Secrets of the Sea House

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank John MacAulay whose book, Sliochd nan Ron: Seal-Folk and Ocean Paddlers, furnished much of the information used in this novel,

booming low note fills the hall, and a single voice starts to sing above it in Gaelic, the song of the Sula Skerrie seal man.

I am at a loss myself to understand why we have these three variations on a similar story of a seaman: the mermaid, the Selkie and the Finnman.’

McOdrum, from the Norse ‘Son of Odrum, or son of the sea serpent’. This family has attached to its lineage a Norse legend. The family are reputedly descended from the King of Norway, who remarried with a Sami witch. In a fit of jealousy she cursed his sons so that they became seal men or ‘sliochd nan ron’.

see, that’s what you have to do to send a haunting spirit back to the day it came from; you must call things by their true name. That is the easy part. Of course, the other part is harder – naming the spirit that was placed onto the spoons or the key or the letter. Many, many things can get a spirit put on them.

thing you have to understand is that the islands are not separated by the sea but connected by it. Everyone has a boat of some description, sooner or later.

I did see the tears running down her cheek, which made me angry that she should enjoy the songs of our sadness; as Maggie did sing about the Uists, where she lived as a girl before the factor there cleared them all away to live or die best they can

I recognised a few of the old farm implements: hoes and cas-chrom spades, a group of rough and ready butter churns and a large stone with a hollowed-out centre – an old hand quern for grinding corn.

We soon realised that what the host should be doing was preparing a snack, or strupach,

Or he would carve from bone, tiny figures of seals and porpoises that he gave to the boy.