from another world...
Halichoerus grypus.
The two words could be magic words. They could be the mysterious, powerful words of a fine incantation.
But they aren't. Halichoerus grypus is no more than the scientific name for Atlantic grey seals. Our seals. Dull, ugly beasts, some say. Ill-tempered and smelly. No magic in them, never mind what superstitious folk believed in years past.
All right. Maybe there is no magic in the scientific name, but other names the seals have in plenty among our islands, and older names: Silkie, selkie, Sea-trow, Roane, the People of the Sea.
Those are better names to conjure with. Those are names in which it is much easier to catch the glint and glimmer of deep magic.
Of course, the realists assure us there was no magic, that the legends were mere fiction. Humans cursed to live most of their lives as seals never existed, they say. They were no more than imagination, spoken into being by our ancestors as they sat before their smoldering peat fires during the never-ending nights of winter.
Maybe the realists, with their solid, earth-bound thinking, are right. We know that the ancient Celts and Norsemen, whose blood flows in our veins, existed in the Hebrides alongside forces and events far beyond their comprehension. We know that what they lacked in scientific knowledge, they made up with dreaming and mythic, mystic explanations. But we also know that the People of the Sea fascinated them from the beginning.
Observing the seal's weeping, they saw the sorrowing soul of royalty cursed by black magic. Listening to his eerie song, they heard voices from another world. They gifted the Selkie with power denied to themselves. Power over storm. Power over sea. Power to grant a heart's dearest wish.
The love of the Seal-folk, the fear of them, the very life of them entwined with the life of the old islanders. So bewitched was the human population that some among them even counted the seals flesh of their flesh and blood of their blood. Wonderful, magical histories they wove for us, histories that were believed in remote areas into the twentieth century.
Silkie, Selkie, Sea-trow, Roane, the People of the Sea.
In our shrunken world and our enlightened age most of us have put the old beliefs, as well as the old names, behind us. They are dusty, discarded relics of another era, a mere curiosity.
Science has provided meteorology to explain away the storms and marine biology to show us there is no enchanted human beneath the seal's sleek fur and tearful eyes. They never existed, these People of the Sea, except in the hearts and on the tongues of our ancestors.
Halichoerus grypus we have with us still. The Selkie--with all their magic--are, of course, pure myth.
Or they are not.
The two words could be magic words. They could be the mysterious, powerful words of a fine incantation.
But they aren't. Halichoerus grypus is no more than the scientific name for Atlantic grey seals. Our seals. Dull, ugly beasts, some say. Ill-tempered and smelly. No magic in them, never mind what superstitious folk believed in years past.
All right. Maybe there is no magic in the scientific name, but other names the seals have in plenty among our islands, and older names: Silkie, selkie, Sea-trow, Roane, the People of the Sea.
Those are better names to conjure with. Those are names in which it is much easier to catch the glint and glimmer of deep magic.
Of course, the realists assure us there was no magic, that the legends were mere fiction. Humans cursed to live most of their lives as seals never existed, they say. They were no more than imagination, spoken into being by our ancestors as they sat before their smoldering peat fires during the never-ending nights of winter.
Maybe the realists, with their solid, earth-bound thinking, are right. We know that the ancient Celts and Norsemen, whose blood flows in our veins, existed in the Hebrides alongside forces and events far beyond their comprehension. We know that what they lacked in scientific knowledge, they made up with dreaming and mythic, mystic explanations. But we also know that the People of the Sea fascinated them from the beginning.
Observing the seal's weeping, they saw the sorrowing soul of royalty cursed by black magic. Listening to his eerie song, they heard voices from another world. They gifted the Selkie with power denied to themselves. Power over storm. Power over sea. Power to grant a heart's dearest wish.
The love of the Seal-folk, the fear of them, the very life of them entwined with the life of the old islanders. So bewitched was the human population that some among them even counted the seals flesh of their flesh and blood of their blood. Wonderful, magical histories they wove for us, histories that were believed in remote areas into the twentieth century.
Silkie, Selkie, Sea-trow, Roane, the People of the Sea.
In our shrunken world and our enlightened age most of us have put the old beliefs, as well as the old names, behind us. They are dusty, discarded relics of another era, a mere curiosity.
Science has provided meteorology to explain away the storms and marine biology to show us there is no enchanted human beneath the seal's sleek fur and tearful eyes. They never existed, these People of the Sea, except in the hearts and on the tongues of our ancestors.
Halichoerus grypus we have with us still. The Selkie--with all their magic--are, of course, pure myth.
Or they are not.
from Song of Healing, dhparker