It is the belief of the people of these islands that every ninth-night the seals put off their skins and assume the human form, and dance and sport about on the land. After some time, they resume their skins and return to the water. The following adventure, it is said, once occurred:[225]
"A man happening to pass by where a female seal was disporting herself in the form of a woman, found her skin, and took and hid it. When she could not find her skin to creep into, she was forced to remain in the human form; and as she was fair to look upon, that same man took her to wife, had children by her, and lived right happily with her. After a long time, the wife found the skin that had been stolen, and could not resist the temptation to creep into it, and so she became a seal again, and returned to the sea."
The Neck called Nikar is also an object of popular faith in the Feroes. He inhabits the streams and lakes, and takes a delight in drowning people.
[224] Færoæ et Færoa reserata. Lond. 1676.
[225] Thiele, iii. 51, from the MS. Travels of Svaboe in the Feroes.
Well, since we are welcome to Yule, Up wi't Lightfoot, link it awa', boys! Send for a fiddler, play up Foula reel, The Shaalds will pay for a', boys. SHETLAND SONG.
Dr. Hibbert's valuable work on the Shetland Islands[226] fortunately enables us to give a tolerably complete account of the fairy system of these islands.
The Shetlanders, he informs us, believe in two kinds of Trows, as they call the Scandinavian Trolls, those of the land and those of the sea.
The former, whom, like the Scots, they also term the _guid folk_ and _guid neighbours_, they conceive to inhabit the interior of green hills. Persons who have been brought into their habitations have been dazzled with the splendour of what they saw there. All the interior walls are adorned with gold and silver, and the domestic utensils resemble the strange things that are found sometimes lying on the hills. These persons have always entered the hill on one side and gone out at the other.
They marry and have children, like their northern kindred. A woman of the island of Yell, who died not long since, at the advanced age of more than a hundred years, said, that she once met some fairy children, accompanied by a little dog, playing like other boys and girls, on the top of a hill. Another time she happened one night to raise herself up in the bed, when she saw a little boy with a white nightcap on his head, sitting at the fire. She asked him who he was. "I am Trippa's son," said he. When she heard this, she instantly _sained_, i. e. blessed herself, and Trippa's son vanished.