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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,
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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.
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"Come, quick, before the tide turns
and we're trapped here!" said the boy.
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Together, they ran for the surf,
-
the seal maiden throwing off her clothes
as they stumbled over rocks and dunes.
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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.
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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!"
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And there she was, Solanna the Elder,
older, battered by her many sea battles,
-
but unmistakably
the seal maiden's mother.
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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.
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At last, exhausted and stuffed,
they paddled slowly to the cave
-
to lie up on the wide
dark ledges to sleep.
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Just before he closed his eyes,
the seal boy asked the seal maiden,
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"How is my father?"
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"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.
