Originally the harpies, sirens and mermaids were all clearly distinct. Sirens and mermaids were conflated in medieval bestiaries and fiction, with sirens acquiring fishy features and mermaids acquiring enchanting songs. Harpies and sirens remain distinct in popular culture, except in
Dungeons & Dragons where harpies have gained the enchanting voices of sirens for no apparent reason.
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| "A Triptych of Harpies. The Maiden, Mother and Crone." ©2014 Wayne McMillan |
In Greek art, harpies were depicted as simple winged women. Sometimes they had ugly faces or the lower bodies of birds. In European heraldry, they were depicted as vultures with the head and breasts of women. In post-classical art, harpies may be depicted as birds with women's heads a la sirens. In the stop-motion films by Ray Harryhausen, they were depicted with bats' wings.
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| Sirens, Greek mythology, wood engraving, 1878 |
In Greek art, sirens were depicted as birds with the heads or whole upper bodies of women like centauresses. Sometimes they were depicted as women with bird legs. In medieval art, sirens were also depicted as mermaids or winged mermaids. Sometimes they were depicted with both bird's feet and fish's tail. They typically carry musical instruments like flutes and lyres.
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Two sirens play instruments while a third sings.
©2003 Bodleian Library, Oxford University |
The same mythical monsters take many forms in art, but not fantasy gaming. The traditional method of fantasy gaming when it comes to depicting monsters is to take a specific inspiration as the baseline and either ignore other depictions or rarely introduce them later as variants or unrelated monsters. Instead of doing that, I would posit that harpies and sirens may change their shape and witnesses unaware of this told stories describing the same monster very differently.
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