Apart from the seal having possibly given rise to legends of the mermaid, it has a distinguished position in superstition and mythology on its own account. In Shetland it is the “haff-fish,” or selkie, a fallen spirit. Evil is sure to follow the unfortunate destroyer of one of these creatures. In the Faroe Islands there is a superstition that the seals cast off their skins every ninth night and appear as mortals, dancing until daybreak on the sands. Sometimes they are induced to marry, but if ever they recover their skins they betake themselves again to the water.
Stephen of Byzantium relates that the ships of certain Greek colonists were on their expeditions followed by an immense number of seals, and it was probably on this account that the city they founded in Asia received the name of Phocea, from φώκη (Phoké), the Greek name of a seal, and they also adopted that animal as the type or badge of the city upon their coinage. The gold pieces of the Phoceans were well known among the Greek States, and are frequently referred to by ancient writers. “Thus from a single coin,” says Noel Humphreys,[29] “we obtain the corroboration of the legend of the swarm of seals, of the remote epoch of the emigration in question, the coin being evidently of the earliest period, most probably of the middle of the seventh century before the Christian era.”
Luigi (+ 1598), brother to the Duke of Mantua, had for device a seal asleep upon a rock in a troubled sea, with the motto: “Sic quiesco” (“So rest I”). The seal, say the ancient writers, is never struck by lightning. The Emperor Augustus always wore a belt of seal-skin. “There is no living creature sleepeth more soundly,” says Pliny,[30] “therefore when storms arise and the sea is rough the seal goes upon the rocks where it sleeps in safety unconscious of the storm.”
The poet Spenser embodies many of the conceptions of his time in the description of the crowning adventures of the Knight Guyon. He here refers to “great sea monsters of all ugly shapes and horrible aspects” “such as Dame Nature’s self might fear to see.”
“Spring-headed hydras, and sea-shouldering whales;
Great whirlpools, which all fishes make to flee;
Bright scolopendras arm’d with silver scales;
Mighty monoceroses with unmeasured tails;
The dreadful fish that hath deserved the name
Of death, and like him looks in dreadful hue;
The grisly wasserman, that makes his game
The flying ships with swiftness to pursue;
The horrible sea-satyr that doth shew
His fearful face in time of greatest storm;
Huge Ziffius, whom mariners eschew
No less than rocks, as travellers inform;
And greedy rose-marines with visages deform;
All these, and thousand thousand many more
And more deformed monsters, thousandfold.”
Faerie Queen, Book ii. cant. xii.
The early heralds took little account of these dreadful creatures—more easily imagined by fearful mariners or by poets than depicted by artists from their vague descriptions. The most imaginative of the tribe rarely ventured beyond such representations of marine monsters as appealed strongly and clearly to the universal sense of mankind—compounds of marine and land animals—either from a belief in the existence of such creatures, or because they used them as emblems or types of qualities, combining for this purpose the attributes of certain inhabitants of the sea with those of the land or of the air to form the appropriate symbol.
In modern heraldry such bearings are usually adopted with special allusion to actions performed at sea, or they have reference in some way to the name or designation of the bearer, and hence termed allusive or canting heraldry. Some maritime towns bear nautical devices of the fictitious kind referred to. For instance, the City of Liverpool has for supporters Neptune with his trident, and a Triton with his horn. Cambridge and Newcastle-on-Tyne have sea-horses for supporters to their city’s arms. Belfast has the sea-horse for sinister supporter and also for crest.
Many of the nobility also bear, either as arms or supporters, these mythical sea creatures, pointing in many instances to memorable events in their family history; indeed, as islanders and Britons, marine emblems—real and mythical—enter largely into our national heraldry.