Mermaid of Marden

The Marden Mermaid is one of the oldest and most localised of English mermaid traditions, tied to a specific church and a specific bell with a stubbornness that has kept it alive for centuries. The story runs like this: the great bell of St Mary the Virgin at Marden had somehow come to rest in the River Lugg — whether dropped during transport, thrown in during some forgotten conflict, or lost by other means, no one now remembers. An attempt was made to raise it with teams of white oxen, the bell was nearly clear of the water, and a mermaid appeared and seized it back into the depths.

She is said to have left a warning — some versions give it as a rhyme — that the bell would never be raised as long as certain conditions held. On still nights near the river, parishioners have traditionally claimed to hear the bell tolling underwater, faint but recognisable, as if the mermaid rings it from her own church below the Lugg.

The tradition is old enough to be cited in nineteenth-century county folklore collections as already well-established, and Marden church still stands beside the Lugg — the river still there to listen to.