THE MERMAID.
The Mermaid (Muir-òigh, maighdean mhara) of the Scottish Highlands was the same as in the rest of the kingdom, a sea-creature, half fish half woman, with long dishevelled hair, which she sits on the rocks by the shore to comb at night. She has been known to put off the fishy covering of her lower limbs. Any one who finds it can by hiding it detain her from ever returning to the sea again. There is a common story in the Highlands, as also in Ireland, that a person so detained her for years, married her, and had a family by her. One of the family fell in with the covering, and telling his mother of the pretty thing he had found, she recovered possession of it and escaped to the sea. She pursues ships and is dangerous. Sailors throw empty barrels overboard, and while she spends her time examining these they make their escape.
A man in Skye (Mac-Mhannain) caught a Mermaid and kept her for a year. She gave him much curious information. When parting he asked her what virtue or evil there was in egg-water (i.e. water in which eggs had been boiled). She said, “If I tell you that, you will have a tale to tell,” and disappeared.
A native of Eilein Anabuich (the Unripe Island), a village in North Harris, caught a Mermaid on a rock, and to procure her release, she granted him his three wishes. He became a skilful herb-doctor, who could cure the king’s evil and other diseases ordinarily incurable, a prophet, who could foretell, particularly to women, whatever was to befall them, and he obtained a remarkably fine voice. This latter gift he had only in his own estimation; when he sang, others did not think his voice fine or even tolerable.