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Your Strange Life is quite interesting, John!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m thinking of Janus in that two headed figure. The others were mostly women, and if I remember correctly it was considered bad luck to have a woman on board, so they put her right out front. What does that say????
Wikipedia has some interesting information:
“In Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, it was once believed that spirits/faeries called Kaboutermannekes (gnomes, little men, faeries) dwelt in the figureheads. The spirit guarded the ship from sickness, rocks, storms, and dangerous winds. If the ship sank, the Kaboutermannekes guided the sailors’ souls to the Land of the Dead. To sink without a Kaboutermanneke condemned the sailor’s soul to haunt the sea forever, so Dutch sailors believed. A similar belief was found in early Scandinavia/Vikings”
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figurehead_(object)
There is also a great collection of ships’ figureheads at Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic CT. The display hall has very low lighting, so the figureheads, looming overhead, seem quite … intimidating. One of them, of ship designer Charles MacKay, in full Scots turnout, looks exactly like my husband.