Folklore of Scottish Lochs and Springs

by James M. Mackinlay

“The moving waters at their priest-like task

Of pure ablution round Earth’s human shore.”

Here he gives us the poetical and not the actual interpretation of a natural phenomenon.

We may, if we choose, talk of the worship of water as a creed outworn, but it is still with us, though under various disguises. Under the form of rites of divination practised as an amusement by young persons, such survivals often conceal their real origin. The history of superstition teaches us with what persistence pagan beliefs hold their ground in the midst of a Christian civilisation. Martin, who visited the Western Islands at the close of the seventeenth century, found how true this was in many details of daily life. A custom connected with ancient sea-worship had been popular among the inhabitants of Lewis till about thirty-years before his visit, but had been suppressed by the Protestant clergy on account of its pagan character. This was an annual sacrifice at Hallow-tide to a sea god called Shony. Martin gives the following account of the ceremony:—“The inhabitants round the island came to the church of St. Mulvay, having each man his provision along with him; every family furnished a peck of malt, and this was brewed into ale; one of their number was picked out to wade into the sea up to the middle, and, carrying a cup of ale in his hand, standing still in that posture, cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Shony, I give you this cup of ale, hoping that you’ll be so kind as to send us plenty of sea-ware for enriching our ground the ensuing year,’ and so threw the cup of ale into the sea. This was performed in the night-time.”

Sailors and fishermen still cherish superstitions of their own. Majesty is not the only feature of the changeful ocean that strikes them. They are keenly alive to its mystery and to the possibilities of life within its depths. Strange creatures have their home there, the mighty sea serpent and the less formidable mermen and mermaidens. Among the Shetland islands mer-folk were recognised denizens of the sea, and were known by the name of Sea-trows.

These singular beings dwelt in the caves of ocean, and came up to disport themselves on the shores of the islands. A favourite haunt of theirs was the Ve Skerries, about seven miles north-west of Papa-Stour. They usually rose through the water in the shape of seals, and when they reached the beach they slipped off their skins and appeared like ordinary mortals, the females being of exceeding beauty. If the skins could be snatched away on these occasions, their owners were powerless to escape into the sea again. Sometimes these creatures were entangled in the nets of fishermen or were caught by hooks. If they were shot when in seal form, a tempest arose as soon as their blood was mingled with the water of the sea. A family living within recent times was believed to be descended from a human father and a mermaid mother, the man having captured his bride by stealing her seal’s skin. After some years spent on land this sea lady recovered her skin, and at once returned to her native element. The members of the family were said to have hands bearing some resemblance to the forefeet of a seal.

“Of all the old mythological existences of Scotland,” remarks Hugh Miller, in his “Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland,” “there was none with whom the people of Cromarty were better acquainted than with the mermaid. Thirty years have not yet gone by since she has been seen by moonlight sitting on a stone in the sea, a little to the east of the town; and scarcely a winter passed, forty years earlier, in which she was not heard singing among the rocks or seen braiding up her long yellow tresses on the shore.”

The magical power ascribed to the sea is shown in an Orcadian witch charm used in the seventeenth century. The charm had to do with the churning of butter. Whoever wished to take advantage of it watched on the beach till nine waves rolled in. At the reflux of the last the charmer took three handfuls of water from the sea and carried them home in a pail. If this water was put into the churn there would be a plentiful supply of butter. Sea water was also used for curative purposes, the patient being dipped after sunset. This charm was thought to savour strongly of the black art. Allusion has been made above to the rising of a storm in connection with the wounding of a sea-trow in Shetland. According to an Orcadian superstition, the sea began to swell whenever anyone with a piece of iron about him stept upon a certain rock at the Noup Head of Westray. Not till the offending metal was thrown into the water did the sea become calm again. Wallace, a minister at Kirkwall towards the end of the seventeenth century, mentions this belief in his “Description of the Isles of Orkney,” and says that he offered a man a shilling to try the experiment, but the offer was refused. It does not seem to have occurred to him to make the experiment himself.

Among the ancient Romans the bull was sacred to Neptune, the sea god, and was sacrificed in his honour. In our own country we find a suggestion of the same rite, though in a modified form, in the custom prevailing at one time of leading animals into the sea on certain festivals. In the parish of Clonmany in Ireland it was formerly customary on St. Columba’s Day, the ninth of June, to drive cattle to the beach and swim them in the sea near to where the water from the Saint’s well flowed in. In Scotland horses seem at one time to have undergone a similar treatment at Lammas-tide. Dalyell, in his “Darker Superstitions of Scotland,” mentions that “in July, 1647, the kirk-session of St. Cuthbert’s Church, Edinburgh, resolved on intimating publicly ‘that non goe to Leith on Lambmes-day, nor tak their horses to be washed that day in the sea.’ ”

A belief at one time existed that it was unlucky to rescue a drowning man from the grasp of the sea. This superstition is referred to by Sir Walter Scott in “The Pirate,” in the scene where Bryce the pedlar warns Mordaunt against saving a shipwrecked sailor. “Are you mad,” said the pedlar, “you that have lived sae lang in Zetland, to risk the saving of a drowning man? Wot ye not, if you bring him to life again, he will be sure to do you some capital injury?” We discover the key to this strange superstition in the idea entertained by savages that the person falling into the water becomes the prey of the monster or demon inhabiting that element; and, as Dr. Tylor aptly remarks, “to save a sinking man is to snatch a victim from the very clutches of the water-spirit—a rash defiance of deity which would hardly pass unavenged.”