Morveren’s dance

The men thought that I was flirting

and they laughed as they cast their nets

but my flicking tail was a warning

and my rock-pool eyes foretold death.

One and then hundreds of fish were trapped

and hauled, writhing, onto blonde sand.

 

My anxious tail churned the seabed sand

as the men began their puckered-lip flirting.

They didn’t know that they were trapped

as more fish swam into their heavy nets.

The men ignored my dance of death,

they saw my tail tangled and shouted a warning.

 

‘Missus, this is your final warning

unless you want to end up gasping on the sand.

You’re in danger of death

while you’re dancing and flirting.

You’ll get tangled in our fishing nets

and once you’re caught, you’re trapped.’

 

I didn’t care that I was trapped

as long as I delivered my warning

that all the fish in the sea were in those nets

that after today no more would be landed on the sand.

As they flirted with me, they were flirting

with the seaside winds of death.

 

Poseidon planned to punish them with death

for having more fish than they could eat trapped.

While they were obliviously flirting

I was trying to give warning,

swimming as close as I dared to the sand

fearless in the face of their coarse nets.

 

Ignorant, they overfilled their nets

condemning their little town to death

as Poseidon summoned a storm of sand

their houses at Seaton became trapped

and although they didn’t hear my warning,

the men saw now that I wasn’t flirting.

 

Yet, in the taverns, the tale of death by sand at Seaton

has forgotten that the mermaid was not flirting when she was trapped

and men still cast their nets without heeding warning.