Mermaids - A Fleams Tale

The people of Fleams, though they live in the most land-locked place in Britain, have heard tell of sea anemones.  In fact, they know where sea anemones came from.



 A sea anemone

This is how they know tell of them... One time on her travels with The Button Gypsies, Ella Campane had arrived at the North East coast.

Miss Ella Campane

She was always on the look-out for new healing powers, which she used in her treatment of the insane at The Canholes Asylum.  Asking around, she found the people of the area very welcoming, and keen on a natter.  They counted it lucky to find a visiting stranger who wanted to hear their stories.

They told her the story of the sea anemone.  It goes like this:

One day, a young healer was wandering by the shore, puzzling out a cure.  The horses belonging to a certain local farm were hag-ridden and it was feared they might die.  The healer sought a way to keep them safe.  She walked and sought an answer in her land.  Right by the strand was a tumbledown cottage, where no-one had lived for years.  Seaweed and mussels grew on the tumbled stones outside, and sheep sheltered inside, where bracken grew.  And, on the rocks outside, she saw an old man sitting.  When the healer let on, he spoke at once, with the tongue of a wiseman.

"A mermaid has done this," he intoned.  "Bleed the next horse that falls ill, and catch the blood on a handful of straw.  When it dries, set fire to the straw, and the ill-wisher will appear in the smoke.  Catch her and slit her throat."  That was all he said, and the healer took note.  She returned to the farm prepared.  In the morning, when another horse was sweating and shivering, she knew what to do.  The young healer carried out the old man's instructions. 

In the smoke, a mermaid appeared.  The healer rushed at her, with her blade drawn.  She managed to slash the mermaid's pearl-white throat, but the mermaid slithered to the shore with unnatural speed.  Her blood fell onto the rocks and into the rock-pools as she passed.  Before you could say "Jack Robinson!" she was in the sea and gone.  The trail of blood-drops she had left became sea anemones, and you can still see them if you go down to the shore when the tide is out.

Ella looked, and she saw the sea anemones, like clots of blood in the crevices between rocks, so she knew the tale was true.  She brought the telling of it back to Fleams.  And what of her search for healing powers?  Did she ever use the wiseman's spell?  Who knows, she may have.