SONGS OF SEA-WOMEN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3414, 20 August 1919, Page 60

SONGS OF SEA-WOMEN.

By Jessie Mackay.

Who was it sang the first song of a mermaid? It were hard to tell. The sea was not loved by primitive man, who saw in it no beauty, but cold fear and the shadow of death. One may hazard the guess that, long before the imagination of men had filled the sea with beings so queen-like and beautiful, there had been a cycle of legend about the softer, homelier fairies of inland waters, the nixies of the pools, the naiads of the rivers. Then to the sea-going Greek came the dream of the golden-haired nereids, daughters of the sea-god Nereus. When did the Celt of the sea-worn West follow the Greek in his fancy about the lovely daughters of the deep, or did the first European song of a fair seawoman come from the wave : beaten haunts of the Ancient People, already retreating from the richer mainlands before history well began? That were a question for pundits. We only know that the seamaid was entrenched in Irish and in Highland legend unknown ages ago, coming to the light in many a mediaeval story, and, later, in many a folk-tale of the coast. Perhaps one need not put much faith in the romances of Ireland's earliest chronicles, but these describe the seamaids playing in shoals round the ships of the conquering Milesians. A folk-relic of this undoubtedly ancient belief is T. Crofton Croker's ballad, "The Lord of Dunkerron," which deals with the love of a Kerry chieftain for "a beautiful spirit of ocean" whom he followed down through the waves to her home on the enchanted sea-floor: — The haze-woven shroud of that newly born isle Softly faded away from a magical pile, A palace of crystal whose bright-beaming 1 sheen Had the tints of the rainbow—red, yellow, and green. And grottoes, fantastic in lime and in form, Were there, as flung up—the wild sport of the. •storm: Yet all was so cloudless, so lovely, and calm, It seemed but • a region of sunshine and calm. The modern reader will easily expand these halting lines into the ethereal, glancing wonder of words in which W. B. Keats paints the ocean-home of "pearlpale Niam" and her young Fenian chief, the mortal Oisin. The lesser Niam of Croker's ballad craves leave to ask the consent of the great sea-lord whom her race obeys. The Lord of Dunkerron waits her return in vain; sounds of terror echo from afar, and a crimson-crested wave carries to his feet the story of the murdered sea-maid's fate:— The palace of crystal has melted in air; The dyes of the rainbow no longer are there: The grottoes with vapours and clouds are o'ercast: The sunshine is darkness: the vision has past. A Scottish poet, almost of the same time and certainly of the same calibre as the Irish Croker, tells of another seamaid's love for a mortal, less tragic, but iu love's regard more sad than that of the lost bride of the faithful o'Sullivan More. It is in the singularly varied pages of Walter Scott's "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border" that one meets Leyden's version of the Mermaid of Corrivrechan, a wild gulf between Jura and Scarba. This unquiet sound was the haunt of most terrible sea-monsters known to Hebridean story, but it was also the home of the beautiful sea-maid whose passion for the "lovely chief of Colonsay". was the theme of many an island tale and song. A hopeless passion it was, for young Macphail loved a mortal maiden of his own race and degree. The opening lines are not devoid of merit:— On Jura's, heath how sweetly swell The murmurs of the mountain bee! How eoftly mourns the writhed shell Of Jura's shore, its parent sea! But softer, floating o'er the deep. The mermaid's sweet lay, That charmed the dancing waves to sleep Before the. bark of Colousay.

Vain is the song' of the Highland siren, for Macphail and the maid of Colonsay have plighted their troth—she with a magic ruby ring that has the gift of remaining bright only as long as the giver lives or is true to her lover. The seamaid, bold in her deep rapture of love and the consciousness of her matchless beauty, snatches the chief from the deck of his ship and bears him down to her luminous cave. But the lover of the Maid of Colonsay is true to his vows, and the wild princess of the deeps, assuming the scaly shape of her kind when in anger or bent on vengeance, leaves him prisoner for long months, and then returns in all the wooing gentleness of a mien and form like the daughters of earth, renewing her spells, and painting once more the joys of the ocean paradise reserved for the spouse of the sea-king's child. The ruby ring still glows its message of fidelity, and the chief entreats to see his native isle once more before plighting his vows to the mermaid, avlio joyfully grants the request. But the agile young chief, gaining the land at a bound, leaves the sea-maid desolate:— And ever as the year returns, The charm-bound sailors know the day, For sadly still the mermaid mourns The lovely chief of Colousay. Exactly the converse of this' Corriverechan legend is the theme of George Macdonald's beautiful ballad, u The Mermaid" : Up cam the tide, wi' a burst and a- whush, back gaed the stanes wi' a whurr; The King's son walkit i' the evenin' hush, To hear the sea murmur and rnurr. In hat's that, and that, far oot in the gray, The laich mune bobbin' afore? It's the bonny sea-maidens at their playHand awa', King's son, frae the shore. Behind a rock the prince watched the lovely maids casting their "pearly kairns" on the sands as they rose to dance in the moonlight. The fairest of all flung her comb so near that he snatched it up and hid it in his breast. When the dance was done each took up the token she had dropped, and danced back" under the waves: But ane wi' hair like the mune in a clud, Was left by the rock her lane; Wi' flitterin' ban's, like a priest's;- she stood, Maist veiledl in a ruch o' rain. Sh<* spied the prince, she sank at his feet, And lay like a wreath o' snaw Meltin' awa'_ in the win' and weet O' a wastin' wastlm' thaw. The prince bore her librae and laid her with love's reverence "saft on a gowden bed." A' that nicht and a' day the neist, She never liftet held; Quiet lay the sea, and quiot Lay her briest, And quiet, lay the kirky and deid. But when at the gloaniin' a sea-breeze, keen, Blew intil the glimsome room. Like two settin' stars she opened her e'en, And the sea-flower began to bloom. And she saw the prince kneelin' at her bed, And afore the mune was new, Careless and cauld' she was -wooed and wed— But a winsome wife she grew. And a' gaed weel till the bairn was born, And syne she celdno sleep; She wad rise at midnicht, and wan'er till morn, Hark—barkin.' the sough o' the deep. The thousand-times repeated tragedy of the eea-wife of course recurs: the magic comb of pearl is by mischance left open to her iview : She twined up her hair wi' eager ban's, And in. wi' the rainbow KainST She's oot, and she's off ower the shinin' san's, And awa' til her moanin' hame! The prince_ he sfartet whaur he lay, He waukit, and was him lane: He soucht. far into the rnornin' gray, But his bonny sea-wife was gane. It may be I have already written in these columns of what seems to me the most haunting and lovely song of a seawoman ever written—Herbert Trench's symbolistic "Rock of Cloud." It is a sailor's tale of a voice sounding out of a deep sea-fog, a voice hard with cureless, endless grief : Man •am I—Would that I were none: Eow hither! ye may hoar Yet shall not save nor bring me homo Seek ye ten .thousand year! It is a wrecked pilot, bound to an enchanted rock, invisible to mortal eyes, and this was the manner of his undoing: Here, while the sole eye of the sira Did scorch my body bare, A great sea-*pirit rose, and shone .In the water thrilled with hair. . . . She lay back on the green abyss, Beautiful: her spread arms Soothed to a poise/—asal—of bliss Huge thunders and alarms. Her breasts, as pearl, were dull and pure, Her body's chastened light Swanlike a cloud, her eyes censure From, the greas depths were bright. There was nothing of 'bitterness In aught -that she could say: She called my soul as down a coast The moon calls bay beyond bay. The sea-woman proffers a strange moonlight love and life to the man she has saved from the waters —the life of a landward Tithonus at the side of an Eos of the deep : All waters that on earth have -welled At last to me repair,— All mountains starred with cities melt Into my dreamy air. But the pilot is as true to his earthly wife as the chief of Colonsay to the island maid : And I criod out sore, sore at the heart For her that sleeps at home, Brightness, I will not know thine art, Nor to thy country come! Straightway she sank —smiling so pale— But from the seethe upbroke— Never shrashed off by gust or gale—- " White, everlasting smoke. From the would-be rescuers there escapes a sudden question from the earthward mind: Does he not rue his choice? Out of the rolling swathes of mist they axe rebuked : Rue it? Now get back to the deep, For I doubt if men ye be. No: I must keep a shady helm By the star I cannot see.

This is the essence of all these songs of sea-women —strange love, strange faithfulness, strange everlasting sorrow. No room here for Tennyson's light lyric of the laughing mermaids and mermen—no room for anything but the long, living sorrow of the sea.