+The Text+ was communicated to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland by
Captain F. W. L. Thomas, who took it down from the dictation of an old
woman of Shetland.
+The Story+ is concerned with the Finn-myth. The Finns live in the
depths of the sea. 'Their transfiguration into seals seems to be more a
kind of deception they practise. For the males are described as most
daring boatmen, with powerful sweep of the oar, who chase foreign
vessels on the sea.... By means of a "skin" which they possess, the men
and the women among them are able to change themselves into seals. But
on shore, after having taken off the wrappage, they are, and behave
like, real human beings.... Many a Finn woman has got into the power of
a Shetlander, and borne children to him; but if the Finn woman succeeded
in re-obtaining her sea-skin, or seal-skin, she escaped across the
water' (Karl Blind in the _Contemporary Review_, September 1881, pp.
399-400). The same writer, in quoting a verse of this ballad, says,
'Shöol Skerry means Seal's Isle.' The whole article is of great
interest.
'G. S. L.,' the author of _Shetland Fireside Tales, or the Hermit of
Trosswickness_ (1877), remarks: 'The belief that witches and wizards
came from the coast of Norway disguised as seals was entertained by many
of the Shetland peasantry even so late as the beginning of the present
century.' He goes on to prove the supernatural character of seals by
relating an exploit of his own, in which a gun pointed at a seal refused
to go off.
Sule Skerrie is a lonely islet to the north-east of Cape Wrath, about as
far therefrom as from the Shetland Isles.
Another version of this ballad, unknown to Child, is given in the
Appendix.