High in the sky, high up there
The moon is laughing everywhere

She has seen stranger, she has
Laughing and dancing way up there

High in the sky, high up there
The moon is laughing everywhere

She has seen stranger, she has
Laughing and dancing way up there

She brings in the tide, sends us to sleep
We dream in her light and think awful deep

Makes us loony with her mad tune
That only comes once in a true blue moon

High in the sky, high up there
The moon is laughing everywhere

She has seen stranger, she has
Laughing and dancing way up there

High in the sky, high up there
The moon is laughing everywhere

She has seen stranger, she has
Laughing and dancing way up there

She brings in the tide, sends us to sleep
We dream in her light and think awful deep

Makes us loony with her mad tune
That only comes once in a true blue moon

High in the sky, high up there
The moon is laughing everywhere

She has seen a stranger, she has
Laughing and dancing way up there

The seal maiden woke to 
hear a tapping on their door.

The boy stood there, dripping seaweed,

with mackerel bones in his teeth 
and the smell of salt all around him.

In his hands, he carried two sealskins, 
one off-white, which was his own,

and one of a dawn grey which 
belonged to the seal maiden.

"Come, quick, before the tide turns 
and we're trapped here!" said the boy.

Together, they ran for the surf,

the seal maiden throwing off her clothes
as they stumbled over rocks and dunes.

No one but the moon saw 
them putting on their sealskins.

She laughed and continued dancing. 
She'd seen stranger, sure she had.

When the seal maiden felt the first rush 
of cold spray, she whooped and shrieked with joy.

And when she saw, coming towards her
in swift, powerful motion, an old grey seal,

she forgot how to swim for a moment,
went under, and came up crying, "Mother! Mother!"

And there she was, Solanna the Elder,
older, battered by her many sea battles,

but unmistakably 
the seal maiden's mother.

All night they swam, dove, 
flipped themselves over,

went after a shoal of salmon 
and then of whiting

and for dessert, a big congery leech.

At last, exhausted and stuffed, 
they paddled slowly to the cave

to lie up on the wide 
dark ledges to sleep.

Just before he closed his eyes,
the seal boy asked the seal maiden,

"How is my father?"

"Don't think of him now," 
the seal maiden answered

for to tell the truth, she'd 
been thinking of him herself.

"I can't help it," answered the seal boy.

"Your son will yearn the land
as you have yearned the sea,"

Solanna the Elder said to the seal maiden.

"I won't go back to the earth," 
said the seal maiden.

"No," said Solanna the Elder, "but you must
let the boy go when the time comes.

He is half earth, and half sea. 
Half boy, half seal.

And you must give him safe passage 
each time he wants to go ashore.

"You must guard his sealskin 
when he steps onto the sand

and be there waiting with it for him 
when he wants to return to the sea."

"I will certainly do that,"
the seal maiden said, and she did

and the seal boy went ashore sometimes
and lived among the people of the earth

and spoke long into the
night with Red Brian, his father

and went out fishing with him

and there was always luck on
the catch when the seal boy was there.

And the seal maiden would watch her son and 
Red Brian to see they were safe and content

and no harm came to them

and then she would return east for the cave 
and the company of Solanna the Elder

and the mermaids and all her own kind.