The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

7 he Seal. 469
th' anns na roin," ^ are words not infrequently heard now-adays
in the Hebrides, asserting this beh'ef. The seal was
credited with the power of being able to assume the human
form. While in human guise, he contracted marriages with
human beings ; and if we are to credit tradition, the Mac-
'Codrums of North Uist are the offspring of such an union.
In former times, the Mac-Codrums were known in the
Western Islands as Sliochd nan Ron, or the offspring of the
seals. As a seal could assume the form of man, and make
his abode on land, so a Mac-Codrum could assume the
form of a seal, and betake himself to the sea ! While in
this guise, we are told that several Mac-Codrums had met
their death !
—
But the tradition of the seal in human form is not con-
fined to the Hebrides. Similar seal stories have been
handed down from the earliest times in Orkney and Shet-
land. Indeed, the relationship between the Orkney and
Shetland stories on the one hand, and the Hebridean stories
on the other, is so close that one is driven to the conclusion
that in all tliese islands they are probably survivals of the
Norse occupation.
Mr Walter Traill Dennison tells us, in his " Orcadian
Sketch-Book," that the seal (or, as the Orcadians call him,
the " selkie"), held a far higher place among the Northmen
than any other of the lower animals. He had a mysterious
connection with the human race, and " had the power of
assuming the human form and faculties." He adds that
every true descendant of the Norsemen 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 one of the Scottish daily newspapers, in March last,
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 seashore there, and
observed a strange marine animal sitting on the rocks. As
i.e. "They say that seals are men under magic spells."