156 ScoTTisH MERMAIDS. 
a tremendous cut in the hindquarter. The operation was per- 
formed without difficulty, and the seal arose from his couch in 
perfect health. The fisherman was then informed that he was 
free to return to his wife, on the express condition, however, 
that he would never again maim or kill a seal. On his assenting 
to this, not without some natural reluctance, he was conducted to 
the door of the cave, and he and his guide rose to the surface 
together, finding their former steed awaiting them, ready for a 
second gallop. Once on land, the guide breathed on the fisher- 
man, and they both became like men again, and mounting, they 
were not long in reaching the door of the hut. And here, to 
his great delight, the fisherman was rewarded with a sum of 
money large enough to make his enforced abstention from seal- 
hunting a loss which he could afford to bear with perfect 
equanimity. 
To conclude, let me borrow from “ Fiona Macleod’’ an 
instance of another form assumed by one of these sirens of the 
sea. As might be expected from the narrator, the circumstances 
are invested with a supernatural eeriness such as is to be found 
only in an atmosphere of Celtic mysticism. Murdo Maclan of 
the Isle is made, in “ Sea-Magic,’’ to relate how “a woman often 
came out of the sea and said strange foreign words at the back of 
his door—and that in a whinnying voice like that of a foal—came 
white as foam, and went away grey as rain. And then,’’ he 
adds, “she would go to that stroked rock yonder and put songs 
against me till my heart shook like a tallow-flaucht in the wind.’’ 
And once, he goes on to say, “a three-week back or so I 
came home in a thin, noiseless rain, and heard a woman-voice 
singing by the fire-flaucht, and stole up soft to the house-side ; 
but she heard the beat of my pulse, and went out at the door, not 
looking once behind her. She was tall and white, with red hair, 
and though I did not see her face, I know it was like a rock in 
rain with the tears streaming on it. She was a woman till she 
was at the shore there, then she threw her arms into the winds, 
and was a gull, and flew away in the lowness of a cloud.”’ 
It is impossible to say in regard to questions such as these, 
where tradition based upon apparent fact merges into legend 
founded upon the frankest fiction. On that account, as well as 
from consideration of length, no attempt has here been made to 
inquire into, or even touch upon, any of the occasions on which 
