Homer takes his Sirens as already familiar; he clearly draws from popular tradition. There is no word as to their form, no hint of parentage: he does not mean them to be mysterious, but by a fortunate chance he leaves them shrouded in mystery, the mystery of the hidden spell of the sea, with the haze of the noon-tide about them and the meshes of sweet music for their unseen toils,—knowing all things yet for ever unknown. It is this mystery of the Sirens that has appealed to modern poetry and almost wholly obscured their simple primitive significance. ‘Their words are no more heard aright Through lapse of many ages, and no man Can any more across the waters wan Behold these singing women of the sea.’ Four points in the story of Homer must be clearly noted. The Sirens, though they sing to mariners, are _not_ sea-maidens; they dwell on an island in a flowery meadow. They are mantic creatures like the Sphinx with whom they have much in common, knowing both the past and the future. Their song takes effect at midday, in a windless calm. The end of that song is death. It is only from the warning of Circe that we know of the heap of bones, corrupt in death—horror is kept in the background, seduction to the fore. * * * * * It is to art we must turn to know the real nature of the Sirens. Ancient art, like ancient literature, knows nothing of the fish-tailed mermaid. Uniformly the art-form of the Siren is that of the bird-woman. The proportion of bird to woman varies, but the bird element is constant. It is interesting to note that, though the bird-woman is gradually ousted in modern art by the fish-tailed mermaid, the bird element survives in mediaeval times[512]. In the _Hortus Deliciarum_ of the Abbess Herrad (circ. A.D. 1160), the Sirens appear as draped women with the clawed feet of birds; with their human hands they are playing on lyres. The bird form of the Sirens was a problem even to the ancients. Ovid[513] asks: ‘Whence came these feathers and these feet of birds? Your faces are the faces of fair maids.’ Ovid’s aetiology is of course beside the mark. The answer to his pertinent question is quite simple. The Sirens belong to the same order of bogey beings as the Sphinx and the Harpy; the monstrous form expresses the monstrous nature; they are birds of prey but with power to lure by their song. In the Harpy-form the ravening snatching nature is emphasized and developed, in the Sphinx the mantic power of all uncanny beings, in the Siren the seduction of song. The Sphinx, though mainly a prophetess, keeps Harpy elements; she snatches away the youths of Thebes: she is but ‘a man-seizing Ker[514].’ The Siren too, though mainly a seductive singer, is at heart a Harpy, a bird of prey. [Illustration: FIG. 37.]