixies, so I have added a See also tag. --Thnidu (talk) 18:35, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Also, the pattern of the tale, as observed by Sabine Baring-Gould in his Curious Tales of the Middle Ages, resembles that of the Knight of the Swan story - the foundation for the character Lohengrin in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and the eponymous opera Lohengrin by Wagner. Patricia de Chenier (talk) 18:08, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Added Knight of the Swan to See also because of the parallels in the two tales (breach of nuptial oath leads to catastrophe). Patricia de Chenier (talk) 02:04, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Starbucks Logo ??

Anyone aware of any info on the Starbucks coffee logo with regard to heraldry? The "Starbucks" mermaid appears, as national heraldry, on a 17th(?) century space-heater stove (vaguely similar to this one), exhibited in the Vilnius Valdovu Rumai. The stove is covered with a repeated pattern of ceramic tiles; one tile shows the Lithuanian Vytis, a second the Polish Eagle coat of arms, a third tile shows the Starbucks mermaid. The first two tiles clearly signify the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth of the 16th-18th centuries. The mermaid is presented as an equal, in size, proportion, and frequency, of the other two coats-of-arms: it is clearly a coat of arms signifying some or another political/geographical region in union with the commonwealth. But which part? I'm guessing parts of the Belarus, or possibly parts of northern Europe; I'm not clear on which, and thus pose the question here (of course, the stove could well be a bit of 17th century propaganda, as it were -- making the pretension that the mermaid was on par with the Vytis and the Eagle). Would love to know more. I presume that there is no chance at all that the mermaid is that of the Jurate and Kastytis legend, but given the age of the legend, and of the logo, I wonder ... linas (talk) 21:09, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Meluzina in the Hungarian Literature

The great Hungarian writer, Kalman Mikszath mention the story in his short novel: How did I become a writer? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.236.3.194 (talk) 10:27, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

We can add that, if you like. I'm leaning toward the "more than one" theory on the grounds that each national Melusine myth may be unique to the people who tell it. But you'll have to show where Mikszath mentions it. Please name the short novel and give us all the bibliographic reference information: name of author as it appears on the novel, place of publication, time of publication, name of publisher, and page(s) in which the story is mentioned. Thanks! Patricia de Chenier (talk) 19:39, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Expansion of the Lede Paragraph to Include Royal Houses Said to be Descended from Melusine

A box over our article posted on October 2016 says:

"This article's lead section does not adequately summarize key points of its contents. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. Please discuss this issue on the article's talk page."

I expanded the lede by mentioning another noble house said (in Curious Tales from the Middle Ages by Sabine Baring-Gould) to be descended from Melusine, the House of Luxembourg, and the lands over which they and the House of Lusignan ruled (to underline their notability).

I also added a second paragraph to the lede which summarizes the common features of stories about Melusine:

• marriage to mortals of noble blood,
• an oath binding the husband never to look at Melusine (or her daughters) in their bath, to conceal her true nature and mermaid-like features,
• Melusine leaving her husband or father after he breaks that oath,
• usually by shapeshifting into another form (often a dragon) and flying away.

Does this satisfy the conditions for removal of the tag at the top of the article? Patricia de Chenier (talk) 02:20, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

I've removed the tag. We have a good lede satisfying the conditions listed in the tag now. Patricia de Chenier (talk) 22:54, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

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A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Bookofmelusine.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 04:22, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

The consensus on this file at nomination page was "Keep" and the nomination was closed without further action. Patricia de Chenier (talk) 10:16, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

Descendants

It's repeated many times through this article that many houses have claimed to be descended from Melusine, but are there any sources that claim a supposed lineage. Who do they claim were her children? EmilySarah99 (talk) 09:56, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

European folklore or just French?

Definitely never heard of this creature in Slavic folklore. Sounds like French only so it should not say European folklore as a whole. 102.117.77.223 (talk) 09:17, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

French, German, Luxembourgish, and British. -- Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 13:46, 21 June 2024 (UTC)