The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

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