h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just how well researched was this entry? I’ve spotted two major errors, and I’ve not even read halfway!

The entry refers to the Scandinavian “havfrue (merman) and the havmand (mermaid)”. Wrong way round! Should be “the havfru (mermaid) and the havmand (merman)”.

And I’m pretty sure there’s no such town in Germany as Lorelei. (I’ve been past a number of times, and studied the maps, and I’ve never noticed it.) Lorelei is the name of a large rocky outcrop overlooking the Rhine (the name means “lurking rock”) and the maiden of folklore took her name from the rock.

According to the famous poem by Heinrich Heine (set to music by er-um, and they play it to you on the Rhine steamer as you pass), she was not even a mermaid, but a siren who sat atop the rock to lure passing boats on to the rocks below.

D.

Another couple of corrections: the Indian celsetial nymphs are "apsaras", not "asparas", and most representations of apsaras show them as having human form (ie having four limbs, not being part fish),
In Sanskrit, Ap + saras means movement in water; hence Apsaras signify the water nymph-like graceful beings known for the fluidity of movements. They were semi-divine, celestial dancers, a personification of feminine charm coupled with an aesthetic vivacity, rather than actual mermaid-like water nymphs.

The author of the Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser's name is usually spelt like that (with an "r" on the end).

i have read somewhere dolphins are like the mermaids many a times there to save the drowning and passing ultrasonic signals