Topic Research: Selkies

"Cliffs Beyond Pettico Wick," photo by Steven Ruffles.

Source: Geograph.

I've decided to base my storybook around selkies, creatures of Celtic folklore who exist as seals in the sea but can shed their sealskin to come ashore. Many of these stories are tragic, as the selkie is often separated from her sea-home against her will and must leave her earthly children if she wishes to return to her original family. Selkies may be either men or women, and I've tried to look for some stories about female selkies and some about male selkies. I noticed a lot of sexism, unfortunately, in that the female selkie usually has her sealskin stolen by a fisherman who has noticed her beauty and who marries her when she can't find her sealskin and has no choice but to live with him. Then, when she does discover her sealskin, she often has no hard feelings toward the man who stole it from her and kept her away from her family for so long! I'd like to write a story in which the selkie has more of a voice and maybe even tricks the man who stole her skin. I've never been to Ireland or Scotland, but I love to look at pictures of the coastal cliffs there, and I love Celtic music. I am excited to include details of the sights, sounds, and smells of the coasts in the stories.

Many selkie stories follow a very similar plot, so I would probably use a few of those stories to write just one of my stories. As I mentioned above, several of these stories involve a man who falls in love with the selkie based on her beauty and steals her sealskin so that she cannot return to the water. She does not know that he stole her skin, so she marries him and has children, only to discover her skin one day and return to the ocean, never to come back. In some of the stories, she spends time with her children; in one story she does this by swimming along with them as they walk on the shore. Sometimes, she visits her husband while he fishes out on the water, and she is sorrowful and tender toward him. I might write a story in which she is not pleased with her husband for stealing her skin. I don't think he's worthy of her love for tricking her and keeping her away from her family. On the other hand, the original stories are so tragically beautiful that I don't know if I would want to mar that with a tale of revenge. Some of the stories that follow this general plot are "The Mermaid Wife," "The Silkie Wife," "The Seal Skin," "Tom Moore and the Seal Woman," and "The Lady of Gollerus." All these stories are from Dan Alishman's Folktexts. These stories are all fairly short and have different interesting details that I could draw from.

The second story I'd like to use, "Herman Perk and the Seal," is also from Dan Alishman's Folktexts.  This story, surprisingly, involves no malice between humans and selkies. A man stranded in a storm is called to by a selkie, who promises to return him safely home if he will retrieve his wife's sealskin so that the two selkies can be together again.

Finally, there is a ballad called "The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry," a traditional folksong from Orkney that was collected by Francis James Child (Source: Sacred Texts). This ballad is tragically beautiful to read and even more beautiful when it is sung. It is from a woman's point of view, but the selkie in the story is male. The woman, nursing her baby, cries out that she doesn't know the father or where he is. The father appears to her and tells her that he is a selkie, a seal by day and a man by night. Then, he takes the baby with him and says that she will marry a hunter who will kill him and their son. This ballad is interesting to me because, as with the common female selkie stories, it was probably used to explain away the disappearance of a parent. In this case, it would have been used to explain the birth and disappearance of a child without a father. The actual folktale is very melancholy, as is the true story of what happened. Mainly Norfolk has more information about the ballad and its different performances.

In this video, two women sing a lovely a cappella version of the song and explain its meaning.

This is another nice version with slightly different lyrics and melody by Joan Baez.