The Equinox (Volume I, Number II)

THE EQUINOX THE SELKIE THAT DEUD NO’ FORGET A long time ago, one Mansie Meur was gathering limpets at the ebb tide, off Hackness, when he heard a strange sound coming from the rocks some distance off. Sometimes it would be like the sob of a woman, and sometimes louder, like the cry of a dying cow, but it was always a most pitiful sound. For a while Mansie could see nothing except a big seal close in to the rocks, who was craning his neck above the surface, and peering at acreek some distance off. And Mansie noticed that the seal was not frightened and never ducked his head once, but gazed continually at that creek. So Mansie crossed an intervening rock, and there, in a crevice, he saw a mother- seal lying in labour. And it was she who was moaning, whilst the father-seal lay out in the water watching her. Mansie stayed and watched her too, and after a while, she gave birth to two fine seal-calves, who were no sooner on the rocks than they clutched at their mother. Mansie thought to himself that the calf-hides would make a nice waistcoat, so he ran forward, and the seal-mother rowed herself over the face of the rock with her fins into the sea, but the two young ones had not the wit to flee. So Mansie seized them both, and the distress of the mother was terrible to see. She swam about and about, and beat herself with her fins like one dis- tracted; and then she would clamber up, with her fore-fins on the edge of the rock, and glower into Mansie’s face. He turned to go off with the two young ones under his arm— they were sucking at his coat the while—when the mother gave such a cry of despair, so human, so desolate, that it went straight to Mansie’s heart, and turning again, he saw the 342