Foraging

‘All waters of the sea together flow
But I, alone, am here with none beside
To watch with me the ebbing of the tide
Nor hear the seabird’s mournful cry ….’

‘A song for Seiglid!’ cried Idranil, as he leapt from the water. ‘Come, you misery. Wake up and join us, we must eat.’ He shook his dripping body, causing the flying drops to spatter Seiglid where he lay on the rock. ‘My nan has a bowl full to the brim and she’ll be distressed if we don’t eat it all. Come on, move, you stone, you solid lump!’
His well-aimed toe shifted Seiglid, who jumped up to find with relief that he could laugh and roar with the best. They ran awkwardly down the rock, wide feet sliding, arms held out for balance.
Feeding is a random thing among the folk but usually follows the tide’s ebb, when the beach has been gleaned and the bowls are full; full of limpets and winkles, of tiny crabs and edible weed. First the little ones are fed, their elders popping the choicest morsels into their groping mouths. Then the oldest grandsires hold out their cupped hands to be filled. The women of the folk eat as best they can, always on the move, with a special care for young mothers with their babies still at their breasts. The sires, the fathers of the sea folk, rarely join this communal feast. They find their food alone, out in the wild waters, although sometimes one would step forward proudly to take the good things offered by his womenfolk. The youngsters, the unproven useless boys, had to take their chances. When there was plenty it was lavished upon them with yearning love for their vulnerable youth, but if there was little to spare they were beaten off and forced to forage for themselves, so they could learn to survive when the testing time of venture came.
Led by Idranil they edged around the group, grinning, a cupped hand held out in hope, and sure enough the bowls were laden and they could have their fill. The afternoon sun warmed the sheltered beach and the folk rested and talked. Young maidens spread out their hair with combs of white bone, little maids at their sides waited to be groomed too. Babies were rocked in old nans’ arms or were crooned over by loving sisters as they lay sleeping in warm nests in the sand. The lazy youths stretched their limbs and their eyes slid often to their heroes.
As the shadows lengthened the tide emptied out of the cove once more and the women wandered away to search the glistening rocks again. Idranil, with Gladrid, lay in the water’s ripple and sway, playing with the little ones who rolled and dived into the curling waves at their feet. One old nan lay on the swell, a baby in her arms, pinching his nose shut whenever the waves broke over them both, laughing at his sneezing splutter, echoing with him the broken wave sounds.
‘Tsh-tsh then, tsh-tshsh, my little one.’ And she sang one of the many lullabies of the folk, her voice warm with love. Babies on the beach were held and surrounded constantly with love; comfy arms cuddled them, gentle fingers stroked them, there were no harsh words: the sea would be their master soon enough.
After a second mealtime, in the long level light of evening, the folk began to settle to sleep. Scratching and yawning, shuffling out familiar sleeping troughs in the soft sand, they muttered the warnings, the old safeguards to keep death, the longest shadow, away.
‘Morning bright to my sight come in flight, end this night.’ Idranil rattled the words away as he always did, shifting and stretching in the comfort of the cave, tumbled among his companions. Ever since they had left their mothers’ sides they had slept like this, limbs tangled together, drawing warmth. Young men of the same year of borning, they waited, some sleepless, for their days of venture.

Vilidorn - who fought the giant squid

Once in a warm sea time there lived a man of the folk, mighty and strong. Vilidorn was his name. His pebble-hard muscles stood out on giant limbs and his proud head stood high on his sturdy neck. Across his massive shoulders, matted with curling hair, his strength moved in rippling show, and knotted ropes of mighty sinew were his arms. Straddled firmly on his powerful legs, feet rooted in the bedded sand, this man was a rock of fortitude and stubborn will.
A hard man was Vilidorn, and proud. He laughed at the trembling efforts of the folk to topple him, and could hold three adversaries at a time to submission beneath the waters. In wrestling and grappling no one was his master. It was said his strength outmatched the very waves.
On days of storm, when mountainous breakers roared, it was his habit to defy the sea: standing motionless in one chosen spot he would shout his challenge, his full beard shaking off the spray, his red mouth laughing. Though the waves burst above his head he would not surrender, only with the dying of the storm would he step aside, kicking the last wavelets beneath his heel. Deriding their weakness he left at last and went to venture on the ocean path, calling his challenge across the deeps.
‘I am Vilidorn, strongest of the sea folk! None can hold me against my will!’
Fish rushed away beneath him. Sea birds cried, raucous, above his head.
‘Be afraid!’ they seemed to say. ‘Beware, for one may come from the darkest cavern of the deep, whose strength you cannot guess!’
Vilidorn sensed the awesome fall beneath him, and he tried in ever farther dives to sound the creatures of the deep with his challenge.
‘I am Vilidorn and you cannot hold me! I do not fear your year-long dark.’
So then the serpent rose to the daylight, its shiny length thrashing the surface, searching for Vilidorn.
The looping body pulsed over Vilidorn’s flesh, huge suckers clung to his skin, and now he felt it draw him down. Around him its many folds throbbed and flailed as Vilidorn braced his legs and arms to force aside the pressing coils. Around his ribs one squeezing circle lay, another turned and knotted about his legs. With panic strength he ripped the slapping tail from his neck and felt the tearing of his own flesh in those thousand sucking mouths. The water clouded before him and through the murk he saw the serpent’s glowing eyes and grasping beak.
With that strength which was once his pride now dying to hollows in his arms and legs yet Vilidorn struggled on to halt his enemy. Blood from his many wounds swirled in the sea about him, like shadowy serpents trailing out his death. And yet he fiercely placed his foot against that hard shell beak, stamped back his heel into a yellowed eye. It was his final thrust and blackness pressed upon him as he felt his last air crushed out of his folded lungs.
And in that moment the grappling coils were torn away and he was freed.
Up! Up to the air again! Helpless as the weakest of the folk, Vilidorn lay on the wave tops savouring life and heard the sea birds cry, joyous, above him and watched the dash of silvered fish below.
‘Be grateful,’ they seemed to say. ‘Thank the friend who came from the deeps to your salvation.’
Then, marked across his huge brow by white craters of torn flesh from the struggle he had won, the massive head of Serbadon, the toothed whale, rose from the waters, and his quiet eye sought out Vilidorn.
‘Know yourself now, Vilidorn of the Sea Folk, and put away your pride.’
‘My life is yours, lord, and in your generosity my only pride,’ replied the weary man. ‘How can I serve you in all the days you have given me?’
‘When your strength returns you may serve me, and you may help my unhappy people: return to your beaches and watch there for my brothers. Alone and melancholy they swim onto the land to end their lives. If you can, with your strength, take them back to the deeps to die in dignity; stay by their side until the last, and try, Vilidorn, to be sure that none of my people shall ever again drift unfriended into that final abyss.’
‘Trust me in this,’ swore Vilidorn.
At that solemn pledge Serbadon sighed heavily and rolled down to the lonely deeps once more.
Then Vilidorn came again to the beach of his borning, silent and understanding, to begin his lifetime duty. So it is to this time still true that no whale will die alone if Sea Folk can be by; for this we owe that great mind in the deeps who once saved proud Vilidorn.

Can silkies help the seals?

Common seal populations around the Orkney and Shetland Islands are shrinking and the cause is not as yet understood. Could it be the result of overcrowded breeding grounds such as two silkies saw many years ago?

The island when at last they reached it lay like a fat woman at low water, hip and shoulders rising roundly from the waves, the waist a low valley between the two. The exhaustion of journey’s end almost overwhelmed Giersi, but Hancid swam on, circling to the eastern beach. Here, as they approached, the damp breeze reached them across the island and the smell of the seals was pressed into nose and mouth, eyes and face.
‘Fagh! Oh Hancid, what is it? Why does it smell so bad?’
‘You’ll see,’ he replied grimly. ‘Come.’
Only stark necessity had forced him to bring her to this place, he hated what he was doing but knew that she had to learn to leave her beloved seals. She must no longer live with them in the gheos but return and live more like a woman of the folk.
They stepped awkwardly up the beach, finding their way between the cows who lay there with their pups. Frequently they were met by an angry hiss as the seals reared up at their approach.
‘Be careful not to go too close,’ murmured Giersi, ‘They like a whole body space clear around them.’
‘Then they haven’t enough room here,’ snapped Hancid stumbling wretchedly as his awkward feet slipped in un-nameable slime and he stubbed himself painfully against stones.
Suddenly a huge bull rose up in front of them, blocking their way. The white hair of his head showed him to be a senior, used to long years of dominating the cows and younger bulls of his beach. With a snarl he loped towards them, bouncing and crashing down the beach.
‘No, no. Be careful!’ screamed Giersi, and lunged towards the rocks at the side of the beach. Hancid stumbled and fled toward the sea where the master bull halted, searching for him with bleary, coated eyes. The beach was now a scene of panic with many cows humping toward the water or striking out with agitated flippers at the press of neighbours too close to their young. Two little pups, white coated, lay crushed in their own blood, where the rush of adults had trampled them.
Looking numbly out to sea, Giersi made out Hancid working his way round to the rocks where she crouched, sobbing at the horror of what she had seen. But he was not finished yet. Cautiously he led her up into the grassland behind the beach. Here, though less crowded, the scene was the same. Cows reared up aggressively as they approached, even snarling and snapping at them. On their guard now for the big bulls the silkies were able to avoid surprising them as they slept and they kept to the higher ground, away from the muddy stream where younger bulls wallowed and eyed the cows. On all sides Hancid pointed to abandoned pups; some were long dead and black flies hung in a visible stench above them. Others, abandoned at birth, lay like helpless infants in soiled and wrinkled bags of fur, too weak to lift their heads, their eyes dulled by dirt and disease. Too many small bodies lay crushed and broken under the awesome weight of adults.
Giersi could walk no further but fell to her knees in the mud and slime of the beaten grass.
‘Why have you brought me here? What do you want to prove?’ she cried. ‘This is not their true life; they are forced to live like this. There is something evil here, Hancid. No creature chooses to be degraded into this. The island is too full. Can they not move to other, cleaner beaches? Hancid, what does this mean?’
‘There are no other beaches, Giersi. Have you never wondered why the folk live as they do, on one sparse rock, when there are oceans all round the world where they might go? There are no more beaches for the people of the sea, the landsmen want them all. And so your precious seals live here for only a short part of the year, angry, aggressive and vicious. Soon they will leave it all and go out into the waters unloving and alone until it all is forced upon them again next year. Stay with the folk, Giersi. They will never abandon you like this poor creature.’ With his foot Hancid stirred the mute body of a day-old pup huddled against a tuft of rank grass for shelter.
The pup’s fur lay in empty rolls along its narrow body, the soft white hair rumpled and damp. At the nudge of Hancid’s foot however it rolled on its side and brushed an agitated flipper at him.
‘This one has some courage left to fight against his fate,’ Giersi smiled through her ready tears. ‘Hancid, let us interfere. He has the right to life, or death with dignity. Let us take him to the gheos and give him a new chance.’
‘He will die, Giersi, he needs to be fed. Without his mother’s milk he will die in a few days. Leave the seals, Giersi, come back to the folk.’
‘You are so sure you are right. Can’t you see that I am right in this? Help me Hancid, we must bring him away, that is the only way that I can forgive you for having brought me to this evil place. Only by saving just one can I bear to think of all the rest. Without this one alive I think I must come here to kill them all, to save them from this disgusting lie, which is never life.’
Alarmed at her violence Hancid began to help her away, afraid at last of what he had begun. Slipping in the disgusting mud they staggered on, then Giersi looked back.
On the slope behind them the little pup, weeping piteously, was slithering along to follow them.
‘Borhaab!’ he cried. ‘Borhaab.’
And she knew that she would take him away. Borhaab would be his name.

**********

Balidur - who was rescued by a bird, a gannet

In the early times, when the seas were warm and the folk lived thick as smelt in the sea, their limbs silver and bronze, then there lived a boy of the folk, Balidur , who was an urchin, full of a fine mischief.
This boy Balidur was sturdy and straight-limbed and his face was open and his eyes full of light. He was a boy, honest and fair in deed, who never knew worry or care, but as a little one grew, close and comforted, strong at his mother’s side. Gentle he was and tender, guiding the steps of little ones but never heeding the words of the old: for within him lived an imp who wanted to laugh at all that he should have held good.
The old ones spoke to Balidur, his nan and the grandsires, saying, ‘Never hurt the birds, our friends. Never give them reason to fear us.’ But at this Balidur laughed:
‘Why would they fear us?’ he asked. ‘The birds can lie on the wind when we are tied to the waves. Let them rather learn to listen to us, who sing daily with more meaning than any bird, who cries his single song on the wind and then it is heard no more.’
So he laughed and would not see what the grandsires wanted to tell him, that we are all equal under the same light. And the nans told him ‘Love all creatures, Balidur, for we are all spawn of the Day Star.’ But he would not heed them, and saw in all the seas only matter for laughter and fun.
On the beach of his borning he came one day upon a large white bird. Afraid and forgotten was that bird, and white in every feather as a flake of snow. But Balidur, full of evil and fun, wanted to spoil the bird and took in his hands black lumps of clay. While the bird looked sadly on him Balidur held firm its feet, and while it could not fly spread black earth upon its wings thinking to make it heavy as he was, to make it cling to land and never more venture over the water. But the bird, staring sadly on him all the while, folded its mud-heavy feathers to flight and lifted away from Balidur, and the beach and from the folk entirely. No one saw it more for the bird knew shame with its mud-dark wings; and fear also, for no longer could he hide when on the snowy wastes of the north.
But Balidur cared nothing for the bird he had harmed in his youth. With his straight limbs and his charm he went on to hurt others, members of the folk, even the maids of his own borning, until none would be his close companion.
‘Leave us!’ said the grandsires. ‘Go now on your venture for here you hurt everyone you touch, and our hearts are made dark by you, just as you darkened the bird in the time of your childhood.’
Then Balidur went venturing, and far he swam and wide, proud in his head and too strong in his heart for any maid of the folk to hold him. So swimming he went due north, to try his pride on the ice.
Cold is the sea of the north waters, cold and hard. Ice fingers hold that sea and stretch out, unforgiving, to capture any who linger after Equinox. Yet Balidur lingered. He had seen no bear, the laughing lights had eluded him as they do so many who venture north in pride. Seals slipped away as he approached, And no birds sang.
At last the narrow grip of winter stretched across the snow, and wind from the Ultimate North scoured its surface. White drops were everywhere: up, down, before and behind, wherever he turned Balidur saw no surface any more, no snow, no sky, no sea. All, all was white.
That whiteness of the Ultimate North is all light. It is every light you ever saw, and it pierces the eyes as a beach grit would, ending all senses. In a cold white blindness Balidur circled, knowing no sense of homeward, lost and alone.
Then came the Bannern, friend of the folk. Flying ahead of him Balidur saw the dark mud wing that he himself had made. But our bird, in spite of all, held no hurt for him. Steady he flew, turning and returning until Balidur set after him. Then steady and slow he led the white-blind boy out of the snow, back to the sea, and gave him again to the waves, his home.
‘Go with the water,’ he whispered to the youth. And Balidur came home. Great the joy at that late return. Full the thanksgiving of mother and sister, thanks to the Bannern, whom none will ever harm again. Remember the Bannern, friend of the folk.

**********

The birth of a silkie

The sea murmured and flowed, soft among the outer rocks. The night was calm and mild: the moon, a fingernail of pale light low on the horizon, was reflected across the gentle swell in a shimmered line which lay straight into the cove. A glissading breeze lifted from the wave sides to whisper among the dried weeds and water-softened wood on the high drift bank left by winter’s storms. Among the grey and dusty pebbles a mass of dried whelks’ eggs shifted and pittered on the slope.
Awake in the cave, Merrin heard the slight sound and tensed. She was reacting too acutely, she knew, but she felt vulnerable, like an egg whose soft shell was only a single tight layer of skin. She was not strong enough, impervious enough, to protect the life within. The baby moved inside her and she grunted at the discomfort, moving heavily to find relief from its weight. Her time was very near and, over-reacting again; tears fell, although she would have called herself happy. She had waited so long for this and now was apprehensive: nothing must fail. Her fears, unusual among the maidens of the folk, disturbed her mother and Borry came to her, furtive in the slanting shadows, to give her the charm.
Fat Borry, folds of flesh at wrist and elbow, squatted at her daughter’s side, breathing noisily.
‘Take it, take it,’ she panted. ‘Keep hold of that, for it won’t be long now, and you’ll be sure to come through as clean as that shell. I’ve put words in it. There’s nothing to worry you, my pretty. Nothing to worry.’ She stroked Merrin’s cheek, smoothed her hair, fondling its curls. Then, pressing palms into her chubby knees levered herself upright. ‘Won’t be long now.’ She smiled bravely and waddled away. Her visit had frightened Merrin more than ever.
She looked slyly at the monster shell in her fist, smoothed and clean, the opening pink and full-fleshed. Like lips. She covered it quickly with her hand, ashamed of her thoughts. Like the other maidens she had laughed and joked recently, pulling winkles from their dark shells intact. Every whole creature promised a successful birth they said. She wished her fingers had proved nimbler.
She shifted again in her sleeping hollow, trying to ease the ache in her back, but it gripped suddenly tighter, groping deep into her groin. Her heart jumped and flexed as if it would swim up, out of her ribs: was this what she had been waiting for so long?
The young moon had set into the west when she gave her first joyful cry. It was certain: her babe was ready in its time of borning. Mothers and nans hurried round her, wide-eyed little maids watched, fingers to their mouths.
‘Outside! Outside!’ Everyone was calling and laughing, helping her to her feet, supporting her in the ritual. Out of the cave, out of the womb into the world, the world of water and of air.
She had prepared the place days before in the shelter of a leaning rock just above the tide line. The flood was running now, close beside the rock. Soon all would be complete. She stumbled a she walked but loving hands reached out, arms held her, and she lay back at last catching the rhythm of it as the sea lapped close around her, calling the child.
It seemed as if, one after another, master waves drummed on her body and their undertow tugged deep within her. She breathed, shallow gasping breaths, whenever she was able. She could see nothing, hear nothing but the sea roar in her ears. She remembered the shell and thought she was listening to its convoluted call, deep down. Deep. Down. With one wilful effort she arched her body, reached for the surface once more, and it was done. Eased into the world on a sigh, her baby was born.
Borry and an old nan took it up, lifted it away into quiet waves for washing. Maids of her own borning helped Merrin to her feet. Weary but triumphant she slid into the smooth sea and waited to be clean. Then proudly carrying her little daughter she led them all back up toward the slumbering cave.
Out on the skerries the seals called, watching suspiciously the activity on the pre-dawn beach. The womenfolk turned and looked back. Colour was drifting into the sky once more, another day waiting to be born.
‘What is coming for you?’ Merrin whispered to the infant in her arms, gazing into the folded face and rubbing dry the downy fur on shoulders and arms. ‘What lifetime of new days here among your folk, measured out by the rise and fall of the sea, your home?’
It was not thinkable that a girl-child would ever leave the home beach.