Hey everyone, before we get started today, I just wanted to let you know that the band I play in, Fire Antlers, has a new album out now on Spotify, Band Camp, or wherever you stream your music.

And if you would like to see Fire Antlers Live, the release show for the new album, The Plot Is Lost, will be on June 14th, here in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada at Irene's Pub on Bank Street.

To get a taste of what you will hear, stick around to the end of the show when I will be playing the new single from The Plot is Lost, Hollow Moon. Check it out.

Have you ever heard of Black Isle in Northern Scotland?

It's one of those places named in a way to flummocks and beguile outsiders.

Because Black Isle isn't so much an island as it's a peninsula, jutting out from Scotland's

east coast into the North Sea.

In this way, Black Isle is a hybrid, both mainland and island.

And so it seems appropriate that Black Isle is the setting for one of Scotland's best-known

mermaid stories. For there is no hybrid more beguiling in the whole world of human folklore than the

mermaid. The story goes that a long time ago, a man named Patterson was walking near Kessik Ferry

on Black Isle when something caught his eye, quote, sitting on the dark misty deep, end quote.

As he drew closer, it became clear that it was a mermaid basking elegantly on a rock.

Patterson had been told that if one was able to pluck a few scales from a mermaid's tail,

she would transform into a human woman and would be compelled to marry the man

who had been bold enough to catch her by surprise. So Patterson tried his luck. He quietly waded into the sea, approached the sunbathing mermaid,

and then quickly plucked two scales from her large fish-like tail.

No sooner did he have the scales in hand that the transformation took place.

The fish's tail magically transformed into two human legs. And now, standing before Patterson was the most beautiful woman he had ever

seen in his entire life. Her hair was long and golden, her eyes as blue as the sky, and her lips, quote,

red as winter berries and as tempting as the fruits of summer, end quote.

Patterson then led this newly transformed woman back to his small Black Isle cottage, and soon the two were wed in a small

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