The Three Knots
Jane Coutts, the author of The Books and the Sea:
Many years ago, when I worked in a small island museum, I was involved with local tales, most of which had been recorded or written down relatively recently, but which had originally been handed down from generation to generation. They had seen a lot of changes in the world in their time.
When I looked into these tales a little, the first thing to strike me was that they had not grown in isolation. Parts of them had come from other places and other people, some of them a long way from home and, far from living in a cultural bubble, they were the product of generations of coming and going, when men and women had left and returned with all they had seen tucked away somewhere in their memories.
The second thing that occurred to me was that these stories were not only a journey out into the world in all its cultural diversity, they also led inwards, onto other paths through the deepest recesses of our minds, a journey to search for our place in life, however unusual or bizarre it might turn out to be.
All across the North Atlantic seaboard and beyond, there are tales of people who could tie the winds up in knots and sell them to sailors departing on a long voyage. The stories, like all tales of the ilk, always seemed to return to the adventures of the sailor and his battles with the weather. I, on the other hand, was invariably left wondering about those women who tied the wind, where they came from and where they went and who they really were.
And so appeared the story of The Three Knots. It led back to other characters I had long wondered about in the tales, and whom I felt had been trivialised and misread in recent times, when the stories were no longer taken seriously. Finn men are a whole world unto themselves, and were once recognised all over northern countries for their abilities to transcend time and space and bring back information or something which had been lost. Their craft, like that of a shaman, is not to be trifled with, because it is not a game, but for some of us, it is unavoidable.
I have always seen the characters in these tales as very real, and have wondered about the depths of the people they were – and more than likely still are. Now and again, I am fairly sure I catch a glimpse of one of them, or hear them speaking in the background or in something I am doing, and usually, I just look around and smile. Perhaps it means I have come full circle.