The peat-fire flame : folk-tales and traditions of the Highlands & Islands

the peat-fire flame
Clan MacCodrum of the Seals.
In the Hebrides it is believed that the seals were royal
attendants in the Palaces of Lochlann (Norway), in the
Land of the King of Sleep, whence they came to the shores
of Western and Northern Scotland and of Ireland in the
capacity of secret emissaries in the service of the Kings of
Lochlann.
The North Uist sept known as the Clan MacCodrum of
the Seals, a sept of the historic Clan Ranald of the Isles,
has been named traditionally, and for centruies, the Children
of the Seals. The tradition of the Seal-folk as it existed
in the Hebrides is alluded to by Sheriff Nicolson among his
collection of Gaelic proverbs, where he makes mention of
the Clann Mhic-Codruim nan Rdn, the Children of
MacCodrum of the Seals. Nicolson recites the Seal-folk
legend concerning the MacCodrums' having been
metamorphosed into seals. But, though they altered their
form, they still retained their human souls. In the Outer
Hebrides generally, and in North Uist particularly, popular
belief has it that the MacCodrums were seals by day, and
human beings by night. And, since the MacCodrums were
conscious of their seal affinity, nothing would induce them
to kill or to molest or injure a seal in any way.
Whereas the natives of Western Ireland refrained from
interfering with seals because they looked upon them as
transformed human beings, the MacCodrums of the
Hebrides showed them the greatest deference, not merely
because they believed them to be of human origin, but
because they believed them to be of their very own flesh and
blood—their very kith and kin.
Seal-folk tradition in the Western Highlands and Islands
asserts that the Clan MacCodrum of the Seals derived its
title from a progenitor who, when wandering by the shore
of his Hebridean isle, came upon a company of seals when
they were in the act of discarding their seal-coats before
bathing themselves. Home with one of the coats dashed
MacCodrum ; and he was on the point of concealing his find
above the lintel of his door when its seal-woman owner
followed him in. This seal-woman MacCodrum restrained
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