The Wild Man (Merman) of Orford, Suffolk

Orford Castle was new. Henry II had it built between 1165 and 1173 on the Suffolk coast, and its keeper was Bartholomew de Glanville. The story survives in one place, the Chronicon Anglicanum of Ralph of Coggeshall, a Cistercian abbot, who set it down around 1205. He was not there, and was writing about events some forty years earlier, "in the time of King Henry II, when Bartholomew de Glanville was keeper of the castle of Orford."

Some fishermen working the sea off Orford pulled up their nets, and inside was a wild man. He was "entirely naked, but in every member bore a human form." His hair seemed "worn and rubbed away" on the surface, his beard was long and pointed, and about the chest he was very hairy and rough. The castellan of Orford, the account says, was lost in wonder.

They kept him at the castle, and he ate whatever he was given. If it was raw, "he pressed it between his hands until all the juice was expelled." He never spoke. "He did not wish to talk, or rather did not have the power to talk, even when suspended by his feet and tortured." He was taken to church at Orford, but showed no sign of reverence or belief.

Then came a test. His keepers led him to the shore and set three rows of very strong nets across the water, and let him go. He plunged to the bottom and passed through every net. Then he rose again and again from the deep, gazing at the people on the shore, "as if mocking them because he had escaped their nets."

He played in the sea for a long time, and all hope of his return was lost. Then, suddenly, he swam back of his own accord and stayed another two months. But he was guarded less carefully now, for he had become a burden. He slipped secretly back into the sea and was never seen again. In all, he is said to have been held about six months.

Ralph offered no verdict. He could not say whether the captive was "a mortal man, or some fish pretending human shape, or was an evil spirit hiding in the body of a drowned man."

Modern writers have tried. Historian Martyn Whittock notes that his behaviour matches later accounts of feral children, or that he may have been mentally ill. Others suggest a shipwrecked sailor driven mad at sea, or a foreigner who could not make himself understood. Some see local belief shaping a medieval marvel. Over the centuries the wild man became a merman, and M.R. James, writing in 1930, called him "a merman" who "could not be induced to take an interest in the services of the church."

In St Bartholomew's Church, Orford, a 15th century font carries four lions and four wild men around its base. The legend may have inspired some twenty wild man carvings on fonts across coastal Suffolk and Norfolk, though the Orford Museum cautions that most of them date from the 15th century.

The story has also reached the stage. Elizabeth Kuti's play Fishskin Trousers premiered at the Finborough Theatre in London in 2013. In 2017, Thea Smiley's The Return of the Wildman opened at the Avenue Theatre, Ipswich. The man from the nets is still just out of reach.