Singing on the rocks
Homer was the first who referred to the sirens. But in the Odyssey said about them is that the sailors should be afraid of singing "wonderful-voice", otherwise they will not return to their homeland. This barely-defined image has inflamed imagination of listeners of the poem. In ancient Greek myth of sirens overgrown with new and new details.
First, they appeared biography. Voice sirens inherited from the mother-muse and initially did not differ from ordinary women. But aunts-muses, fearing for his position on Parnassus, disfigured these newly songbird - turned them into a hybrid of human and poultry.
According to another version, sirens became friends with Persephone by Hades dragged into the realm of the dead. Her friends did not know about it and begged the gods to give them the opportunity to search for the missing on the ground in the sky and under water. Thus sirens were divided into half-birds and half-fishes.
The next string of myths explaining why the sirens are dangerous to humans. Death refused to help them search for Persephone, and then the siren decided to take revenge. Virgin fish singing drawing inside the sailors into the depths of the sea. Winged maidens sucked the blood of those who stayed to listen. On this subject, prompted by Homer, was exhausted. And then was born the myth of the death of the sirens. Savior from this scourge announced Odysseus. It has appeared the only thing who has not moored to island, певуньи have blundered for the first time. With despair of the maiden-bird have rushed in the sea and have turned to rocks. About Virgins-fish first forgotten, but in the Middle Ages the people of Europe have borrowed this image in the tales of the treacherous mermaids and undine. Resurrected and sirens, birds, becoming, for example, in the character of the Slavic tradition - birds of Syria and Phoenix.
Where an event that began the myth of the sirens? You can, of course, look in the Mediterranean and "grave" - rocks sticking out of the water alone. But much more interesting to start from the fact that the singing of the sirens Homer could take the sounds associated with the natural features of a particular place on the coast. For example, in the Gulf of Salerno is an archipelago Galli. Configuration of the coastal cliffs here are such that they reinforce the sounds reaching the sea. The cries of seals taken a liking to the island, passing through this mouthpiece, could almost be mistaken for the sounds of human voice ...