[12] This peculiar feat is mentioned by Drs. Rink and Nansen, as well as in connection with the Greenlander of 1816. Another "kayak" custom may here be noticed. Brand stated of the Orkney Finn-man, that "when in a storm he seeth the high surge of a wave approaching, he hath a way of sinking his Boat, till the wave pass over, least thereby he should be overturned." This manifestly does not refer to the deliberate overturning for amusement, in calm weather. But Hans Egede, in describing the Eskimo kayakers of Greenland, during the eighteenth century, is evidently speaking of the usage referred to by Brand, when he says: "They do not fear venturing out to sea in these boats in the greatest storms; because they can swim as light upon the largest waves as a bird can fly: and when the waves come upon them with all their fury, they only turn the side of the boat towards them, to let them pass, without the least danger of being sunk." (Quoted in the Scots Magazine of 1816, p. 654.)
[13] Mr. R. M. Ballantyne; "Ungava," chap. xx.
[14] This illustration appears in Mr. Carstensen's "Two Summers in Greenland." London, Chapman & Hall, 1890.
[15] Gentleman's Magazine, March 1, 1882.
[16] Contemporary Review, September, 1881.
[17] Contemporary Review, August, 1881. In the Archæological Review (June, 1889, pp. 219-220) Mr. G. L. Gomme gives various references of this kind, Irish and Shetlandic. One instance describes the "Merrow" ancestress as "half fish and half woman," which corresponds with the Shetlandic "sêlkie-wife," or seal-woman. More extreme still is the tradition that the Irish clan of Coneely, like the natives of Burra Firth, in Unst, are actually descended from "seals."
[18] Preface to Leyden's "Mermaid," in "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border."
[19] "Letters from the Isle of Man." London 1847; p. 59.
[20] The allusion in "Hudibras" bears more specially on the custom of selling the winds in bags or "bottled;" which is a variation of the Manx practice.
[21] The preface to Leyden's "Mermaid."