Hi folks,

I found the following in "The Collected Reprints from Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine, Volumes 1-6 ~ 1959-1964". It gives it's version of the term "nourris".

This hauntingly beautiful ballad has its origin in folklore of the "supernatural" of the Hebrides and Orkneys Islands in Great Britain. It is one of the ballads collected by Professor Francis James Child and appears as #113 in that scholar's venerated collection. Albert B. Freidman, editor of "The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World," says of the song: "The folklore of the Hebrides and Orkneys - Sule or Shule Skerry is a Western Orkney islet - is rich in tales of the silkies or seal-folk. Enchanted creatures, they dwell in the depth of the sea, but they occasionally come upon land, after doffing their sealskins, and pass as ordinary men, like the silkie of the ballad, who has begat a child upon an 'earthly nourris,' a mortal woman. Many families in the Scottish islands trace their ancestry to sealmen, and because of a totemic taboo, will not taste seal meat. Though the denouement of this ballad may seem a contrived literary device, the Orkney islanders would consider the prophecy in keeping, because the silkies are noted for their power of foretelling the future."

All the best,

Mick