The large seal, with whom she used to hold her conversations, immediately joined her, and congratulated her on her escape, and they quitted the shore together. But ere she went she turned round to her husband, who stood in mute despair on the rock, and whose misery excited feelings of compassion in her breast. "Farewell," said she to him, "and may all good fortune attend you. I loved you well while I was with you, but I always loved my first husband better."[233] * * * * * The water-spirit is in Shetland called Shoopiltee; he appears in the form of a pretty little horse, and endeavours to entice persons to ride on him, and then gallops with them into the sea. FOOTNOTES: [226] Description of the Shetland Islands. Edinburgh, 1822. [227] Edmonston's View, &c., of Zetland Islands. Edin. 1809. [228] We need hardly to remind the reader that in what precedes Dr. Hibbert is to be regarded as the narrator in 1822. [229] Edmonston, _ut supra_. [230] Dr. Hibbert says he could get but little satisfaction from the Shetlanders respecting this submarine country. [231] _Stacks_ or _skerries_ are bare rocks out in the sea. [232] A _voe_ is a small bay. [233] See below, _Germany_. ORKNEYS. Harold was born where restless seas Howl round the storm-swept Orcades. SCOTT. Of the Orcadian Fairies we have very little information. Brand[234] merely tells us, they were, in his time, frequently seen in several of the isles dancing and making merry; so that we may fairly conclude they differed little from their Scottish and Shetland neighbours. One thing he adds, which is of some importance, that they were frequently seen in armour. Brownie seems to have been the principal Orkney Fairy, where he possessed a degree of importance rather beyond what was allotted to him in the neighbouring realm of Scotland.