I was recently reading a book about Orkney in the old days. There was a story of a young girl who defied her neighbours by rescuing the crew of a ship being smashed to pieces on the rocky shore during a storm. The neighbours wanted the crew dead so that they could loot the wreck. I'm pretty sure Orcadians used to believe that if you rescued someone from the sea then you or a close relative would die as compensation for cheating the sea gods of their victim. A handy excuse indeed for letting a crew drown before the looting of the wreck could begin. It also raises the possibility that Lord Kitchener may have been tossed off an Orkney cliff back into the sea after surviving the sinking of HMS Hampshire in 1916.