The Mermaid of Eathie Shore

Eathie Shore, Black Isle, Ross-shire, Scotland

A mermaid was heard singing on the rocks at Eathie Shore by a group of fishermen who tried to capture her — only to find themselves paralysed on the beach as the tide came in.

The Black Isle in Ross-shire is not, despite its name, an island — it is a peninsula between the Cromarty and Moray Firths. Its shoreline, particularly the rocky stretch around Eathie, has a long tradition of mermaid sightings that is distinct from the Orkney and Hebridean selkie traditions. The Eathie mermaid accounts describe a creature of the conventional type: fish-tailed from the waist down, human above, and heard singing before she is seen. The singing is described not as beautiful in any comfortable way but as compelling to the point of helplessness — a song that cannot be unhear and that produces a specific craving to approach the water. The principal account, in the form collected by Hugh Miller in the 19th century, involves a group of Cromarty fishermen who heard the singing from the rocks and attempted to capture her by surrounding her on the shore. They found as they approached that they could not move. Their limbs worked but their direction was wrong — each man found himself walking toward the water rather than toward the creature, as though the geography had rearranged itself. The tide came in. They would have drowned had the singing not stopped, which released them. They ran. Hugh Miller, who recorded this account, noted that he had heard identical accounts from fishermen who did not know each other and had no reason to coordinate their stories.