Sample Story: The Blue Men of the Minch

This is the first story in the first volume of the Blue Men, Green Women project. It’s available as a downloadable word document or you can read it online here. There are another 5 stories in this volume and another 2 or 3 volumes in the full series. See the overview for more information. Please link to the site of you like the story. The first blog entry on this site provides details on sources for this story.

The Blue Men of the Minch

S.J. McKenzie 2008

The main thing you need to know about John MacCodrum is that he never listened to what he was told. Well, maybe that’s not quite it. It was more the case that he would listen to you well enough, but then he’d go and do the exact opposite of what you’d said. Many young lads have their heads on backwards that way, but it was particularly so with young MacCodrum.

The real problem was that his father had filled the boy’s head with all sorts of ideas about the Blue Men. Everyone feared them back then, and hated them too, but it was more like an obsession with Bill MacCodrum. ‘They’ve ruined me,’ he would say as he sat all hunched over, drinking to ease his sorrows. (He would rather drink good ale and complain, than pour it into the morning tide in an effort to get on their good side, a thing some others tried). ‘I could have been prosperous, and made a good life for my family, but for those devils.’

Any ill luck that came his way, he’d blame it on the Blue Men straight out, rather than look to his own failings. When holes appeared in his newly-mended nets, he said it was the Blue Men that did it, and not his own clumsy fingers. Or when his boat came limping home with a hole in the stern, it was the Blue Men’s doing, and not the rocks in the Minch near the Shiant Isles. He could do no wrong himself, because everything was down to them. But he never minded the trouble they caused to others, or sorrowed for the widows of all the men they’d drowned over the years. He only cared about the holes in his own nets, and so forth.

No-one could say he didn’t have more bad luck than other fellows, for it’s true that he did, and maybe it was their doing. But when a man does nothing but moan and complain, and will take no steps to improve his situation, well, he doesn’t make himself popular, especially if he never says a word about anyone else’s problems but his own. So after a while, people used to dread him being around, and sometimes took to pretending they’d gone out when they saw him coming down the road.

That’s why his son, young John, turned out the way he did. He didn’t want to end up like his father, so whatever the miserable old fellow said, he’d do the reverse; and once the habit had gotten into him, he’d pay no heed to anybody else, neither. It was an annoying habit to say the least, but in the case of the Blue Men, it really landed him in serious trouble. You see, after all those years of his father telling him they were treacherous devils, one day he decided to take a boat out and see if they were really as bad as all that!

When he was much older, he told us the whole story of what happened. He did meet up with the Blue Men right enough, as you’ll hear in a moment. But it must be said that he wasn’t much of a storyteller. Even when he’d gotten older, he was still plain and direct about everything. He just said things one after another, and the whole tale lasted no more than five minutes. Now, that really won’t do, with a tale like this one. You have to spin it out, add in little details of your own here and there to keep it going. But despite all that, the basic shape of the story here is just as he told it to us.

*****

Early one morning, John was out alone in his boat on the Minch, trying to get himself into mischief by calling out ‘Balloo! Balloo! Come to me if you’re Blue!’ and all other kinds of nonsense, as loud as he can. It was a fine day when he went out, but it’s always rough in the Minch, especially the part near the Shiant Isles, which is where he was now. The Blue Men make the current with all their splashing and churning around in the water, people say, although there isn’t much sense in that, when you think about it.

Anyway, young John has all the luck his father doesn’t, and things have a habit of coming to him just like he wants them to, including trouble. So it isn’t long before he sees a Blue Man sticking his head up out of the water and looking straight at him. The fellow took the shape of a man and was about the same size too, but his skin was blue and shiny, like a dolphin, all except his face which was more of a grey colour. He swam like a dolphin as well, with his body standing proud out of the water and his legs pushing him along beneath. Upon his head was a blue cap, what they call a ‘sea hat,’ which looked like nothing so much as the end of a bright blue sausage-skin that had been rolled up over his head.

‘What on Earth are you doing out here making all that noise, lad?’ said the Blue Man, in a voice that had a hint of the Erse about it.

‘Well, I’m out looking for the Blue Men, and it seems I’ve found one of you, right quick. But I can’t see how I am supposed to answer you in a rhyme if you don’t ask me in one, see?’

The Blue Man must have thought John was completely out of his mind, but really he was only halfway out of it, and now I need to explain why. Before MacCodrum met with the Blue Men, we all had this funny idea that they spoke only in rhymes and riddles. It seems strange to say it now, but we all believed that without question. We’d heard from somewhere that if you met with them at sea, and they sang two lines of a song at you, you’d be alright provided you could answer them with two lines that rhymed with their own. If you couldn’t answer in that way, you were dragged below, or your cargo was taken, or something dreadful like that. So, bad luck if you were no good at rhymes, then.

Anyway, that was how the story went, but it turns out this wasn’t the truth at all, so poor John had gotten off on the wrong foot, for the creature had no idea what he was talking about. ‘It is you that are talking in riddles, boy,’ said the Blue Man, scratching his head. And after they talked for a bit more, it came to light that the whole story about rhymes and riddles had been made up by some lads from Ullapool, to excuse the fact that they had somehow lost another cargo.

‘I remember that crew,’ said the Blue Man, whose name was Alexander. ‘Sold off all their herrings to the smugglers, kept the money, and told their bosses that we’d taken it! Do you mind! What would we want with salted fish? We’ve got plenty fresh down in our caves. All lies it was, but we took the blame, and folk came out hunting for us. That was years ago now, though.’

Thought John, ‘If that part is untrue, I must see if the rest of it is lies, too.’ So he says as bold as you like: ‘Just as well for me anyway, as to the rhymes, for I’m no good at them. Why, if you asked me to rhyme “fish” with “wish” I’d be hard pressed. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is John MacCodrum, although I wish it wasn’t. My father has told me a lot about you, and I have come to see if it is true.’

The Blue Man was smiling before that, but now he looked at the boy with a glint of menace in his eyes and said, ‘You’re not the son of William MacCodrum, are you? The one living in Tarbert? Eighteen footer, blue mainsail, leaks like a sieve?’

‘The very man!’ said young MacCodrum. ‘But this acorn fell far from the tree, I promise you that. I am nothing like him.’

The Blue Man stared at him for a minute and then said ‘I think you’d better come down below and meet with the family. It’s no good talking to you about it up here. You’ll need a sea hat, like mine here, so you can have a good look around.’

‘I’d be delighted,’ said MacCodrum, although it was an invitation to terrify the stoutest heart. ‘Tell me how I might go about it, and I’ll do it straight away.’

‘It’s easy enough. Meet me here, tomorrow, at around this time,’ said Alexander. ‘And don’t bring anything but yourself.’

*****

The next morning, John found Alexander out there again in the same spot, along with a few more Blue Men who looked just like him, all sticking their heads up above the water, curious to see the young human fellow who had sought them out yesterday. The younger ones began giggling at him for they thought he looked very outlandish, what with his bright red hair and the red freckles on his nose. They’d brought with them an extra sea hat, and shortly after stretching it right down over the lad’s head like a bag, Alexander gave a signal and they grabbed him about the waist and then disappeared below the water, like birds diving for fish.

He gave up on holding his breath when he worked out that the blue hood somehow had breathing air in it, and after that, he started to enjoy himself down there. Can you imagine the journey they had? Think of all the things John might have seen, had it not been completely dark! When they got close to the end though, they did come into some light, and it seemed to him there were giant creatures on the edge of his sight, which were watching their descent and maybe thinking to gobble them up. But then he saw they were coming to the safety of a large metal door, in the side of a mountain that grew out of the ocean floor. The door opened and they made a sort of tumble, and then they were on dry land, for somehow the water didn’t come into the cave like it should.

Well, inside was the most astonishing place you could ever see. There were many other doors and passageways, all dank and dripping, with bridges and arches of green stone here and there, leading to caves and grottoes where the strange underwater men were walking about as normal folk do on the streets of Tarbert or Portree. All of this lies under the Shiant Isles, just on the horizon over there, according to MacCodrum.

So after he’d been shown around, he sat and talked with the leader of the Blue Men, whose name was Iain Môr Gorm, or ‘Ian the Great and Blue.’ (MacCodrum made a foolish remark when he told the tale, saying that in fact the leader was no bluer than any of the rest, but of course Iain was called ‘The Blue’ simply because he had Royal blood inside of him). Anyway, in the course of their conversation, it became clear to MacCodrum that much of what was known about the Blue Men was the wrong way round entirely. The ample quantities of liquor they served up may have helped him in forming this favourable opinion.

‘Do we kidnap sailors and drown them?’ asks the chief, in answer to one of MacCodrum’s questions. ‘I think you’d best be asking yourself about your own people kidnapping us, instead. Our women folk are forever going missing up there! Some young lad of yours sees one of our lasses sunning herself on the rocks, and he thinks he’s in love! So up he sidles, and he steals her sea hat while she’s dozing there. So of course, she’s stuck, isn’t she? She can’t get back down again without her sea hat, it’s like part of her soul, so she’s forced to marry him. I’ve lost count of the times that’s happened over the years. It’s at least three. One poor lass spent seven years up in the sun, til she forgot the feel of the green sea about her. And when we finally rescued her, it was too late, and she couldn’t feel at home either above the waves or below.’ At this the other Blue Men made a general chorus of agreement that this was a very shameful thing.

‘Alright, so what about the shipwrecks and all that, then?’ said MacCodrum. A different kind of lad may have made some attempt at an apology, or at least an excuse for what the chief had said, but he behaved as though the actions of his own kind were no reflection upon him at all. The Blue Man chief looked aggrieved at this, but nonetheless he answered the question right away.

‘What are we being accused of here? The weather? The current that flows in the Minch? If ships become ruined on our waters, these things are Mannanan’s doing, not ours. Maybe we benefit from them, but that is a different thing. We do the sea god due honour, so he favours us with his actions.’ Again, the other Blue Men made noises of assent when he had finished talking.

‘So it is not the case that you entangle the nets of fishermen and ruin their boats and suchlike?’ said MacCodrum, wisely ignoring the blasphemy that had just been spoken.

‘Well, I’m not saying we haven’t taken steps to defend ourselves,’ said Iain Môr Gorm in reply. ‘Every so often, a man from the surface causes us harm and draws our ire, and after that, we make sure he has a bad run of it with the fishing or whatever he does at sea, if we can. And that is the reason why we brought you down below here. So we could talk to you about your father.’

‘Old Bill?’ said MacCodrum. ‘Let’s not dwell on him. He never has a good word to say about you, or anyone. I would rather forget him, and pretend I had been found under a stone, if it is all the same to you.’

‘I can see why that may be so, but we cannot forget about what he has done,’ said the chief. ‘You know that I spoke to you of human men that kidnap our women folk and keep them prisoner on the surface? Your father is just such a man. Many years ago now, he took my wife captive, and when we came to rescue her, we couldn’t find her sea hat, not at all. Well, we got her back down below safe enough in a borrowed one, but we all like to have our own hat, the one we were born with. The hat is like a part of us, and without it, there are certain things we can’t do right. It’s especially so for the women folk. So, we’d like to know what became of it.’

Ever since MacCodrum had learned about the sea hats, thoughts had been slowly making their way to the top of his mind, like bubbles in water. One of them came up now. ‘Haven’t I seen one of those things before, somewhere?’ he asked himself, and as he listened to the chief’s story he remembered it clearly – the little folded-up hood of blue skin, all dry and dusty, he’d seen a few times when he’d crept in to his father’s room to steal money from the old metal box beneath the bed. So he believed what the Blue Man told him right away.

‘It seems my father’s misfortunes are well deserved after all,’ he said, ‘which is just as I always suspected. So, I think that I can help you get the sea hat back. You must meet me in the usual place in seven days time.’ And after that he came back up to the surface, with his friend Alexander to show him the way.

*****

The next part of the tale sees MacCodrum going to visit an old priest all the way over in Huishnish, many miles from his home. He looked for the sea hat in the metal box, of course, but it was no longer in there, and after he’d thought about it for a bit, he started to wonder if he hadn’t just imagined seeing it there. ‘Maybe the Blue Men are just playing a trick on me,’ he thought, and he wanted to find out a bit more about it, just to be sure they were not. Luckily enough, the old priest was still there when he arrived. The old man was on death’s door, and if John had come a fortnight later he would have been cold in the ground, and so the rest might never have happened.

‘Yes, I remember your father,’ said the priest, who was sitting out in his garden, but on one of his best soft chairs, “to get the air”, if you can imagine that. ‘How could I not remember him?’ he asked, but went straight on. ‘His was the strangest wedding service I ever performed. There was no-one else present but the two of us. A wedding without a bride! I know it’s wrong, but he offered me so much money I couldn’t resist it. A fortune, it was. Seen me right from that day to this.’

‘Aye,’ said MacCodrum. ‘I always wondered what happened to all that money.’ Folks had sometimes told him that his grandfather had made a modest fortune reaving from shipwrecks, but he’d never seen a penny of it, and now he knew why. ‘So anyway, what happened next?’

‘Well, he wasn’t the first man in these parts to have taken up with one of them, you know. A murrough, I mean. I believe they are not so different from us in many ways.’

‘What of it?’ said MacCodrum. ‘And what happened after that?’

‘I mean that your father and this murrough-woman lived together for some time. Nearly a year. I understand there was no disharmony between them, but even so, there was no need to involve the Lord in their union and I would not have done it, had I known what she truly was. I felt tricked, and still do, despite the money. Such things are not mean to be.’

‘Oh, get to the point, will you? What happened to her?’ said MacCodrum angrily, and you must understand that all this conversation had taken quite a long while, because of all the old man’s dithering and spluttering and feeling faint, for he was very unwell.

‘I cannot be certain, but I believe they rescued her. I heard from a neighbour that while your father was out one day, a few strange-looking blue fellows came into the house and ran off with her. He was most angry and upset when he came home, ranting and cursing out on the street for hours, but what was he to do? They had her safely away. And a good thing, too.’

‘So what about her sea hat? Do you know what became of it?’ And he explained to the old man that his father still had the strange blue skin hat somewhere in his possession.

‘Ah, the cohuleen druith?’ The man coughed out the old Erse words. ‘That is the thing which most separates their race from ours, I believe. While our own souls reside within us, the murrough seem to carry theirs outside of their bodies, and use them as a means to travel between one world and another. Without her cohuleen druith, a murrough will become just like a normal woman, and she will stay that way until it is returned to her, although she will never be truly happy. She cannot bear children without it, either. To steal one is a terrible crime.’

‘What is to be done, Father?’ said MacCodrum. ‘I’d like to make amends for his wrongdoing, if I can. For one thing, I don’t want the curse of the Blue Men coming on me when he’s gone!’

‘I agree that you should set things right,’ said the priest. ‘And I can only suggest that you follow him and see where he’s keeping it hidden now. If he’s got any sense, he’ll keep it in the water somewhere. He may have loved her once, but now that she’s gone, nothing is gained by him keeping it other than her continuing sorrow.’

*****

‘So it’s all true,’ thinks MacCodrum as he starts to walk home again. The only thing to do now was to see where the old devil was keeping the hat, and then he could have it off him. ‘And I won’t mind doing that at all. If he tries to fight back, so much the better! I’ll give him a good old belting!’ He got all hot under the collar thinking about that for the first part of the walk, but it is a long way from Huishnish, so by the time he got home early the next morning he was cold and footsore and still very much looking forward to grabbing the hat, but not so much to giving his father a belting.

He had to keep a close eye on the old man for a few more days before he finally caught wind of where the thing was hidden. On the third night, he heard his father creeping downstairs and out the back door. Then, out of his window, he spied the old man bringing up something from the well in the yard, and sure enough it was the sea hat. In the moonlight it was all shining and silver blue, and it was easy to believe it truly was a living soul. The old man just sat there on the edge of the well and held it in his hands, staring at it for what seemed like an age, whispering to it and slowly rocking himself back and forth.

It was a pathetic sight, almost enough to make John feel sorry for his father, but not so much that he didn’t go down there and get out the sea hat as soon as the old man was back upstairs and sleeping. ‘About time!’ he said to the hat as he grabbed it out of the bucket, all wet and shining. ‘I’ve been looking forward to getting my hands on you!’

You might have thought this tale was going to end up neatly, with MacCodrum going back down below and returning the hat to the Blue Men, and then of course he’d find out that their queen was his mother all along, and what a happy occasion that would be. But you’d be forgetting that he never did what he was told. As soon as you said a word to him, he always had something else in mind. So he wasn’t going to do just what the Blue Men wanted, either.

‘Three days before I’m due to go back!’ he said. ‘Plenty of time! I can gather up enough to keep me going for the rest of my days.’ For that was what he’d wanted all along, as soon as he’d learned about the sea hats. Just like his grandfather, he wanted to get his hands on some of the riches that have gone down to the bottom of the Minch near Point Ushnish over the years. They have a lighthouse there now, which has already saved many a sailor, and it’s not been there long. But before that, who knows how many ships went down there? And not all of them carrying salt fish, either. Spanish galleons were sunk, so they say, and English boats during the Civil War, and all sorts of other vessels besides.

MacCodrum thought this a far better way to make a living than catching fish in the very same place. ‘If I am going to bring up silvery things from the water, why not make them coins, eh?’ he thought. ‘That way I needn’t be bothered doing it for very long!’ So after he’d got out on to the water, he pulled the sea-hat over his head like they’d shown him, made ready a collection of glowing sea-worms to use like a torch, and then jumped straight in the water and got about it. All this took no more than two hours after he’d taken the hat out from the well. He wasn’t one to waste time when he’d made a plan.

So down he goes to the bottom of the sea, and it wasn’t long before he comes upon a wreck and takes an oak cask of fine old brandy up out of it. ‘There were creatures down there,’ he said about it afterwards, ‘all sorts of beasties hovering about on the edge of my light, but they must have been cowardly for they didn’t gobble me up after all.’ So there was nothing him stopping him from going on and taking as much as he pleased. After that he finds another ship, and takes some old silver plates from it, and on a third, he finds quite a hoard of old coins and the like. All of this he takes back up to his boat and then brings it back to a place behind his father’s house where he buries it, near where his father hid the cohuleen druith for all those years. Maybe that acorn didn’t fall so far from the tree, after all.

Anyway, that’s only the first day. He goes back again on the second day and finds even more than before, for he’s out in deeper water now, getting closer to the Shiant Islands. His grandfather could do no more than dive down to the wrecks that sank right on the rocks, or wait for things to come floating in to shore. But with the sea hat, the young MacCodrum can go right down to the wrecks of ships that foundered in the deeper water and were all still lying there untouched.

Most folk would have stopped at that, for after two days he had enough to see him by for a good many years. But that wasn’t MacCodrum as a boy. Back out on the third day he was, and this time he went diving down right close to the Shiant Isles themselves. Well, a priest might say that you should never go fishing with another person’s soul, or something of that sort. But the rest of us would just be content with thinking that a third trip out might be pushing our luck. And so it was. The Blue Men had been waiting nearly twenty years to get back the sea hat, you see, and they weren’t going to wait another day on account of him.

He hadn’t been down there long when up from out of the darkness came three of them, and they were all very much faster than poor MacCodrum. He claims he was weighed down by all the goods he was carrying back up to his boat, but we’ll never know, because we never saw any of that lot. Two of them grabbed him right round the middle and pinned his arms, so there was no point in him struggling, and the third one, his friend Alexander, looked him calmly in the eye, then took hold of the stolen sea hat and ripped it right off his head. Then they let him go again as quick as that, and swam off into the deep, leaving him hovering there with just a single breath of air inside, and two hundred yards of water between himself and daylight.

*****

He survived, of course, although no-one really knows how, and he can’t remember it himself. He says he swam up for all he was worth, but he was a long way down there when they got to him, and he must have blacked out. The next thing he knew, he was waking up clutching onto a small part of what used to be his boat, and he saw that the rest of it was all drifting in little pieces around him, for they’d come up and completely destroyed it. So he floated around for a day or more on a plank of wood, and then finally washed ashore on a beach up towards Mulhagery, and walked his way back here.

A man shouldn’t really survive something like that. Not down that deep. That’s how some of us got to thinking that maybe MacCodrum’s mother really was from the sea, and that he survived because of being partly a murrough himself. But looking at him with his red hair and all, it was hard to believe it. Anyway we did see a lot of the treasure he’d got up, and he lived off it for many years, but despite his money, he was never the same man.

To begin with, he wouldn’t go near the sea again, and that’s something of a problem out here. But more than that, it was as though he’d lost some part of his will, so that he was never headstrong, and never took a chance on anything. He wouldn’t go his own way, or make plans of any sort. He just sat here on his hoard, like he was waiting for something that never came, and finally he passed away, just last year. He was only forty-eight.

As for the Blue Men, we don’t think of them so much, any more. No-one goes out looking for them, and so no-one finds them. If a man’s nets are full of holes, well, he ought to pay more heed to them before they tatter. And if a ship goes down, we blame the rocks, or the weather, or the current that always runs throughout the Minch near the Shiant Isles, even on the calmest day of the year.