Whales Weep Not!

"They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.

All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge on and on,
and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath
out of the sea!"

- D. H. Lawrence.

It's a poignant tale, with a sperm whale found later to be ill, possibly dying already, found beached on the sands near North Berwick sixteen years ago.

Now the National Museum of Scotland has the skull of this leviathan at a new exhibit in the Grand Gallery; an artefact once part of an installation by artist Lucy Skaer in the Tate Gallery, shown as part of the Turner Prize exhibition in 2009.

Humankind may have walked on the Moon, but this cetacean once swam amongst the abyssal deeps - at home in a truly alien environment. It still seems however, a sad end for such a remarkable and intelligent animal, for so long a focus for romance and story.

And legend.