Greyling

The Fisherfolk who live in the Scottish islands of Shetland and Orkney tell many strange and beautiful tales of the Selchies, the seals who take on human form.

Once on a time a fisherman and his wife lived by the side of the sea. All that they ate came out of the sea. Their hut was covered with the finest mosses that kept them cool in the summer and warm in the winter. And there was nothing they needed or wanted except a child.

Each morning, when the moon slipped down behind the water and the sun rose up behind the plains, the wife would say to the fisherman, “You have your boat and your nets and your lines. But I have no baby to hold in my arms.” And again, in the evening, it was the same. She would weep and rock the cradle that stood by the hearth. But year in and year out the cradle stayed empty.

Now the fisherman was also sad that they had no child. But he kept his sorrow to himself so that his wife would not know his grief and thus double her own. Indeed, he would leave the hut each morning with a song and return each night with a whistle on his lips. His nets were full but his heart was empty, yet he never told his wife.

One sunny day, the fisherman as usual set down to his boat. But this day he found a small grey seal on the sand, crying for its own.

The fisherman looked up the beach and down. He looked in front of him and behind. And he looked to the town on the great grey cliffs that went down into the sea. But there were no other seals in sight.

So he took off his shirt. Then he dipped it into the water and wrapped the seal pup carefully.

“You have no father and you have no mother,” he said. “And I have no child. So you shall come home with me.”

And the fisherman did no fishing that day but brought the seal pup wrapped in his shirt, straight home to his wife.

When she saw him coming home early with no shirt on, the fisherman’s wife ran out of the hut. Then she looked wonderingly at the bundle which he held in his arms.

“It is nothing,” he said, “but a seal pup I found on the beach. I thought we could give it love and care until it is old enough to go to the sea.”

The fisherman’s wife nodded and took the bundle. Then she uncovered the wrapping and gave a loud cry. “Nothing!” she said. “You call this nothing?”

The fisherman looked. Instead of a seal lying in his shirt, there was a strange child with great grey eyes and silvery grey hair, smiling up at him.

The fisherman cried: “It is a selchie, I have heard of them. They are men upon the land and seals in the sea. I thought it was but a tale.”

“Then he shall remain a man upon the land,” said the fisherman’s wife, clutching the child in her arms, “for I shall never let him return to the sea.”

“Never,” agreed the fisherman, for he knew how his wife had wanted a child. And in his secret heart, he wanted one, too. Yet he felt, somehow, it was wrong.

“We shall call him Greyling.” said the fisherman’s wife, “for his eyes and hair are the color of a storm-coming sky. Greyling, though he has brought sunlight into our home.”

And though they still lived by the side of the water in a hut covered with mosses that kept them warm in the winter and cool in, the summer, the boy Greyling was never allowed in the sea.

He grew from a child to a lad. He grew from a lad to a young man. He gathered driftwood for his mother’s hearth and searched the tide pools for shells for her mantel. He mended his father’s nets and tended his father’s boat. But though he often stood by the shore or high in the town on the great grey cliffs, looking and longing for what he did not really know, he never went into the sea.

Then one windy morning, just fifteen years from the day that Greyling had been found, a great storm blew up suddenly in the North. It was such a storm as had never been seen before; the sky turned nearly black and even the fish had trouble swimming. The wind pushed huge waves onto the shore. The waters reached the little hut on the beach. And Greyling and the fisherman’s wife were forced to run away to the town high on the great grey cliffs. There they looked down at the boiling sea. Far from shore they saw the fisherman’s boat, its sails flapping like the wings of a wounded gull. And clinging to the broken mast was the fisherman himself, sinking deeper with every wave.

The fisherman’s wife gave a terrible cry. “Will no one save him?” she called to the people of the town who had gathered on the edge of the cliff. “Will no one save my own dear husband who is all of life to me?”

But the townsmen looked away. There was no man there who dared risk his life in that sea, even to save a drowning soul.

“Will no one at all save him?” she cried out again.

“Let the boy go,” said one old man, pointing at Greyling with his stick. “He looks strong enough.”

But the fisherman’s wife held Greyling in her arms and closed his ears with her hands. She did not want him to go into the sea. She was afraid he would never return.

“Will no one save my own dear heart?” cried the fisherman’s wife for a third and last time.

But shaking their heads, the people of the town went to their houses and shut their doors and locked their windows and set their backs to the ocean and their faces to the fire that was in every hearth.

“I will save him, Mother,” cried Greyling, “or die as I try.”

Before she could tell him to stop, he broke from her grasp and dived from the top of the great cliffs, down, down, down into the stormy sea.

“He will surely sink,” whispered the women as they ran from their warm fires to watch.

“He will certainly drown,” called the men as they took down their spyglasses from the shelves.

They gathered on the cliffs and watched the boy dive down into the sea.

As Greyling disappeared beneath the waves, little fingers of foam tore at his clothes. They took off his shirt, his trousers and his shoes and sent them away to the shore. And as Greyling went deeper beneath the waves, even his skin seemed to move away till he swam, free at last, in the grey coat of a great grey seal.

The selchie had returned to the sea.

But the people of the town did not see this. All they saw was the diving boy disappearing under the waves and then, farther out, a large seal swimming towards the boat in the sea. The grey seal, with no effort at all, brought the fisherman to the shore, though the waves were wild and bright with foam. And then, with a final salute, it turned its back on the land and headed joyously out to sea.

The fisherman’s wife hurried down to the sand. And behind her followed the people of the town. They searched up the beach and down, but they did not find the boy.

“A brave son,” said the men when they found his shirt, for they thought he was certainly drowned.

“A very brave son,” said the women when they found his shoes, for they thought him lost for sure.

“Has he really gone?” asked the fisherman’s wife of her husband when at last they were alone.

“Yes, quite gone,” the fisherman said to her. “Gone where his heart calls, gone to the great wide sea. And though my heart grieves at his leaving, it tells me this way is best.”

The fisherman’s wife sighed. And then she cried. But at last she agreed that, perhaps, it was best. “For he is both man and seal,” she said. “And though we cared for him for a while, now he must care for himself.” And she never cried again.

So once more they lived alone by the side of the sea in a new little hut which was covered with mosses to keep them warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

Yet, once a year, a great grey seal is seen at night near the fisherman’s home. And the people, in town talk of it, and wonder. But seals do come to the shore and men do go to the sea; and so the town folk do not talk of it very long.

But it is no ordinary seal. It is Greyling himself come home — come to tell his parents tales of the lands that lie far beyond the waters, and to sing them songs of the wonders that lie far beneath the sea.