The Fisherman and the Merman - Page 2

escaped the attack
of the boatmen, approach the skerry, disrobe themselves of their
amphibious hides, and resume the shape of the sons and daughters of the
ocean. Their first object was to assist in the recovery of their
friends, who having been stunned by clubs, had, while in that state, been
deprived of their skins. When the flayed animals had regained their
sensibility, they assumed their proper form of mermen or merwomen, and
began to lament in a mournful lay, wildly accompanied by the storm that
was raging around, the loss of their sea-dress, which would prevent them
from again enjoying their native azure atmosphere, and coral mansions
that lay below the deep waters of the Atlantic. But their chief
lamentation was for Ollavitinus, the son of Gioga, who, having been
stripped of his seal's skin, would be for ever parted from his mates, and
condemned to become an outcast inhabitant of the upper world. Their song
was at length broken off, by observing one of their enemies viewing, with
shivering limbs and looks of comfortless despair, the wild waves that
dashed over the stack. Gioga immediately conceived the idea of rendering
subservient to the advantage of the son the perilous situation of the
man. She addressed him with mildness, proposing to carry him safe on her
back across the sea to Papa Stour, on condition of receiving the seal-
skin of Ollavitinus. A bargain was struck, and Gioga clad herself in her
amphibious garb; but the Shetlander, alarmed at the sight of the stormy
main that he was to ride through, prudently begged leave of the matron,
for his better preservation, that he might be allowed to cut a few holes
in her shoulders and flanks, in order to procure, between the skin and
the flesh, a better fastening for his hands and feet. The request being
complied with, the man grasped the neck of the seal, and committing
himself to her care, she landed him safely at Acres Gio in Papa Stour;
from which place he immediately repaired to a skeo at Hamna Voe, where
the skin was deposited, and honourably fulfilled his part of the
contract, by affording Gioga the means whereby her son could again
revisit the ethereal space over which the sea spread its green mantle.