Thursday in PB

(Followers of this Port Brokeferry project will know that each new day begins with an extract from an historical or official document, something that tells us a bit more about the place where all these people have their days. This is now Thursday in PB and below is something from a collection of folk tales.)

THE PORT BROKEFERRY MERMAID

About six miles out from the shore at Port Brokeferry the sea floor rises to a jagged point that just breaks through the surface of the water. Locally these rocks are known as The Snag on account of the nets that fishermen all too regularly tear on their teeth when the water is high enough to conceal the danger. The rocks were also once known as Bessie’s Seat and behind that lies our story.

Bessie was the name given to a mermaid that was sometimes seen on the rocks off shore at Port Brokeferry. Several accounts have been written down and most are consistent in their description of her and of her habits. Her hair was green and long, so long it could conceal her like a blanket as she slept curled on the rocks. When she entered the water her hair fanned out about her and took on a reddish hue.

She had eyes as black as new-mined coal and as shiny, like the wet wide eyes of seals, always looking surprised and interested. There were webs between her fingers and her nails were sharp and horny, as old men’s toe nails can be. Her tail was scaley and marked like a mackerel is marked, banded in blue and silver and black.

Bessie knew the fishermen and would come to their call. They fed her honey dripped from a wooden spoon, and sweetened mead poured from a beaker into her open mouth. She had no words but made sound. It was sometimes like she was singing and the fishermen came home humming the music she had made and for days afterwards the one song was in their heads like a small madness.

If boats veered too near to the claw and tooth of Bessie’s Seat, she would scream in alarm and in this way she is credited with saving many a boat from a broken hull and the lives of the fishermen were always in her debt.

Then things changed. Like in the poem, ‘in an instant a’ was dark.’

A visitor paid a drunken man called Bacon to ferry him out to Bessie’s Seat. The visitor wanted to see her for himself, he told Bacon, wanted to see the mermaid he had heard so much talk of. She was there as she always was. Not so pretty as the man had hoped, but he still calculated some profit in catching her and exhibiting her as a curiosity in the cities and towns. He cast a net over Bessie’s Seat, and hoped to take her as he would take fish from the sea. Bessie tore the net with her nails and her teeth and screamed so loud she was heard by women on the shore. Then she attacked the small boat and pulled the unnamed man to the bottom of the sea. Bacon was later found adrift on the broken remains of his boat. His grandson is still resident in Port Brokeferry and can confirm the story.

Bessie the mermaid was never seen again and fishermen still curse their torn nets and curse the man who sent Bessie away. Bessie’s Seat is a little more obvious these days and is now the home of a small colony of common seals. They too come to the sides of visiting boats and take offered fish from the hands of boatmen and stare wet-eyed and curious at the visitors that are brave enough to sail out to The Snag and back.

(extract from ‘Spit In Your Eye: A Collection of Sea Tales From The North-West’, Charles Crawley, editor. Published in 1929 by Blackfriars Books, Edin.)