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

THE PEAT-FIRE FLAME
The impression made by the approach of Esquimos upon
a party of Americans visiting the coast of Greenland is well
illustrated by the following quotation, the source of which
I cannot recollect at the moment
" At one time, while in camp at Ikamiut, when the wind
was blowing a gale, shutting us up all day in our tent, and
tossing the waves of the fiord into such commotion that it
would have been madness for any large boat to have
ventured upon the water, we were thrilled by the cry that
some kayakers were coming. They were three that
belonged to the little settlement, and had come that day as
a matter of course from Sukkertoppen, which was twenty
miles distant. Upon reaching the shore and pulling
themselves loose from their shells (canoes), the kayakers ran
their hands into the apertures from which they had drawn
their limbs, and brought out various objects of merchandise
which they had purchased at the store for their families.
Then they severally took up their kayaks and carried them
to a secure place, and disappeared in the igloos (huts of
earth and stone), where their families soon joined them to
talk over the adventures of the week. To us they seemed
like inhabitants of the sea, who were accustomed to shed
their skins on coming out of the water."
But, for my own part, I like to think of the Seal-folk
and of the MacCodrums in particular—as vassals long, long
ago in the royal Palaces of the Kings of Lochlann, and as
having come to our Isles as secret emissaries from the
Courts of the King of Sleep. They are, indeed, the
Children of the Scandinavian King—under enchantment.
The Battle o' the Bay.
During the Great War, there served with a Highland
Regiment overseas a certain man named Morrison, a native
of Lewis, who in 1916 related the following strange story
at a road outpost, ' Somewhere in France.'
There lived in the crofting township of Barvas, in that
same Island of Lewis, an old family named MacCrimmon,
one of the male members of which fell in love with, and
married, a seal-woman. Exactly when this
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happened, no
:
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