“Looking down Smith Street, 1870.”
It was doubtless a flock of seals which he saw, for, although these animals are no longer found in numbers on our coasts, a stray one is occasionally, though very rarely, to be seen. They are known to exist on the opposite shores of Brittany and Normandy, and the few specimens that have been taken in our seas are of the same variety as those found on the French coast. It is not improbable that they may have been more common in former days; and it is possible that “Le Creux du Chien,” a large cavern at the foot of the cliffs to the eastward of Petit-Bôt Bay, may have been so named from being the resort of one of these amphibians.[112]
[112] From Mr. Denys Corbet.
Editor’s Note.—In Sark as well as in Guernsey they still believe in sirens, and an old man there, who had been a fisherman in his youth, told me of these women who used to sit on the rocks and sing before a storm. In Sark they are considered young and beautiful, but Guernsey fishermen talk of old women who sit on the rocks and sing, and the ships are brought closer to the rocks by the curiosity of those on board to hear this mysterious music, and then the storm comes, and the ships go to pieces on the rocks, and the sirens,—whether young or old,—carry down the sailors to the bottom of the sea, and eat them. So the tradition goes.
Referring to the legend of the Changeling, as related on pages 219-220, Paul Sébillot also tells a story very similar to this. Tome I. p. 118-119.
Un jour une femme dit à sa voisine,—“Ma pauvre commère, je crains que mon gars a été changé par les Margots … j’voudrais bien savoir c’qui faut faire.”
“ … Vous prendrez d’s œufs; vous leur casserez le petit bout, et puis d’cela vous mettrez des petits brochiaux d’bois dedans; vous allumerez un bon feu; vous les mettrez autour, debout; et vous mènerez le petit faitiau à se chauffer aussi.”