<p>"Once, long before Buddha, long before Allah, long before the Christ, the peoples on either side of the Pentland Firth worshipped Mara, the Green Goddess of the sea.<br>Mara gave them food, seals, birds, shellfish. She also gave them life; the tides of women's courses that brought on the passion, and then the pain of birth.<br>When angry she raged and swept away the sand and flooded inland: but none had ever seen her in the flesh except f...