Sirena is the mermaid of Hagåtña and the best-loved figure of Guam's Spanish-era folklore. A girl who loved swimming above every chore, she slipped away once too often to the Hagåtña River at the Minondu spring instead of gathering coconut shells for her mother's ironing coals. Her exasperated mother cursed her — if she loved to swim so much, let her be a fish — and her godmother (in some tellings her grandmother) quickly blessed the part of the girl that belonged to her, so that only Sirena's lower half became a fish. Half woman and half fish, Sirena swam out of the river mouth into the Pacific, where sailors are said to glimpse her still. The tale, adapted from Iberian mermaid lore during the colonial period and first set down at length by Mavis Warner Van Peenen in 1945, is told as a caution to disobedient children and quick-tongued mothers alike; a statue of Sirena stands today beside the river mouth in Hagåtña.