AMONGST THE MERMAIDS
to slay a seal again. The return was effected in the same way
as the previous journey, and the horseman, on his departure,
left sufficient gold to compensate the islander for the loss of
his means of livelihood.
This story is the only one out of the scores told to me in
which the seal may be said to take the offensive, and I cannot
trace it to any foreign source.
Mr. Walter Traill Dennison in his “ Orcadian Sketches”
tells us that the seal held a far higher place among the North-
men than any of the lower animals. He had a mysterious
connection with the human race, and had the power of assum-
ing the human form and faculties, and every true descendant
of the Vikings looks upon the seal as a kind of second cousin
in disgrace. Old beliefs die hard, and, in illustration of this,
the following paragraph from a Scottish daily newspaper may
be appropriately given :
A MERMAID ON AN ORKNEY ISLE.—A strange story of the mermaid comes
from Birsay, Orkney. The other day a farmer’s wife was down at the sea-
shore there, and observed a strange marine animal on the rocks. When she
returned with her better half, they both saw the animal clambering amongst
the rocks, about four feet of it being above water. The woman, who had a
splendid view of it, describes it as a “ good-looking person,” while the man says
it was “a woman covered over with brown hair.” At last the couple tried to
get hold of it, when it took a header into the sea and disappeared. The man
is confident he has seen the fabled mermaid, but people in the district are
of opinion that the animal must belong to the seal tribe. An animal of
similar description was seen by several people at Deerness two years ago.”
Mr. Dennison, in the above-mentioned book, only touches
on seals once, but the story he gives is new to me and I have
translated it and curtailed it from the Orcadian dialect. I
wonder if the old Norseman who told it had ever heard of
Androcles ?
341