Seals have their origin in human beings who of their own free-will have
drowned themselves in the sea. Once a year—on Twelfth-night—they slip
off their skins and amuse themselves like men and women in dancing and
other pleasures, in the caves of the rocks and the big hollows of the
beach. A young man in the village of Mygledahl, in Kalsoe, had heard
talk of this conduct of the seals, and a place in the neighbourhood of
the village was pointed out to him where they were said to assemble on
Twelfth-night.
In the evening of that day he stole away thither and concealed himself.
Soon he saw a vast multitude of seals come swimming towards the place,
cast off their skins, and lie down upon the rocks. He noticed that a
very fair and beautiful girl came out of one of the seal-skins and
lay down not far from where he was hidden. Then he crept towards her
and took her in his arms. The man and the seal-girl danced together
throughout the whole night; but when day began to break, every seal
went in search of its skin. The seal-girl alone was unsuccessful
in the search for her skin; but she tracked it by its smell to the
Mygledahl-man, and when he, in spite of her entreaties, would not give
it back to her, she was forced to follow him to Mygledahl. There they
lived together for many years, and many children were born to them; but
the man had to be perpetually on the watch lest his wife should be able
to lay hands on her seal-skin, which, accordingly, he kept locked in
the bottom of his chest, the key of which was always about his person.
One day, however, he was out fishing, when he remembered that he had
left the key at home. He called out sorrowfully to the other men: ‘This
day I shall lose my wife.’ They pulled up their lines and rowed home
quickly; but when they came to the house, his wife had disappeared, and
only the children were at home. That no harm might come to them when
she left them, their mother had extinguished the fire on the hearth and
put the knives out of sight. In the meantime, she had run down to the
beach, attired herself in her seal-skin, and directed her course to the
sea, where another seal, who had formerly been her lover, came at once
to her side. This animal had been lying outside the village all these
years waiting for her.
And now, when the children of the Mygledahl-man used to come down to
the beach, they often saw a seal lift its head above the water and
look towards the land. The seal was supposed to be the mother of the
children.
A long time passed away, and again it chanced that the Mygledahl-man
was about to hunt the seals in a big rock-hole. The night before this
was to happen, the Mygledahl-man dreamed that his lost wife came to
him and said that if he went seal-hunting in that cave he must take
care not to kill a large seal which stood in front of the cave, because
that was her mate; and the two young seals in the heart of the cave,
because they were her two little sons; and she informed him of the
colour of their skins. But the man took no heed of his dream, went away
after the seals, and killed all he could lay hands upon. The spoil was
divided when they got home, and the man received for his share the
whole of the large male seal and the hands and feet of the two young
seals.
That same evening, they had cooked the head and paws of the large seal
for supper, and the meat was put up in a trough, when a loud crash was
heard in the kitchen. The man returned thither and saw a frightful
witch, who sniffed at the trough, and cried: ‘Here lies the head, with
the upstanding nose of a man, the hand of Haarek, and the foot of
Frederick. Revenged they are, and revenged they shall be on the men
of Mygledahl, some of whom shall perish by sea, and others fall down
from the rocks, until the number of the slain shall be so great that
by holding each other’s hands they may gird all Kalsoe.’ When she had
uttered this communication, the witch vanished from the room and was
seen no more.
Many Mygledahl-men soon afterwards came to a violent end. Some were
drowned in the sea by Kalsoe while fishing; others fell from the rocks
while catching the seafowl: so that the witch’s curse might be said to
have taken partial effect. The number of the dead, however, is not yet
so large that they can encircle the whole of the island hand in hand.[2]