MERMAIDS and MERMEN (i. e. sea-maids and sea-men), a class of beings fabled to inhabit the sea, with a human body as far as the waist, ending in the tail of a fish; the females of them represented above the surface of the sea combing their long hair with one hand and holding a mirror with the other; they are supposed to be endowed with the gift of prophecy, and are of an amorous temper.

MEROVINGIANS, a name given to the first dynasty that ruled over France, and which derives its name from Merovig, the founder of the family.

MERRILEES, MEG, a half-crazy Border gipsy; one of the characters in Scott’s “Guy Mannering.”

MERRY MONARCH, a title by which Charles II. of England was at one time familiarly known.

MERSEY, river rising in NW.  Derbyshire, flows westward 70 m. between Lancashire and Cheshire to the Irish Sea; is of great commercial importance, having Liverpool on its estuary; its chief tributary is the Irwell, on which stands Manchester.

MERTHYR-TYDVIL (58), industrial town in Glamorganshire, on the Taff, 15 m.  NW. of Cardiff; is the centre of great coal-fields and of enormous iron and steel works, which constitute the only industry.

MERV (500), an oasis in Turkestan, belonging to Russia, being conquered in 1883, 60 m. long by 40 broad, producing cereals, cotton, silk, &c.; breeds horses, camels, sheep, with a capital of the same name, on the Transcaspian railway.

MERYON, CHARLES, etcher of street scenes, born at Paris; son of English doctor; died insane (18211868).

MESMER, FRIEDRICH ANTON, a German physician, born near Constance; bred for the Church, but took to medicine; was the founder of animal magnetism, called mesmerism after him, his experiments in connection with which created a great sensation, particularly in Paris, until the quackery of it was discovered by scientific investigation, upon which he retired into obscurity, “to walk silent on the shore of the Bodensee, meditating on much” (1733-1815).

MESMERISM, animal magnetism so called, or the alleged power which, by operating on the nervous system, one person obtains control over the thoughts and actions of another.

MESOPOTAMIA, the name given after Alexander the Great’s time to the territory “between the rivers” Euphrates and Tigris, stretching from Babylonia NW. to the Armenian mountains; under irrigation it was very fertile, but is now little cultivated; once the scene of high civilisation when Nineveh ruled it; it passed from Assyrian hands successively to Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, and Arab; now, after many vicissitudes, it is in the deathly grasp of Turkish rule.

MESSENIA, a province of Greece, mainly the fertile peninsula between the Gulfs of Arcadia and Coron; in ancient times the Messenians were prosperous, excited Spartan envy, and after two long wars were conquered in 668 B.C. and fled to Sicily.

MESSIAH (i. e. the Anointed one), one consecrated of God, who the Jewish prophets predicted would one day appear to emancipate the Jewish people from bondage and exalt them in the eyes of all the other nations of the earth as His elect nation, and for the glory of His name.