Picked him for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.
- W.B. Yeats
The poem by Yeats encapsulates the major problem with water women who love land men. They simply cannot cohabit the same place. Unfortunately, the men nearly always want to live with their mermaid lovers and forget that they cannot breathe underwater. Thus the mermaid is a powerful seductress and her love means death to the hapless sailor or fisherman. Until Hans Christian Andersen's famous story "The Little Mermaid," these water spirits enjoyed quite a reputation as femme fatales. Click the link to read the ballad of "Clerk Colvill" who was killed by his mermaid lover:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch042.htm
The Fisherman and the Syren - Frederic Lord Leighton (1830-1896)
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