[A "GOOD FAIRY" OF TRADITION] " [173]
THE TESTIMONY OF TRADITION.
CHAPTER I.
In one of an interesting series of papers on "Scottish, Shetlandic, and Germanic Water Tales,"[2] Dr. Karl Blind remarks as follows:—
It is in the Shetland Tales that we hear a great deal of creatures partly more than human, partly less so, which appear in the interchangeable shape of men and seals. They are said to have often married ordinary mortals, so that there are, even now, some alleged descendants of them, who look upon themselves as superior to common people.
In Shetland, and elsewhere in the North, the sometimes animal-shaped creatures of this myth, but who in reality are human in a higher sense, are called Finns. Their transfiguration into seals seems to be more a kind of deception they practise. For the males are described as most daring boatmen, with powerful sweep of the oar, who chase foreign vessels on the sea. At the same time they are held to be deeply versed in magic spells and in the healing art, as well as in soothsaying. By means of a "skin" which they possess, the men and the women among them are able to change themselves into seals. But on shore, after having taken off their wrappage, they are, and behave like, real human beings. Anyone who gets hold of their protecting garment has the Finns in his power. Only by means of the skin can they go back to the water. Many a Finn woman has got into the power of a Shetlander and borne children to him; but if a Finn woman succeeded in reobtaining her sea-skin, or seal-skin, she escaped across the water. Among the older generation in the Northern isles persons are still sometimes heard of who boast of hailing from Finns; and they attribute to themselves a peculiar luckiness on account of that higher descent.
Tales of the descent of certain families from water beings of a magic character are very frequent in the ... North. In Ireland such myths also occur sporadically. In Wales ... the origin from mermen or mermaids is often charged as a reproach upon unhappy people; and rows originate from such assertions. In Shetland the reverse is, or was, the case. There the descendants of Finns have been wont to boast of their origin; regarding themselves as favourites of Fortune....
But who are the Finns of the Shetlandic story? Are they simply a poetical transfiguration of finny forms of the flood? Or can the Ugrian race of the Finns, which dwells in Finland, in the high north of Norway, and in parts of Russia, have something to do with those tales in which a Viking-like character is unmistakable?
Repeated investigations have gradually brought me to the conviction that the Finn or Seal stories contain a combination of the mermaid myth with a strong historical element—that the Finns are nothing else than a fabulous transmogrification of those Norse "sea-dogs," who from eld have penetrated into the islands round Scotland, into Scotland itself, as well as into Ireland. "Old sea-dog" is even now a favourite expression for a weather-beaten, storm-tossed skipper—a perfect seal among the wild waves.
The assertion of a "higher" origin of still living persons from Finns ... would thus explain itself as a wildly legendary remembrance of the descent from the blood of Germanic conquerors. The "skin" wherewith the Finns change themselves magically into sea-beings I hold to be their armour, or coat of mail. Perhaps that coat itself was often made of seal-skin, and then covered with metal rings, or scales, as we see it in Norman pictures; for instance, on the Bayeux tapestry. The designation of Norwegian and Danish conquerors, in Old Irish history, as "scaly monsters," certainly fits in with this hypothesis.
But however the Finn name may be explained etymologically, at all events Norway appears in the Shetland tales, and in the recollection of the people there, as the home of the "Finns." And this home—as I see from an interesting bit of folk-lore before me—is evidently in the south of Norway....
"Before coming to this important point, I may mention a Shetlandic spell-song ... [which] refers to the cure of the toothache; the Finn appearing therein as a magic medicine-man:—
A Finn came ow'r fa Norraway,
Fir ta pit töth-ache away—
Oot o' da flesh an' oot o' da bane;
Oot o' da sinew an' oot o' da skane;
Oot o' da skane an' into da stane;
An dare may do remain!
An dare may do remain!
An dare may do remain!In this, though not strictly and correctly, alliterative song, the Finn is not an animal-shaped creature of the deep, but a man, a charm-working doctor from Norway.... Presently we will, however, see that the Finns of the Shetlandic stories are martial pursuers of ships, to whom ransom must be paid in order to get free from them. This cannot apply ... to a mere marine animal or sea monster: for what should such a creature do with ransom money?... As to their animal form, Mr. George Sinclair writes:—
"Sea monsters are for most part called 'Finns' in Shetland. They have the power to take any shape of any marine animal, as also that of human beings. They were wont to pursue boats at sea, and it was dangerous in the extreme to say anything against them. I have heard that silver money was thrown overboard to them to prevent their doing any damage to the boat. In the seal-form they came ashore every ninth night to dance on the sands. They would then cast off their skins, and act just like men and women. They could not, however, return to the sea without their skins—they were simply human beings, as an old song says:
"'I am a man upo' da land;
I am a selkie i' da sea.
An' whin I'm far fa every strand,
My dwelling is in Shöol Skerry.'"
There are many such folk-tales in the northern Thule. A man, we learn, always gets possession of the Finn woman by seizing the skin she has put off. One of these stories says that the captured Finn woman would often leave her husband to enjoy his slumber alone, and go down amongst the rocks to converse with her Finn one: but the inquisitive people who listened could not understand a single word of the conversation. She would, it is said, return after such interviews with briny and swollen eyes.
The human family of this Finn were human in all points except in hands, which resembled web feet. Had the foolish man who was her husband burnt or destroyed the skin, the Finn woman could never have escaped. But the man had the skin hidden, and it was found by one of the bairns, who gave it to his mother. Thereupon she fled; and it is said that she cried at parting with her family very bitterly. The little ones were the only human beings she cared for. When the father came home, he found the children in tears, and on learning what had happened, bounded through the standing corn to the shore, where he only arrived in time to see, to his grief, his good wife shaking flippers and embracing an ugly brute of a seal. She cried:—
"Blissins' be wi' de,
Baith de and da bairns!
Bit do kens, da first love
Is aye da best!"whereupon she disappeared with her Finn husband and lover.
... I here give what Mr. Robert Sinclair says of the capture of Finn brides by Shetlanders:
"Each district, almost, has its own version of a case where a young Shetlander had married a female Finn. They were generally caught at their toilet in the tide-mark, having doffed the charmed covering, and being engaged in dressing their flowing locks while the enamoured youth, by some lucky stroke, secured the skin, rendering the owner a captive victim of his passion. Thus it was that whole families of a mongrel race sprang up, according to tradition. The Finn women were said to make good housewives. Yet there was generally a longing after some previous attachment; if ever a chance occurred of recovering the essential dress, no newly formed ties of kindred could prevent escape and return to former pleasures. This was assiduously guarded against on the one side, and watched on the other; but, as the story goes, female curiosity and cunning were always more than a match for male care and caution; and the Finn woman always got the slip. One or two of these female Finns were said to have the power to conjure up from the deep a superior breed of horned cattle; and these always throve well. I have seen some pointed out to me as the offspring of these 'sea-kye.'"
In answer to my question, the Shetland friend lays great stress on the fact of the Finn woman being wholly distinct from the Mermaid....
Of the Finn man my informant says:—
"Stories of the Norway Finns were rife in my younger days. These were said to be a race of creatures of human origin no doubt, but possessed of some power of enchantment by which they could, with the use of a charmed seal-skin, become in every way, to all appearance, a veritable seal; only retaining their human intelligence. It seems that any seal-skin could not do; each must have their specially prepared skin before they could assume the aquatic life. But then they could live for years in the sea. Yet they were not reckoned as belonging to the natural class of 'amphibia.' As man or seal they were simply Finns, and could play their part well in either element. Their feats were marvellous. It was told me as sheer truth that they could pull across to Bergen—nearly 300 miles—in a few hours, and that, while ordinary mortals were asleep, they could make the return voyage. Nine miles for every warp (stroke of the oar) was the traditional speed...."
Here, then, the Finns are men of human origin; remaining intelligent men in their sea-dog raiment; coming from Norway; not swimming like marine animals, but rowing between Shetland and Norway—namely, to the town of Bergen, which lies in the southern ... part of Norway. As strong men at sea, they row with magic quickness.... Each one of them ... must have his specially prepared skin.... There is nothing here of the swimming and dipping down of a seal.
We have followed Dr. Karl Blind so far. But, while recognizing the value of his statements and comments up to this point, it is necessary to give only a modified assent to some of his subsequent deductions, and to flatly deny the correctness of others; because his researches in "Shetlandic folk-lore" have clearly been too limited in their extent, or rather, he has omitted to check those traditions by any possible contemporary records. Some of those tales were received from a Shetland woman "who strongly believed in the Finns, and declared herself to be a descendant of them.... She was, she said, the 'fifth from the Finns,' and she attributed great luckiness to herself, although she was as poor as poor could be." One of her stories is of her father's great-grandfather; and as this ancestor of the woman's is not spoken of as a "Finn," it would seem that she was "fifth from the Finns" through another branch of her lineage. But, at any rate, this progenitor in the fourth degree cannot have belonged to a much later period than the middle of the eighteenth century. However, we shall see these Shetland Finns more plainly described if we turn to the latter part of the seventeenth century.
In "A Description of the Isles of Orkney," written by the Rev. James Wallace, A.M., Minister of Kirkwall, about the year 1688, one reads as follows:—