Editing Merrow (section)

===Merrow-men===
While most stories about merrow are about female creatures, a tale about an Irish merman does exist in the form of "[[The Soul Cages (story)|The Soul Cages]]", published in Croker's anthology. In it, a merman captured the souls of drowned sailors and locked them in cages ([[lobster pot]]-like objects) under the sea.{{sfnp|Keightley|1850|pp=527–536}}{{sfnp|Yeats|1888|p=69}} This tale turned out to be an invented piece of fiction (an adaptation of a German folktale), although [[Thomas Keightley]] who acknowledged the fabrication claimed that by sheer coincidence, similar folktales were indeed to be found circulated in areas of counties [[County Cork|Cork]] and [[County Wicklow|Wicklow]].{{sfnp|Keightley|1850|pp=536n}}{{r|markey}}

The male merrow in the story, called Coomara (meaning "sea-hound"{{sfnp|Croker|1828|loc='''II''', 55}}), has green hair and teeth, pig-like eyes, a red nose, grows a tail between his scaly legs, and has stubby fin-like arms.{{sfnp|Croker|1828|loc='''II''', 34}} Commentators, starting with Croker and echoed by O'Hanlon and Yeats after him, stated categorically that this description fitted male merrows in general, and ugliness ran generally across the entire male populace of its kind,{{sfnp|Kennedy|1866|p=121}}{{sfnp|Yeats|1888|p=69}}{{sfnp|Kinahan|1983|p=260}} the red nose possibly attributable to their love of [[brandy]].{{sfnp|Kennedy|1866|p=121}}

The ''merrow'' which signifies "sea maiden" is an awkward term when applied to the male, but has been in use for a lack of a term in Irish dialect for ''merman''.{{sfnp|Keightley|1850|pp=370n}}{{sfnp|Yeats|1888|p=61}} One scholar has insisted the term ''macamore'' might be used as the Irish designation for merman, since it means literally "son of the sea", on authority of Patrick Kennedy, though the latter merely glosses ''macamore'' as designating local inhabitants of the [[County Wexford]] coast.{{sfnp|Kinahan|1983|p=260n|ps= : The term "macamores" is glossed in Patrick Kennedy's ''Banks of the Boro'', p. 370}} Gaelic (Irish) words for mermen are ''{{lang|ga|murúch fir}}'' "mermaid-man" or ''{{lang|ga|fear mara}}'' "man of the sea".{{r|"o-hogain-mermaid"}}