SINGAPORE'S INFAMOUS MERLION

This imposing beast is the Merlion, Singapore's semi-official national symbol, a freak of nature which boasts the head of a lion and the body of a fish. As faintly ludicrous as this mythical hybrid might sound (calling to mind Napoleon Dynamite's definition of a liger: "It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed... bred for its skills in magic") the story behind its creation is mildly amusing.

Concerned by the lack of authentic nationalist mythology, the Singapore Tourism Board contrived instead to invent their own, commissioning designer Fraser Brunner to build the original Merlion statue in 1964. Tourism brochures of the time peddled some spurious yarn about the legendary Sang Nila Utama, who saw a lion while hunting on an island believed to have been Singapore.

Unfazed by the widespread derision which greeted the Merlion for its perceived artificiality, the Tourism Board persisted with the project, even enlisting unofficial poet laureate Edwin Thumboo to immortalize the Merlion in one of his poems. Employing the Merlion as a laboured allegory for Singapore's post-war economic miracle, his verse is stirring stuff indeed . Below is an abridged version of the meisterwerk:

'Ulysees by the Merlion'

I have sailed many waters,
Skirted islands of fire,
Contended with Circe
Who loved the squeal of pigs;
Passed Scylla and Charybdis
To seven years with Calypso,
Heaved in battle against the gods.

But this lion of the sea
Salt-maned, scaly, wondrous of tail,
Touched with power, insistent
On this brief promontory... Puzzles

Nothing, nothing in my days
Foreshadowed this
Half-beast, half-fish,
This powerful creature of land and sea

Perhaps having dealt in things,
Surfeited on them,
Their spirits yearn again for images,
Adding to the dragon, phoenix,
Garuda, naga those horses of the sun,
This lion of the sea,
This image of themselves.