Ben Varrey

The Ben Varrey is the Isle of Man's own mermaid tradition, distinct from the Scottish selkie or the English sea-maiden. She is a 'Woman of the Sea' — beautiful, half-fish, and possessed of knowledge no mortal has: the weather beyond the horizon, the whereabouts of fish, the fates of those at sea.

Encounters with her could go either way. A fisherman who treated her with respect might receive a warning of storms before they struck, or be guided to waters thick with herring. One who showed disrespect, or tried to capture her, might find his nets always empty, his boat becalmed, or his family cursed for a generation. Several Manx families have traditional claims to mermaid ancestry — a Ben Varrey found on the shore, coaxed ashore, who lived as a wife for years before the sea called her back.

Walter Gill's late nineteenth-century collection of Manx folklore documented multiple named traditions of the Ben Varrey, and she features in the same breath as the Glashtyn and the Buggane as part of the island's distinctly Manx supernatural world.