Crimean Legend - The mermaid and the fountain near Miskhor

Once upon a time there lived a modest toiler Abiy-Aka in the village of Miskhor. He had a daughter, a dark-eyed beauty Arzi. Her stature was lithe and slender, like a vine, her bright lips glowed like ripe cherries and her delicate cheeks were rosy like velvety peaches. Everybody admired charming Arzi, but a cunning old man, Ali-Baba by name looked at her more attentively than anyone else. The old Turk was notorious for kidnapping beautiful girls and sending them to Istanbul for sale to the Turks' harems.

Time went on and the girl was growing more beautiful day by day. She often came down to her favorite fountain and sat there gazing at the waves running onto the shore and thinking about a cheerful fellow from a remote mountain village whom she had met once near the fountain.

Soon came the day when the fellow sent his match-makers. The wedding of beautiful Arzi was merrily celebrated in the village of Miskhor. When the dusk fell on the shore Arzi wished to say farewell to her favorite fountain.

The girl even didn't suspect that several perfidious eyes watched her. Suddenly...Two tenacious hands seized the girl, swathed her in a cloak and immediately set off for the sea.

Ali-Baba got a great amount of money for Arzi and the girl was shut up in the Sultan's harem.

Not only the wretched parents and the fiance missed the poor girl greatly but also her favorite fountain withered as well.

Arzi was homesick and fretted. A child was born during her captivity but she was never happy. A year after the brigands had seized her on the remote Crimean coast, she climbed the tower of the Sultan's seraglio with the baby in her arms and threw herself into the Bosphorus.

That same evening a sorrowing mermaid with the baby in her arms approached the fountain near the Miskhor shore.

Since then, once a year, the mermaid with the baby emerged from the quiet waves of the sea. She came up to the fountain, sat down on the shore gazing at her native village. Then she sank into the sea and disappeared till the next year.

Miskhor - a resort on the south coast of Crimea;

Seraglio - a Sultan's palace;

"The Mermaid" and "The Fountain of Arzi" by the sculptor Amandus Adamson on the Miskhor coast are the widely known sculptured groups of bronze figures.

Crimea is temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation. For now it is not a place for tourism.