"But he'd stand out that he knew nothing of the skin; and it's a wonder he was heart-proof against her soft, deludering, soothering ways; you'd have thought she'd been a right woman all her life, to hear her working away at the 'Ah, do,' and 'Ah, don't'; and then, if she didn't exactly get what she wanted, she'd pout a bit; and if that didn't do, she'd bring him the youngest baby; and if he was hardened entirely, she'd sit down in a corner and cry; that never failed, except when she'd talk of the skin—and out and out, she never got any good of him about it—at all! But there's no end of female wit; they'll sit putting that and that together, and looking as soft and as fair-faced all the while as if they had no more care than a blind piper's dog, that has nothing to do but to catch the halfpence. 'I may as well give up watching her' said John to himself; 'for even if she did find it, and that's not likely, she might leave me (though that's not easy), but she'd never leave the children'; and so he gave her a parting kiss, and set off to the fair of Castlebar. He was away four days, longer certainly than there was any call to have been, and his mind reproached him on his way home for leaving her so long; for he was very tender about her, seeing that though she was only a seal's daughter, that seal was a king, and he made up his mind he'd never quit her so long again. And when he came to the door, it did not fly open, as it used, and show him his pretty wife, his little children, and a sparkling turf fire—he had to knock at his own door.
"'Push it in, daddy,' cried out the eldest boy; "'mammy shut it after her, and we're weak with the hunger.' So John did as his child told him, and his heart fainted, and he staggered into the room, and then up the ladder to the thatch—It was gone!—and John sat down, and his three children climbed about him, and they all wept bitterly.
"'Oh, daddy, why weren't you back the second day, as you said you'd be?' said one. 'And mammy bade us kiss you and love you, and that she'd come back if she'd be let; but she found something in the thatch that took her away.'
"'She'll never come back, darlings, till we're all in our graves,' said poor John—'she'll never come back under ninety years; and where will we all be then? She was ten years my delight and ten years my joy, and ever since ye came into the world she was the best of mothers to ye all! but she's gone—she's gone for ever! Oh, how could you leave me, and I so fond of ye? Maybe I would have burnt the skin, only for the knowledge that if I did, I would shorten her days on earth, and her soul would have to begin over again as a babby seal, and I couldn't do what would be all as one as murder.'
"So poor John lamented, and betook himself and the three children to the shore, and would wail and cry, but he never saw her after; and the children, so pretty in their infancy, grew up little withered atomies, that you'd tell anywhere to be seal's children—little, cute, yellow, shrivelled, dawshy creatures—only very sharp indeed at the learning, and crabbed in the languages, beating priest, minister, and schoolmaster—particularly at the Hebrew. More than once, though John never saw her, he heard his wife singing the songs they often sung together, right under the water; and he'd sing in answer, and then there'd be a sighing and sobbing. Oh! it was very hard upon John, for he never married again, though he knew he'd never live till her time was up to come again upon the earth even for twelve hours; but he was a fine moral man all the latter part of his life—as that showed."
As I close my book and put out my candle for the night the moonlight streaming in at the window draws me to the casement. The bay is like a sheet of quivering silver with the mountains of Achill and the island of Clare towering darkly above it. On the highway winding off white in the clear light no sign of life is visible and but for the softly sobbing winds, the silence of the night is intense. The tide is flowing to the sea and the waters are deserted save for one slowly drifting boat. One is scarcely conscious at first of any sound other than that of the winds but, as the boat draws nearer on the air floats upward one of those sad crooning melodies of these people—at first a low monotone which rises and rises, wailing all around and far above until the very mountains seem to throw back the sorrow of it. Then it falters away into silence.
From a steel engraving