The Seal's Daughter
by Harriet Goodchild
Genre: Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Swearwords: None.
Description: The seal's daughter falls in love with a young fisherman, but she's given three promises to the king.
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So buy me, so buy me an acre of land
Tell me a riddle and sing me a rhyme
Between the sea water and the sea sand
If you would be a true lover of mine.
The cambric shirt, Traditional
I had this tale from my grandam when I was a girl; she had it from hers and so it must be true.
Once there was a seal that watched a fisherman. Swimming in the sound, she watched him set out his creels by day; resting on a rock beneath the tideline, she watched him haul his boat out of the water come the evening. She saw his back was broad, and his arm was strong, and his smile sweet enough to drown in. And on the spring equinox, in the evening when the world is at its balance, she swam up to the shingle and took off her skin, as all seals can do, and buried it beneath a hawthorn bush at the head of the beach. Then she went a-knocking at the fisherman’s door and, when he opened it to see a woman clad in nothing but her own wet hair, you may be sure he did not hesitate to let her in.
Well, that night went by happily enough and so did a twelvesmonth after it, and in that time the seal mended his nets by day and warmed his bed by night, merry as any woman is when she has a young and lusty man to keep her company. But a seal’s skin dries out without the seal within to keep it supple and if left too long empty will never fit again. Then she must walk the land forever, a woman amongst women. So after a year and a night, she got up from his bed and kissed the fisherman as he lay sleeping, and looked her last on her little daughter in her cradle, and went out of his house alone. She found her skin beneath the thorn and put it on and slipped back into the sea, never to walk again upon the land.
So the fisherman woke to find himself alone but, though he missed the seal sorely, he bore her no ill will. She had told no lies and made no promises and he was wise enough to know a seal cannot help her nature. And he had besides her daughter to keep him company for, being born above the tideline, the babe had only the one skin to wear her whole life long. But it was a very fine one and, when the seal’s daughter was grown, she was the fairest lass in all Lyikené, her face sweet as a briar rose at midsummer, her hair bright as sunlight on water. Then many young men came a-courting, fishermen from the coast and clansmen from the mountains, whalemen from the north and harpers from the king’s hall but she would have none of them. She smiled and tossed back her shining hair, took their gifts of amber and of ivory, of bronze pins and honeycomb, and slipped laughing through their fingers leaving them foolish and alone.
And, like ripples spreading across water, tales spread across Lyikené of the seal’s daughter, who was so fair of face, so comely and so proud she turned away the finest men ever to walk those shores. In time, even the king himself heard them and came down to the shore upon the equinox to find out if all these tales were true. He saw the seal’s daughter in the pale sunlight before her father’s house and, from the moment of that first looking to the ending of his life, he wished only that he could take his heart from out his breast and lay it at her feet. But the seal’s daughter saw only the king, a hard, bright sight in his red cloak, his bronze sword at his side, not much more like a lover than the sun is at its rising. Even so, perhaps she would have looked beyond the red and beyond the bronze to see the man that wore them had he not said to her, speaking lordliwise as the king does, speaking foolishly as a young man does when a woman’s beauty has stolen his wits away, Come sit beside me in my hall; give me kisses three; lie down with me and be my love forever.
Now, no man of Lyikené will set himself against the king but for a woman it is another matter. For no woman wants a man who takes her heart and will for granted, as if she were but an apple ripe for the picking, even if that man be the king himself. So first the seal’s daughter thought and then she smiled and fetched three things from her father’s house. She held out her hand to show the king a pearl from an oyster, as fine a pearl as any in Lyikené and, when he had seen it, she tossed it over her shoulder onto the shingle shore, saying, On the day you give me back the pearl, I will sit beside you in your hall.
Then she put back her shining hair and showed the king a ring wrought of gold from out the later lands and of amber from the north and, when he had seen it, she threw it high and far into the sea, saying, On the day you give me back the ring, I will give you kisses three.
And then she laughed and took a bodkin in one hand and a feather from a snow goose’s breast in the other. She pricked her finger with the bodkin and let a drop of her red blood fall onto the feather and, when the king had seen it, she opened her hand for the west wind to blow it away,saying, On the day you give me back the feather, I will lie with you and be your own forever. Having done these three things she walked away without a backward glance, certain in her heart she had had the mastery for the west wind blows a long, long way, the sea keeps all it is given and no man can find a pearl among an acre of shingle. And the king was left upon the shore, foolish and alone.
Not quite alone. There was a seal lying on a rock below the tideline, watching all that had been done and listening to all that had been said.
Now this you know as well as I: the king of Lyikené is the king of the Sea People. But here’s two things perhaps you did not know: not all the Sea People live above the tideline and oftentimes the king can see what other men cannot - that is a part of what makes him the king. There and then, the king looked long and hard at that seal and, when he was certain, he set down his cloak and his sword belt, he walked to the water’s edge and held out his empty hands, waiting for the seal to speak.
A long, long time she lay on her rock and looked at him, keeping her silence, but the king was a patient man and he kept his. Love had made him foolish on the shore but he had recovered his wits and knew it behoved him to deal with her not as the king who could command her answer but as the man who wished to win her daughter. The tide sprang swiftly up the beach but the king kept his feet as salt water rose around him. On the shore, the seal’s daughter had seen a hard, bright sight in red and bronze but below the tideline the seal’s black eyes saw another thing entirely and so at last, when the sea was lapping over the rock and the king standing breastdeep in the breakers, she said, I can find you the pearl, and the ring, and the feather but only you yourself can win her heart. And without that, all the rest is nothing.
The king thought, and then he smiled. If a seal can take off her skin, he said, so too can a king. Bring me the pearl, and the ring, and the feather, and leave her heart to me. Then the seal dived deep into the sea and the king returned to his hall to set all in order before he brought his true love home.
Well, the seal’s daughter went on through her days and gave no more thought to her bargain with the king, knowing the west wind blows a long, long way, the sea keeps all it is given and no man can find a pearl in an acre of shingle, be he a hundred times a king. And surely the king had forgotten it too, for he came not again to the seashore. But in a sennight a young fisherman came, offering his labour to any that would have him in return for a share of the boat and the catch, and the old fisherman her father was minded to have a young man by, for salt water had stiffened his fingers and the wind had racked his bones. In the month that followed, the seal’s daughter glanced often and again at the handsome fisherman and each time she looked she liked better what she saw. And perhaps he saw her looking for, one morning, as he loaded creels and nets into the boat, he asked if she would go a-walking with him come the evening, since he must go up the coast on the morrow with a boatload of smoked herring for the moon’s day market. She said neither Yea! nor Nay! but at eventime he found her waiting and saw she had plaited a red ribbon into her shining hair.
So they walked together along the shore, talking of little things that did not matter, whilst the sun set and the tide ebbed and turnstones whistled all around them. And at the evening’s end, she stooped to pluck a flower of pink seathrift from a clump growing near her father’s door and tucked it in his coat without a word.
The next morning he was gone before the dawning and, before the seal’s daughter had had time to decide whether she missed him or no, there was a firm step behind her on the shingle and she turned to face the king clad all in his red and bronze. Out in the sound, a seal’s head stuck up out of the water, curious as seals are to see what goes on above the tideline. Then a turnstone, pecking at seaweed on the tideline, looked sidelong as any bird will, first with one eye towards the seal, then with the other at the king and took flight across the sea. The king marked the place where the bird had been and crossed the shore to pick something small and bright and round out of the shingle. He tossed the pearl carelessly to the seal’s daughter, saying as he did, Now come and sit beside me!
So that evening she sat in the king’s hall, at the king’s side, whilst a harper sang of the seven daughters of Mùrai, of Ala and Imacah, and other tales of love. She ate with him because a promise is a promise, and drank with him for the same reason, though the king’s red wine was sour to her taste and the king’s fine food as ashes in her mouth. All the time she ate and drank she looked neither right towards the king nor left towards his mother but only straight ahead to the tapestries hanging on the wall. When all the wine was drunk, all the food eaten and all the songs sung, when she had kept her promise, she made her courtesy to the king, another to his mother, and ran though the night back to her father’s house, thankful the sea kept all it was given and the west wind blew a long, long way, even if the king had found a pearl in an acre of shingle.
Three days later the young fisherman returned, very fine in a new shirt the colour of his eyes, with a bundle of ribbons in his pocket for her to plait into her hair. He found her waiting for him and, in the evening as they walked together along the path atop the beach, he told her of the sights and sounds of the market, the fortunetellers and jugglers, the musicians and the thieves; and, all the while he talked, she never looked but at him, at his broad shoulders, his laughing smile, his eyes deep enough to drown in. And for certain he saw her looking for, next morning, as they readied the boat for sea, he asked the old fisherman if he might court his daughter, her mother not being by to ask.
Now, never has the father lived who would not rather see his daughter matched to a king than to a fisherman, be he e’er so handsome, and so the old man sighed and sucked his teeth awhile. But then he remembered that the sea keeps all it is given, that the west wind blows a long, long way and it was better she had a fisherman to love her than no man at all. And, put that way, he liked the young man well enough for his own sake, he being handy in a boat and not one to shirk his labour or his round in the alehouse of an evening. So he gave his consent and they said no more about it.
And she was happy enough to be courted by him, and old men who had thought her lovely in her pride thought her ten times more so now she had set her pride aside and found a man to smile on. So tales spread along the coast that at last the seal’s daughter had found a man to please her and all the rest must go elsewhere a-courting. Perhaps such tales reached the king’s ears, perhaps they did not, but certaintimes he did not come again to the shore. And glad enough the seal’s daughter was of it and told herself, though the king had found the pearl, she had still the mastery. This being so, there was nothing to stand in the way of the fisherman’s courtship but he was in no hurry to take her from her father’s house and, each time she complained of his slowness, he said only that he was minded to wait until he had a house of his own to put her in.
And that was the reason he gave her when he told her he must away a sennight to his own village, since a man there owed him ten of ivory and the debt had fallen due. So the old fisherman fished alone and the seal’s daughter put away her ribbons and would not smile until her father scolded her into a better humour. For he was not a man to think highly of long courtships, his own having taken no longer than the time between one tide and the next, and had long wondered what need there was to wait, if he were willing and she were willing.
On the third day in the morning, as she sat before her father’s house cleaning fish to ready them for the drying racks, the seal’s daughter heard a crunch of shingle and then a shadow fell across her. Looking up, she saw the king’s red and bronze and, at his back, a man with an osprey on his gloved arm. The king’s man unfastened its jesses and gave it to the king, who drew off its hood and held it high. The great bird beat its wings against the air waiting for the king cast it off. Soaring high into the sunlight, it circled the bay until it saw its mark and stooped to snatch a silver fish from out the waves nearby where a seal was swimming. Its task completed, the osprey dropped its fish at the king’s feet to alight on his fist where he made much of it, feeding it from his own hand. Then the king gave back the bird and dismissed his man, that he might speak with the seal’s daughter alone.
Clean it, the king bade her, pointing at the fish. She took her knife and made a crimson slit from head to tail so all the guts spilled out and with them her own gold ring. Three kisses you promised me, said the king as she stared down at it, Three kisses I’ll have of you but I can wait until you’ve washed your hands.
Slowly, slowly she walked to the water’s edge to rinse fishes’ blood and fishes’ scales from her hands; slowly, slowly she walked back, thinking of her fisherman’s laughing eyes and smiling mouth, wishing she had never been so foolish as to set herself against the king. But a promise is a promise, and she must keep it. So she closed her eyes and stood up on her toes, put her arms around the king’s neck and kissed him, feeling his smooth skin beneath her lips, very unlike the rough cheeks of a fisherman. She kissed his brow, she kissed his cheek and he was so still beneath her kisses she might have been embracing a wooden figure carved on a ship’s prow. But when she kissed his mouth his arms closed tight around her; he pulled her close and kissed her long and longingly, and her heart beat fast to know lying beneath the king’s red and bronze there was a man desired her. She squirmed and twisted in his grasp; at once he let her go and, her promise kept, she went into her father’s house, locking the door behind her. Then the king walked a little while upon the shore, to raise his hand in greeting to the seal swimming in the sound, and only the seal saw that he was smiling.
And four days later the young fisherman returned, with ten counters of ivory bound tight against his skin to keep them safe and a white hare’s foot in his pocket to bring her luck, and the seal’s daughter flung herself into his arms, gasping and sobbing her tale of the king into his shoulder. When at last he had her story straight, he looked sober enough, for no man of Lyikené is fool enough to set himself against the king, whether it be for a great thing or a little one. But in a while he sat her down beside him and dried her eyes on the tail of his shirt and bid her smile. The west wind blows a long, long way, he told her, and like as not that feather’s half way across the world in Ohmorah by now! She smiled and nodded, and picked a harebell to put in the buttonhole of his shirt.
Perhaps it was so. A sennight went by, and another, and another, and all those days he kept the boat within the bay setting out creels for lobsters and for crabs. And each evening, when the boat was hauled out onto the shingle, she was waiting for him, with one of the ribbons he had brought her plaited into her hair. Then word came down the coast there was a skipper taking on hands for a trip deep water after codfish and, when he heard the news, she saw in his face that he would go. For when it’s done, love, he told her, I’ll have enough put by to take you from your father’s house into my own. She was loath to have him leave her but could say no word against it. Instead she gave him a whalegut cape of her father’s to keep him dry in high weather and found him a pair of his trousers to wear whilst she took his own to patch the places where they were worn through. When all was ready, the fisherman packed up his seaboots and gear into a bundle, kissed her three times, once for her upon her brow, once for him upon her cheek and the last for luck upon her lips, and left her, alone and lonely in her father’s house.
And five days later it was midsummer’s day and the world full of light and out of balance. On midsummer’s morning, the king came down to the seashore and her heart fluttered like a bird within her breast to see the king’s red and the king’s bronze. For he had found a pearl in an acre of shingle and the sea had given the ring back to him. If any man could find that feather surely it was he, and then who would have the mastery? The king called out to her to come to him and so they stood together upon the tideline and, though he looked long at her, she never looked at him. She gazed out into the sound towards the fishing boats, hoping against hope. There were many bright sails in the distance but none of them was set on the boat of her own fisherman; he was far away in northern seas and could not come to her no matter how hard she wished it.
The wind blew hard into their faces. The wind blows from the east today, the king told her, and she heard in his voice that he was smiling. Still she would not look at him, only at the sea and the sky. Close by the shore there was a rock, half uncovered by the ebbing tide, and on that rock a seal was lying, basking in the sun as seals do in the summertime. Then the seal’s daughter saw something else between the sea and sky, blowing on the east wind towards the shore, a little thing, a feather light as a fallen leaf, white as a flake of snow, and she could have wept aloud to see it. The wind blew and the king put out his hand to catch it as it drifted across the tideline.
He showed her the feather, pointing to the place its whiteness was stained with blood, bright as the day she had pricked it from her finger. She could not look at him, only at her future lying in the palm of his hand. Now I’ve done all you required of me, said the king, The time has come for you to leave your father’s house, to live with me and lie with me and be my own forever.
She swallowed once, she swallowed twice, knowing it must be so. Then she bowed her head and, in a whisper, asked him for seven days that she might leave her father’s house in order and, careless of such a little thing, the king granted it. But though she spoke of her father she thought only of her fisherman, that she must bid him farewell forever, if only he reached the land in time for her to do so.
His boat did not come in that day, nor the next, nor even the next. Six long and empty days went by until at last she saw his sail in the distance and, at that sight, she did not know if her heart would burst for joy because he was come back to her, or break with sorrow because their parting was so close. And when at last the catch was landed and the crew fed and rested, the day was gone and but the evening left to her to walk with him along the beachtop where harebells grew in turf cropped close by rabbits and by sheep, where seathrift clung tight between the rocks, where briars tangled themselves across the evening, the sweetest roses with the sharpest thorns.
He set his hands upon her shoulders and bent his head towards her, Come live with me and be my love forever. Now, a seal neither makes a promise nor breaks it but she was not a seal, only a seal’s daughter who must live her life above the tideline where promises lay hard and heavy on her heart as on any other woman’s. So, though she desired nothing more than to spend her life with her fisherman, though she would love no other man but him, she said, I gave a promise to the king.
She picked a single rose from the briar beside her, though its thorns tore her fingers every bit as sharp as love tore at her heart. She held it out to him, saying, This is all I can give you. As he took the rose, his fingers brushed against hers and a drop of her blood smeared across his hand. He kissed her poor, sore fingers and then, for a long time, he held her very close against him and all the while her tears ran down her face onto his shoulder. He spoke no word and nor did she, for what use were words at such a time? He left her at the door of her father’s house and I think her heart was broken clean in two to see him walk alone into the night.
In the morning, the king’s mother came with all the ladies of the king’s hall to bring her home and make her ready. When she was gone, her father went down to the tideline where the seal was waiting for him. It’s a fine thing, I suppose, he said, to have a daughter dwell in the king’s hall. The seal looked long at him, and gave no answer. Then he said, But the other was a fine fellow too. She looked up at him with her great black eyes. One thought led on to another, and at last he laughed aloud and kissed her on the brow. Then the seal slipped away into the sea and the fisherman went back to his house with a lighter heart than he had had for many a day
In the king’s hall the king’s mother plaited her hair and tied her laces. The seal’s daughter had wept the night away but now she was done with weeping and her face was pale and set. She stood stiff and silent whilst the women moved around her, making her ready for the king with many a rustle of silk and many a rattle of amber beads. When all was done, the king’s mother led her to the king’s chamber, and closed the door behind her.
The silken coverlet had been turned back ready; she saw a bit of seathrift and a harebell and a sprig of sweetbriar lying on the pillow, and caught her breath into a gasp. There was a step behind her. She turned and saw him, dressed in the shirt that matched his eyes and the old trousers she herself had patched but with the king’s red cloak about his shoulders. He opened his arms, smiling, asking, Do you know me now, love? and she ran across the little space between them, ranting and raging at him for playing such a trick, laughing and sobbing to have him for her own again, until his arms closed tight around her and he bent his head to kiss her.
And that, of course, is the beginning and in that beginning is my story’s end.
Note on the ballad. The cambric shirt is a version of Child Ballad no. 2, the type specimen of which is The Elfin knight. Its best known variant these days is, of course, Scarborough Fair and, should you wish to hear it in that guise, I heartily recommend any of Martin Carthy’s singings. I believe it was also recorded at some point by a couple of Americans… It is a riddle song where two lovers set each other increasingly preposterous tasks. In the version I’ve quoted, the woman’s demands are by far the more unreasonable. Good for her.
Swearwords: None.
Description: The seal's daughter falls in love with a young fisherman, but she's given three promises to the king.
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So buy me, so buy me an acre of land
Tell me a riddle and sing me a rhyme
Between the sea water and the sea sand
If you would be a true lover of mine.
The cambric shirt, Traditional
I had this tale from my grandam when I was a girl; she had it from hers and so it must be true.
Once there was a seal that watched a fisherman. Swimming in the sound, she watched him set out his creels by day; resting on a rock beneath the tideline, she watched him haul his boat out of the water come the evening. She saw his back was broad, and his arm was strong, and his smile sweet enough to drown in. And on the spring equinox, in the evening when the world is at its balance, she swam up to the shingle and took off her skin, as all seals can do, and buried it beneath a hawthorn bush at the head of the beach. Then she went a-knocking at the fisherman’s door and, when he opened it to see a woman clad in nothing but her own wet hair, you may be sure he did not hesitate to let her in.
Well, that night went by happily enough and so did a twelvesmonth after it, and in that time the seal mended his nets by day and warmed his bed by night, merry as any woman is when she has a young and lusty man to keep her company. But a seal’s skin dries out without the seal within to keep it supple and if left too long empty will never fit again. Then she must walk the land forever, a woman amongst women. So after a year and a night, she got up from his bed and kissed the fisherman as he lay sleeping, and looked her last on her little daughter in her cradle, and went out of his house alone. She found her skin beneath the thorn and put it on and slipped back into the sea, never to walk again upon the land.
So the fisherman woke to find himself alone but, though he missed the seal sorely, he bore her no ill will. She had told no lies and made no promises and he was wise enough to know a seal cannot help her nature. And he had besides her daughter to keep him company for, being born above the tideline, the babe had only the one skin to wear her whole life long. But it was a very fine one and, when the seal’s daughter was grown, she was the fairest lass in all Lyikené, her face sweet as a briar rose at midsummer, her hair bright as sunlight on water. Then many young men came a-courting, fishermen from the coast and clansmen from the mountains, whalemen from the north and harpers from the king’s hall but she would have none of them. She smiled and tossed back her shining hair, took their gifts of amber and of ivory, of bronze pins and honeycomb, and slipped laughing through their fingers leaving them foolish and alone.
And, like ripples spreading across water, tales spread across Lyikené of the seal’s daughter, who was so fair of face, so comely and so proud she turned away the finest men ever to walk those shores. In time, even the king himself heard them and came down to the shore upon the equinox to find out if all these tales were true. He saw the seal’s daughter in the pale sunlight before her father’s house and, from the moment of that first looking to the ending of his life, he wished only that he could take his heart from out his breast and lay it at her feet. But the seal’s daughter saw only the king, a hard, bright sight in his red cloak, his bronze sword at his side, not much more like a lover than the sun is at its rising. Even so, perhaps she would have looked beyond the red and beyond the bronze to see the man that wore them had he not said to her, speaking lordliwise as the king does, speaking foolishly as a young man does when a woman’s beauty has stolen his wits away, Come sit beside me in my hall; give me kisses three; lie down with me and be my love forever.
Now, no man of Lyikené will set himself against the king but for a woman it is another matter. For no woman wants a man who takes her heart and will for granted, as if she were but an apple ripe for the picking, even if that man be the king himself. So first the seal’s daughter thought and then she smiled and fetched three things from her father’s house. She held out her hand to show the king a pearl from an oyster, as fine a pearl as any in Lyikené and, when he had seen it, she tossed it over her shoulder onto the shingle shore, saying, On the day you give me back the pearl, I will sit beside you in your hall.
Then she put back her shining hair and showed the king a ring wrought of gold from out the later lands and of amber from the north and, when he had seen it, she threw it high and far into the sea, saying, On the day you give me back the ring, I will give you kisses three.
And then she laughed and took a bodkin in one hand and a feather from a snow goose’s breast in the other. She pricked her finger with the bodkin and let a drop of her red blood fall onto the feather and, when the king had seen it, she opened her hand for the west wind to blow it away,saying, On the day you give me back the feather, I will lie with you and be your own forever. Having done these three things she walked away without a backward glance, certain in her heart she had had the mastery for the west wind blows a long, long way, the sea keeps all it is given and no man can find a pearl among an acre of shingle. And the king was left upon the shore, foolish and alone.
Not quite alone. There was a seal lying on a rock below the tideline, watching all that had been done and listening to all that had been said.
Now this you know as well as I: the king of Lyikené is the king of the Sea People. But here’s two things perhaps you did not know: not all the Sea People live above the tideline and oftentimes the king can see what other men cannot - that is a part of what makes him the king. There and then, the king looked long and hard at that seal and, when he was certain, he set down his cloak and his sword belt, he walked to the water’s edge and held out his empty hands, waiting for the seal to speak.
A long, long time she lay on her rock and looked at him, keeping her silence, but the king was a patient man and he kept his. Love had made him foolish on the shore but he had recovered his wits and knew it behoved him to deal with her not as the king who could command her answer but as the man who wished to win her daughter. The tide sprang swiftly up the beach but the king kept his feet as salt water rose around him. On the shore, the seal’s daughter had seen a hard, bright sight in red and bronze but below the tideline the seal’s black eyes saw another thing entirely and so at last, when the sea was lapping over the rock and the king standing breastdeep in the breakers, she said, I can find you the pearl, and the ring, and the feather but only you yourself can win her heart. And without that, all the rest is nothing.
The king thought, and then he smiled. If a seal can take off her skin, he said, so too can a king. Bring me the pearl, and the ring, and the feather, and leave her heart to me. Then the seal dived deep into the sea and the king returned to his hall to set all in order before he brought his true love home.
Well, the seal’s daughter went on through her days and gave no more thought to her bargain with the king, knowing the west wind blows a long, long way, the sea keeps all it is given and no man can find a pearl in an acre of shingle, be he a hundred times a king. And surely the king had forgotten it too, for he came not again to the seashore. But in a sennight a young fisherman came, offering his labour to any that would have him in return for a share of the boat and the catch, and the old fisherman her father was minded to have a young man by, for salt water had stiffened his fingers and the wind had racked his bones. In the month that followed, the seal’s daughter glanced often and again at the handsome fisherman and each time she looked she liked better what she saw. And perhaps he saw her looking for, one morning, as he loaded creels and nets into the boat, he asked if she would go a-walking with him come the evening, since he must go up the coast on the morrow with a boatload of smoked herring for the moon’s day market. She said neither Yea! nor Nay! but at eventime he found her waiting and saw she had plaited a red ribbon into her shining hair.
So they walked together along the shore, talking of little things that did not matter, whilst the sun set and the tide ebbed and turnstones whistled all around them. And at the evening’s end, she stooped to pluck a flower of pink seathrift from a clump growing near her father’s door and tucked it in his coat without a word.
The next morning he was gone before the dawning and, before the seal’s daughter had had time to decide whether she missed him or no, there was a firm step behind her on the shingle and she turned to face the king clad all in his red and bronze. Out in the sound, a seal’s head stuck up out of the water, curious as seals are to see what goes on above the tideline. Then a turnstone, pecking at seaweed on the tideline, looked sidelong as any bird will, first with one eye towards the seal, then with the other at the king and took flight across the sea. The king marked the place where the bird had been and crossed the shore to pick something small and bright and round out of the shingle. He tossed the pearl carelessly to the seal’s daughter, saying as he did, Now come and sit beside me!
So that evening she sat in the king’s hall, at the king’s side, whilst a harper sang of the seven daughters of Mùrai, of Ala and Imacah, and other tales of love. She ate with him because a promise is a promise, and drank with him for the same reason, though the king’s red wine was sour to her taste and the king’s fine food as ashes in her mouth. All the time she ate and drank she looked neither right towards the king nor left towards his mother but only straight ahead to the tapestries hanging on the wall. When all the wine was drunk, all the food eaten and all the songs sung, when she had kept her promise, she made her courtesy to the king, another to his mother, and ran though the night back to her father’s house, thankful the sea kept all it was given and the west wind blew a long, long way, even if the king had found a pearl in an acre of shingle.
Three days later the young fisherman returned, very fine in a new shirt the colour of his eyes, with a bundle of ribbons in his pocket for her to plait into her hair. He found her waiting for him and, in the evening as they walked together along the path atop the beach, he told her of the sights and sounds of the market, the fortunetellers and jugglers, the musicians and the thieves; and, all the while he talked, she never looked but at him, at his broad shoulders, his laughing smile, his eyes deep enough to drown in. And for certain he saw her looking for, next morning, as they readied the boat for sea, he asked the old fisherman if he might court his daughter, her mother not being by to ask.
Now, never has the father lived who would not rather see his daughter matched to a king than to a fisherman, be he e’er so handsome, and so the old man sighed and sucked his teeth awhile. But then he remembered that the sea keeps all it is given, that the west wind blows a long, long way and it was better she had a fisherman to love her than no man at all. And, put that way, he liked the young man well enough for his own sake, he being handy in a boat and not one to shirk his labour or his round in the alehouse of an evening. So he gave his consent and they said no more about it.
And she was happy enough to be courted by him, and old men who had thought her lovely in her pride thought her ten times more so now she had set her pride aside and found a man to smile on. So tales spread along the coast that at last the seal’s daughter had found a man to please her and all the rest must go elsewhere a-courting. Perhaps such tales reached the king’s ears, perhaps they did not, but certaintimes he did not come again to the shore. And glad enough the seal’s daughter was of it and told herself, though the king had found the pearl, she had still the mastery. This being so, there was nothing to stand in the way of the fisherman’s courtship but he was in no hurry to take her from her father’s house and, each time she complained of his slowness, he said only that he was minded to wait until he had a house of his own to put her in.
And that was the reason he gave her when he told her he must away a sennight to his own village, since a man there owed him ten of ivory and the debt had fallen due. So the old fisherman fished alone and the seal’s daughter put away her ribbons and would not smile until her father scolded her into a better humour. For he was not a man to think highly of long courtships, his own having taken no longer than the time between one tide and the next, and had long wondered what need there was to wait, if he were willing and she were willing.
On the third day in the morning, as she sat before her father’s house cleaning fish to ready them for the drying racks, the seal’s daughter heard a crunch of shingle and then a shadow fell across her. Looking up, she saw the king’s red and bronze and, at his back, a man with an osprey on his gloved arm. The king’s man unfastened its jesses and gave it to the king, who drew off its hood and held it high. The great bird beat its wings against the air waiting for the king cast it off. Soaring high into the sunlight, it circled the bay until it saw its mark and stooped to snatch a silver fish from out the waves nearby where a seal was swimming. Its task completed, the osprey dropped its fish at the king’s feet to alight on his fist where he made much of it, feeding it from his own hand. Then the king gave back the bird and dismissed his man, that he might speak with the seal’s daughter alone.
Clean it, the king bade her, pointing at the fish. She took her knife and made a crimson slit from head to tail so all the guts spilled out and with them her own gold ring. Three kisses you promised me, said the king as she stared down at it, Three kisses I’ll have of you but I can wait until you’ve washed your hands.
Slowly, slowly she walked to the water’s edge to rinse fishes’ blood and fishes’ scales from her hands; slowly, slowly she walked back, thinking of her fisherman’s laughing eyes and smiling mouth, wishing she had never been so foolish as to set herself against the king. But a promise is a promise, and she must keep it. So she closed her eyes and stood up on her toes, put her arms around the king’s neck and kissed him, feeling his smooth skin beneath her lips, very unlike the rough cheeks of a fisherman. She kissed his brow, she kissed his cheek and he was so still beneath her kisses she might have been embracing a wooden figure carved on a ship’s prow. But when she kissed his mouth his arms closed tight around her; he pulled her close and kissed her long and longingly, and her heart beat fast to know lying beneath the king’s red and bronze there was a man desired her. She squirmed and twisted in his grasp; at once he let her go and, her promise kept, she went into her father’s house, locking the door behind her. Then the king walked a little while upon the shore, to raise his hand in greeting to the seal swimming in the sound, and only the seal saw that he was smiling.
And four days later the young fisherman returned, with ten counters of ivory bound tight against his skin to keep them safe and a white hare’s foot in his pocket to bring her luck, and the seal’s daughter flung herself into his arms, gasping and sobbing her tale of the king into his shoulder. When at last he had her story straight, he looked sober enough, for no man of Lyikené is fool enough to set himself against the king, whether it be for a great thing or a little one. But in a while he sat her down beside him and dried her eyes on the tail of his shirt and bid her smile. The west wind blows a long, long way, he told her, and like as not that feather’s half way across the world in Ohmorah by now! She smiled and nodded, and picked a harebell to put in the buttonhole of his shirt.
Perhaps it was so. A sennight went by, and another, and another, and all those days he kept the boat within the bay setting out creels for lobsters and for crabs. And each evening, when the boat was hauled out onto the shingle, she was waiting for him, with one of the ribbons he had brought her plaited into her hair. Then word came down the coast there was a skipper taking on hands for a trip deep water after codfish and, when he heard the news, she saw in his face that he would go. For when it’s done, love, he told her, I’ll have enough put by to take you from your father’s house into my own. She was loath to have him leave her but could say no word against it. Instead she gave him a whalegut cape of her father’s to keep him dry in high weather and found him a pair of his trousers to wear whilst she took his own to patch the places where they were worn through. When all was ready, the fisherman packed up his seaboots and gear into a bundle, kissed her three times, once for her upon her brow, once for him upon her cheek and the last for luck upon her lips, and left her, alone and lonely in her father’s house.
And five days later it was midsummer’s day and the world full of light and out of balance. On midsummer’s morning, the king came down to the seashore and her heart fluttered like a bird within her breast to see the king’s red and the king’s bronze. For he had found a pearl in an acre of shingle and the sea had given the ring back to him. If any man could find that feather surely it was he, and then who would have the mastery? The king called out to her to come to him and so they stood together upon the tideline and, though he looked long at her, she never looked at him. She gazed out into the sound towards the fishing boats, hoping against hope. There were many bright sails in the distance but none of them was set on the boat of her own fisherman; he was far away in northern seas and could not come to her no matter how hard she wished it.
The wind blew hard into their faces. The wind blows from the east today, the king told her, and she heard in his voice that he was smiling. Still she would not look at him, only at the sea and the sky. Close by the shore there was a rock, half uncovered by the ebbing tide, and on that rock a seal was lying, basking in the sun as seals do in the summertime. Then the seal’s daughter saw something else between the sea and sky, blowing on the east wind towards the shore, a little thing, a feather light as a fallen leaf, white as a flake of snow, and she could have wept aloud to see it. The wind blew and the king put out his hand to catch it as it drifted across the tideline.
He showed her the feather, pointing to the place its whiteness was stained with blood, bright as the day she had pricked it from her finger. She could not look at him, only at her future lying in the palm of his hand. Now I’ve done all you required of me, said the king, The time has come for you to leave your father’s house, to live with me and lie with me and be my own forever.
She swallowed once, she swallowed twice, knowing it must be so. Then she bowed her head and, in a whisper, asked him for seven days that she might leave her father’s house in order and, careless of such a little thing, the king granted it. But though she spoke of her father she thought only of her fisherman, that she must bid him farewell forever, if only he reached the land in time for her to do so.
His boat did not come in that day, nor the next, nor even the next. Six long and empty days went by until at last she saw his sail in the distance and, at that sight, she did not know if her heart would burst for joy because he was come back to her, or break with sorrow because their parting was so close. And when at last the catch was landed and the crew fed and rested, the day was gone and but the evening left to her to walk with him along the beachtop where harebells grew in turf cropped close by rabbits and by sheep, where seathrift clung tight between the rocks, where briars tangled themselves across the evening, the sweetest roses with the sharpest thorns.
He set his hands upon her shoulders and bent his head towards her, Come live with me and be my love forever. Now, a seal neither makes a promise nor breaks it but she was not a seal, only a seal’s daughter who must live her life above the tideline where promises lay hard and heavy on her heart as on any other woman’s. So, though she desired nothing more than to spend her life with her fisherman, though she would love no other man but him, she said, I gave a promise to the king.
She picked a single rose from the briar beside her, though its thorns tore her fingers every bit as sharp as love tore at her heart. She held it out to him, saying, This is all I can give you. As he took the rose, his fingers brushed against hers and a drop of her blood smeared across his hand. He kissed her poor, sore fingers and then, for a long time, he held her very close against him and all the while her tears ran down her face onto his shoulder. He spoke no word and nor did she, for what use were words at such a time? He left her at the door of her father’s house and I think her heart was broken clean in two to see him walk alone into the night.
In the morning, the king’s mother came with all the ladies of the king’s hall to bring her home and make her ready. When she was gone, her father went down to the tideline where the seal was waiting for him. It’s a fine thing, I suppose, he said, to have a daughter dwell in the king’s hall. The seal looked long at him, and gave no answer. Then he said, But the other was a fine fellow too. She looked up at him with her great black eyes. One thought led on to another, and at last he laughed aloud and kissed her on the brow. Then the seal slipped away into the sea and the fisherman went back to his house with a lighter heart than he had had for many a day
In the king’s hall the king’s mother plaited her hair and tied her laces. The seal’s daughter had wept the night away but now she was done with weeping and her face was pale and set. She stood stiff and silent whilst the women moved around her, making her ready for the king with many a rustle of silk and many a rattle of amber beads. When all was done, the king’s mother led her to the king’s chamber, and closed the door behind her.
The silken coverlet had been turned back ready; she saw a bit of seathrift and a harebell and a sprig of sweetbriar lying on the pillow, and caught her breath into a gasp. There was a step behind her. She turned and saw him, dressed in the shirt that matched his eyes and the old trousers she herself had patched but with the king’s red cloak about his shoulders. He opened his arms, smiling, asking, Do you know me now, love? and she ran across the little space between them, ranting and raging at him for playing such a trick, laughing and sobbing to have him for her own again, until his arms closed tight around her and he bent his head to kiss her.
And that, of course, is the beginning and in that beginning is my story’s end.
Note on the ballad. The cambric shirt is a version of Child Ballad no. 2, the type specimen of which is The Elfin knight. Its best known variant these days is, of course, Scarborough Fair and, should you wish to hear it in that guise, I heartily recommend any of Martin Carthy’s singings. I believe it was also recorded at some point by a couple of Americans… It is a riddle song where two lovers set each other increasingly preposterous tasks. In the version I’ve quoted, the woman’s demands are by far the more unreasonable. Good for her.
About the Author
Harriet Goodchild calls herself "another Scot in exile". She was born in Glasgow and wishes she was there still. She likes fairytales. And folk music.
Her novel, Twicetold Tales, and her collection of short stories, Tales from the Later Lands, can be viewed on Authonomy by clicking on the images below.
Her novel, Twicetold Tales, and her collection of short stories, Tales from the Later Lands, can be viewed on Authonomy by clicking on the images below.
 Twicetold Tales |
 Tales from the Later Lands |