Selkie

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A Faroese stamp depicting the capture of a seal woman
A Faroese stamp depicting the capture of a seal woman

Selkies (also known as silkies or selchies) are mythological creatures in Irish, Icelandic, and Scottish mythology that can transform themselves from seals to humans. The legend apparently originated on the Orkney Islands where selch or selk(ie) is the Scots word for seal (from Old English seolh).

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[edit] Legends

Selkies are able to transform to human form by shedding their seal skins and can revert to seal form by putting their selkie skin back on. Stories concerning selkies are generally romantic tragedies. Sometimes the human will not know that their lover is a selkie, and wakes to find them gone. Other times the human will hide the selkie's skin, thus preventing them from returning to seal form. A selkie can only make contact with one particular human for a short amount of time before they must return to the sea. They are not able to make contact with that human again for seven years, unless the human is to steal their selkie's skin and hide it or burn it.[citation needed] The Grey Selkie of Suleskerry is a ballad typical of the former, while The Secret of Roan Inish is a movie telling the latter tale.

Male selkies are very handsome in their human form, and have great seduction powers over human women. They typically seek those who are dissatisfied with their romantic life. This includes married women waiting for their fishermen husbands. If a woman wishes to make contact with a selkie male, she has to go to a beach and shed seven tears into the sea.

If a man steals a female selkie's skin, she is in his power, to an extent, and she is forced to become his wife — a regional variant on the motif of the swan maiden, unusual in that the bride's animal form is usually a bird. Female selkies are said to make excellent wives, but because their true home is the sea, they will often be seen gazing longingly to the ocean. If her skin is found she will immediately return to her home — sometimes, her selkie husband — in the sea.

Sometimes, a selkie maiden is taken as a wife by a human man and she has several children by him. In these stories, it is one of her children who discovers her sealskin (often unwitting of its significance) and she soon returns to the sea. The selkie woman avoids seeing her human husband again but is sometimes shown visiting her children and playing with them in the waves.

Some stories from Shetland have selkies luring islanders into the sea at midsummer, the lovelorn humans never returning to dry land.[1]

Seal changelings similar to the selkie exist in the folklore of many cultures. A corresponding creature existed in Swedish legend, and the Chinook Indians of North America have a similar tale of a boy who changes into a seal (see the children's story The Boy Who Lived With The Seals by Rafe Martin). Jane Yolen incorporated such a changeling as a selkie into her picture book, The Grayling.

[edit] Theories of origins

One folklorist theory of the origin of the belief is that the selkies were actually fur-clad Finns, traveling by kayak. [2]

[edit] References

The melodic progressive metal band Between the Buried and Me released their Alaska album in 2005 with a song called "Selkies: The Endless Obsession." Seal Child is a children's novel by Sylvia Peck which details a modern telling of the selkie myth. The Folk Keeper, a "young readers" novel by Franny Billingsley CACA also uses this myth powerfully. The recent album "Honeycomb" by Pixies front-man Frank Black includes a tune called "Selkie Bride", which alludes to the Selkie legend. At least one tale about selkies is included in Scottish Folk Tales by Ruth Manning-Sanders.

The science-fiction Petaybee Series by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough employs the selkie myth in a futuristic setting. Selkies also appear as one of many varieties of "changed" human in both John Ringo's Council Wars series and Ken MacLeod's Engines of Light trilogy.

The video game Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles features selkies as a race. Unlike mythical selkies, the ones in Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles are simply a human race, with body paint, such as stripes, or arrows on even the youngest children in the game. The selkies in the game usually have blue-green hair, probably referring to the mythical selkie's origin in the sea. One reference to them, however, is in their town, there's a selkie who says something along the lines of, "We Selkies came from the sea, and one day we will return there."

The folk musician Mike Agranoff wrote a song entitled "The Ballad of the White Seal Maid", that is a sad story of a fisherman and his selkie wife.

The book "Water Shaper" is based off of some myths about selkies.

The song "Sælkvinden" (the seal-woman) by danish singer Lars Lilholt is a sad story about a young fisherman and a selkie.

[edit] Bibliography

  1. ^ Hardie, Alison (20.01.2007) Dramatic decline in island common seal populations baffles experts - Mystical Connections. The Scotsman newspaper.
  2. ^ Carole B. Silver, Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness, p 47 ISBN 0-19-512100-6
  • Thomson, David The People of the Sea: A Journey in Search of the Seal Legend
  • Katharine Briggs, An Encyclopeidia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Boogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures, ISBN 0-394-73467-X

[edit] See also

For other aquatic mythological creatures of Celtic origin see:

[edit] External links

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