This is a rare first-hand mermaid account from the Channel Islands, told with names attached. Tostevin was on the cliffs above Petit Bôt, the small bay at the bottom of a wooded valley on the south coast, when he looked down and saw six figures on the sand, women from the waist up and fish below. He ran down the cliff path as fast as he could to get a closer look. Before he reached them they were in the water and out of sight.
MacCulloch was polite but not convinced. "It was doubtless a flock of seals which he saw," he wrote, pointing out that seals still turned up occasionally and had probably been commoner in the past, and that the ones taken locally matched those on the French coast. The honest verdict is the same today: the witness was reliable, and the sighting is best explained by seals hauled out on the sand.
Carey's notes add what the sea people meant to the fishermen. In Sark and Guernsey alike they still believed in sirens who sat on the rocks and sang before a storm. The Sark sirens were young and beautiful. The Guernsey ones were old women whose song drew ships in towards the rocks, after which the storm broke and "the sirens, whether young or old, carry down the sailors to the bottom of the sea, and eat them". Petit Bôt is a popular bathing beach reached by road down the valley.
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