Listen with care to this now, and a god will arm your mind. Square in your ship’s path are Seirênês, crying beauty to bewitch men coasting by; woe to the innocent who hears that sound! He will not see his lady nor his children in joy, crowding about him, home from sea; the Seirênês will sing his mind away on their sweet meadow lolling. There are bones of dead men rotting in a pile beside them and flayed skins shrivel around the spot.

(The Odyssey, by Homer, Book Twelve, lines 43 - 53).