False Mermaid

“What were they looking for?” Cormac’s imagination had already conjured three ruddy-faced figures crouching among sodden nets with glowing lanterns.

“I’m not even sure they knew,” Roz said. “But what they found was a heavy fishing weight, still covered with blood and bits of fur.”

Cormac could see the terrible thing before him, glistening red in the lamplight. He imagined a lone figure out on the island, caught up in a fury of violence, striking confusion and fear into a crowd of hapless, slow-moving animals. He heard cries of alarm, desperate splashing as they tried to escape into the sea, and he thought of the creatures he’d seen this morning, not far from Rathlin O’Birne. Perhaps Heaney couldn’t bear what he saw in the dark pools of their eyes. “So what did they do?”

“What could they do? It wasn’t against the law to kill seals—not at that time.”

“But if people believed that Heaney had killed his wife—and it seems as though there was widespread suspicion—why wouldn’t they come out and say so?”

“I think it had to do with the remnants of fairy belief. And you have to consider the social context of that time. The local people feared Heaney, but they were just as fearful of the police—the Royal Irish Constabulary were an extension of English rule. Nobody wanted to cooperate, no matter what they knew. Heaney might come after them if they talked, and if he did, how could they entrust their families’ safety to the very same bailiffs who had no compunction about evicting people when they couldn’t pay the rent? The song might have been an indirect way to tell what really happened. I’ve always suspected that at its root, the selkie stories had far more to do with female emancipation than otherworldly sea creatures. Once they escape their enchantment, shape-shifting females are in possession of their own identities, liberated from the bonds of marriage and social expectation. In spite of being torn, they’re still able to leave their husbands, even their children. It’s a deeply unsettling notion, that there’s something pulling at women, far larger than any possible domestic concerns. Something as deep and mysterious and otherworldly as the sea. A whole separate realm.”

Cormac couldn’t help thinking of Nora, perhaps content to be her own person, apart from him. Roz was right—it was an unsettling notion. He tried to shake it off. “What made you decide to spend months digging all this up?”

“I came across the words of the song again, just by chance, and there’s something so powerful about the way it captures the wintry feeling of a place—the darkness and the snow, the cold sea, the utter desolation. It’s the mood of the piece, and the ambiguity of the selkie’s situation—she may have escaped her captivity, but she’s not really free. It’s there from the opening line of the song: Is cosúil gur mheath tú nó gur thréig tú an greann—‘It seems you’ve faded away and abandoned the love of life.’ The woman is trapped and heartsick and exhausted, but she can’t seem to leave that place where her two worlds met. She’s divided, in body and in spirit; the love she feels for her children is as strong as the pull of the sea.” Roz gazed out the window into the middle distance. “I know she’s out there somewhere, Cormac. People might imagine that I study these things because I harbor some secret belief in mermaids. I don’t, as it happens. But our need for them is real. And so is all the anger and fear, the fierce love and jealousy embedded in the stories about them—all the things that make us humans carry on as we do. Think of it—Mary Heaney disappeared more than a hundred years ago, and yet people who live down the road still know intimate details of her life. Why? Because her dilemma speaks to them. Her story expresses a duality that’s deeply embedded in all of us. Folktales are really complex psychological ideas given form and flesh.” Roz touched his arm. “Tell me, Cormac, have you had a good look around your father’s house? Surely you’ve noticed all the photographs on the walls—and have you counted how many are seals? When I remarked on the pictures, your father showed me how all the drawers and cupboards in his room are literally filled with notebooks of selkie stories his aunt Julia had collected. And I got a very strange feeling at that moment, wondering how it was your father and I just happened to meet that evening at Port na Rón. Even if you don’t believe in other realms, or fate, or serendipity—‘all that auld shite,’ as your father likes to call it—you still have to admit, there’s something funny going on.”

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