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.

Semester Project Topic Brainstorm

The Moon

I get excited about the moon just about every evening when it comes out, and judging by the vast collection of moon stories and myths from cultures all over the world, I don't think I'm the only one! The moon seems to draw in people of all backgrounds and cultures. The sun is heavily discussed in casual and scientific conversations, but the moon is better at inspiring people to write stories about it. Maybe it's because we can look directly at it and see shapes like a man or a hare, or maybe it's because the moon is associated with night, which is more mysterious and eerie than day. I also think it's interesting that, according to Timothy Harley in Moon Lore, moon deities are men more often than they are women. I would have guessed it was the other way around, since women and the moon are both labeled as mysterious, and since in Spanish and French the noun for "moon" is feminine. It might be fun to find and retell stories about the moon as a woman, man, and something else (inanimate or containing an animal, maybe).

Screenshot from the 1902 film Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon).

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Women Saints

As I discussed in my post about reading options earlier this week, I am interested in stories about women saints because I like the mysticism of Catholicism and I am interested in the treatment and portrayal of women during Biblical times and the Middle Ages. I've had quite a bit of exposure to the Bible, but I haven't read many stories about saints from after Biblical times. If I choose this topic, I will probably narrow down to a more specific theme that connects a few women. I might tell the stories from the women's point of view, but I'm sure that's been done many times before, so I would want to put an additional spin on the retelling that would have to do with the narrower theme. The Golden Legend would be a good place to start reading for this topic.

Saint Gemma Galgani. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Buddhist Jataka Tales

Last fall I took a class on death and dying, and we did an entire unit on reincarnation. The class was focused on death and dying in America, so after some reading about the basics of reincarnation around the world, we directed our attention to reincarnation beliefs in America. I thought the Buddhist vision of reincarnation was one of the most interesting, especially because it places emphasis on spiritual and moral aspects of life and rebirth. I also think the idea of the Buddha is interesting, and I like that the Jataka tales track his many lives. From the few Jataka stories I have already read, the theme of self-sacrifice seems like it is very prominent. I think this would be an interesting topic to explore if I wanted to narrow down my project a little. Laura's Jataka unit that draws from Shedlock would be a good place to start, as would Buddhist Birth Stories by T. W. Davids, which discusses the history of the tales in Buddhism and includes literal translations of the original stories.

Bhutanese painting depicting the Jataka tales.

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Celtic Water Creatures

When I was very young, my mom and I would listen to a CD called The Seal Maiden. I loved this album, which was a story of a selkie in musical form. Recently, I listened to the album again and was transported back to my early childhood and drawn into the story, which I can appreciate and understand more now that I am older. I like the story of the selkie because it involves a protagonist who has lost her home, beautiful descriptions of the ocean, and the pain of being torn apart from two different families. It is a sad story but contains a lot of beauty. I would like to read more selkie stories, since they can be either women or men, and maybe stories about other underwater Celtic creatures, such as waterkelpies. Donald Mackenzie's Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend has some stories about mermaids and seal-people, and Walter Gregor's Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland has a story about waterkelpies.

Stamp of the Faroe Islands depicting a seal-woman (selkie).

Source: Wikimedia Commons.