Selkies: Oh, Bring Back My Seal Skin to Me!

The capture of a seal woman on a Feroese stamp

      When I was very little my mom used to cut this column of bed-time stories out of the newspaper for my sister and I.  One of the stories was of the seal-maiden.  The story told of a fisherman that found a sealskin on the beach and decided to take it home with him.  As he left there was a cry and he turned to see a beautiful maiden.  It turned out that she was a seal-maiden, a selkie, the seal skin belonged to her.  She'd taken it off to dance on the beach and if the fisherman and if she didn't don her seal skin before the tide went out she'd be trapped on land.  But the fisherman was charmed by the selkie and refused to give her back her seal skin no matter how she pleaded.  So she went home with him and became his wife.  The fisherman hid the seal skin away and years passed and they had children and life went on.  Until one day, while the she was cleaning or while the children where playing (or both) the seal-maiden found the hiding place of her seal-skin.  She immediately rushed out to the sea, donned her seal skin like a coat and transformed into a seal, swimming out with the tide back to her sea home.  When the fisherman returned home he saw that his wife was gone and when he found that the seal skin was gone he knew that his wife had returned to her watery home.  This is the most common selkie tale though there are variations.  According to Teit, there is one ending where a selkie-woman returned to her seal-husband and seal-children but called back to her human husband asking him to never kill a seal because it might be her or her family while in another account the selkie's human husband commits suicide after his selkie-wife returned to the sea.

 Selkies or Seal-Folk are fae that shift from seal and human forms by means of their seal coats.  Although
they mainly live in the waters around Scotland and Ireland as seals, sometimes the selkie folk would come ashore, shedding their seal coats to frolic about on land, most often in groups just like regular seals.  In the folktales he collected from Shetlanders that had immigrated to British Columbia, J. A. Teit noted that all the sea-folk and animals had a special bond and would look out for each other, "thus gulls watched over the welfare of the seals when they were ashore, and warned them of the approach of danger; and seals did the same for mermaids" (193).  Despite this neighborhood watch system many selkie-women would have their seal coats stolen by fishermen that had fallen in love with them on the spot. A selkie's seal skin is their most prized possession because it is the only way that they may return to the sea.  Not only is a selkie trapped on land without their seal-skin, they must also submit to whoever has possession of their seal-skin.  A selkie may marry a mortal man that has gotten hold of her seal skin like the story of the seal-maiden, although "other selkie/human romances appear to have been built on genuine mutual affection" (Paciorek 208).

      For awhile I'd only heard and read stories of selkie-women but it turns out that there are male selkies, as well, and they are just as alluring as their female counterparts, "a selkie-man in human form was said to be to be a handsome creature, with almost magical seductive powers over mortal women" (orkneyjar).  I've noticed that while a selkie-woman may be beautiful and alluring her seal-skin is usually stolen by a fisherman but the selkie-men seem to come ashore deliberately, leaving their seal skins in a safe place before offering their aid to “unsatisfied” mortal women or by being called by seven tears of a maiden (orkneyjar).  Children from mortal and selkie unions were said to have webbed fingers and feet or be born in their own seal skin.

Ondine (2009) An Irish fisherman catches a woman in his net who appears to be a selkie

      According to Teit, there are also tales of people getting rides on the backs of seals.  In one story, a seal hunter, left behind by his companions after they'd been clubbing seals because of a sudden storm.  One of the seals which was only stunned, regained consciousness and found that his seal skin was gone.  The selkie boy's mother agreed to bring the seal hunter home if he helped her find her son's lost seal skin.  The hunter finds the boy's seal skin and returns it to him (Teit 192).

I can't wait to visit Scotland and Ireland and she the seals there!  Perhaps I'll catch myself a selkie-man...






Resources:

Froud, Brian and Allen Lee.  Faeries.  New York : Abrams, 1978.  Print.

Paciorek, Andrew L.. Strange Lands: Supernatural Creatures of the Celtic Otherworld. Blurb. Print.

Teit, J. A. "Water-Beings in Shetlandic Folk-Lore, as Remembered by Shetlanders in British Columbia". The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 31, No. 120 (Apr. - Jun., 1918). pp. 180-201. Web. 12 Sept. 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/534874

Towrie, Sigurd. "The Selkie-Folk". Web. 17 Sept. 2013. http://www.orkneyjar.com/folklore/selkiefolk/index.html

I Love Spriggans in the Springtime, I Love Spriggans in the Fall

You never know when you're going to have the opportunity to be a folklore snob.  Especially since opportunities usually appear when you least expect them.

For instance, last semester during spring break, I found myself with my friends Ivan and Hildi (names have been changed to protect the innocent and to save my own skin).  We were sitting on Ivan’s couch as he explain Skyrim to Hildi.  After Ivan showed her how to kill characters in the game, Hildi took the controller and began happily killing all the village people while Ivan started describing the different creatures to watch out for in the game.

     “Spriggans are the worst,” Ivan said. “I hate Spriggans.  Hate ’em!”

     “So what are the spriggans like in this game?” I asked, a bit sleepily.  It was about three o'clock in the morning.

     “They’re nature spirits. They guard stuff,” Ivan explained.  “They’re nasty fighters and it sucks when they attack you.”

     “Ok, so they’re like real spriggans,” I nodded as the sounds of the game continued, glad that the game was keeping to the good ole antiquated folklore.  Until I realized there was an awkward stunned silence emanating from where Ivan and Hildi sat.  They exchanged a bemused glance.  Only then did I realize my statement was a rather unorthodox one.

     “Real spriggans?” Hildi and Ivan repeated, almost in complete unison.

     “What are real spriggans like?” Ivan asked.

     “They guard things,” I said, rolling my eyes at his amused grin. “They can also change sizes because they have expandable stomachs. Didn’t you know?”

     “I didn’t know that spriggans were real,” Ivan replied, matter-of-factly.

     “Of course they are,” I said, indignant.  So here is a blog on spriggans.

     Spriggans are Cornish sprites.  They are related to piskies, if piskies were the light-hearted cheerleaders then the spriggans would be their goth cousins.  Spriggans are cunning, spiteful and malicious. They are said to be horribly ugly with small, bony, twisted bodies.  Spriggans are excellent thieves, they enjoy playing nasty tricks on humans and will often lead travelers astray off cliffs or into miry bogs.  Spriggans are fierce guardians of treasure, kith and kin.  While spriggins may not care for humans they are always looking out for their fellow fae, forming “part of the fairy bodyguard...ready to dish out summary justice to those who would harm their otherworldly cousins” (mysteriousbritain).  Spriggans can change their size on a dime from being a tiny little sprite to being as big as a bear or a giant.  Some believe that spriggans are the ghosts of ancient giants and it's their former giant existence that allows them to become ginormous at a whim.  In the Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, this size changing talent is attributed to the spriggan’s expandable stomach which contains a nearly insatiable appetite.  Spriggan's, like many of the Celtic and English fae, also steal human infants and replace them with their own ugly brats or even take the place of the child themselves.  According M. A. Courtney in "Cornish Folk-Lore. Part III", "although an innocent baby held in the arms is thought in Cornwall to protect the holder from mischief caused by ghosts and witches, it has no power over these creatures, who are not supposed to have souls" (183).

Sculpture by Marilyn Collins

     Spriggans live in secluded places like abandon castles and mountain crags on the coasts of Cornwall and Ireland.  There is a sculpture of a spriggan by Marilyn Collins in parkland walk.  The sculpture is partially hidden by vines in the arch of an abandoned railway.  Just the sort of haunt a spriggan would love.  Spriggans are also said to cause terrible storms and were thought responsible for blighted crops and diseased livestock. Curiously enough, spriggans cannot touch salt water. I wonder if this aversion to salt water was factored into the video game...

Actually the spriggans of The Elder Scrolls are more like woodland spirits or driads, since they have an affinity with the wildlife and are made of wood and magic.  So they really aren’t like actual spriggans at all. Le sigh...





Resources:

Courtney, M. A. "Cornish Folk-Lore. Part III". The Folk-Lore Journal , Vol. 5, No. 3 (1887), pp. 177-220. JStor. Web. 13 Sept. 2013. http://0-www.jstor.org.www.consuls.org/stable/1252554

DiTerlizzi, Tony and Holly Black. The Wyrm King. New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2009. Print.

Froud, Brian and Allen Lee.  Faeries.  New York : Abrams, 1978.  Print.

Johnson, Craig. “Explore Parkland Walk”. The Archer November 2005: 7. Web. 17 May 2013.

"The Spriggans". Mysterious Britain. Web. 16 May 2013.

Paciorek, Andrew L.. Strange Lands: Supernatural Creatures of the Celtic Otherworld. Blurb. Print.

"Spriggan (Skyrim)". Wikipedia.  Web.  17 May 2013.

Underground History.  http://www.underground-history.co.uk/northernh3.php.  Web.  17 May 2013.

Kelpies: All the pretty little horses

The Kelpie is a Scottish demon, a water-horse that lures riders onto it's back, plunging into the loch and drowning it's rider.  I’m not sure what draws me to Kelpies aside from the fact that they’re a more obscure fae.  There aren’t as many stories about Kelpies as there are about mermaids or other sea monsters so whenever I find a new kelpie story I get especially excited. I’ve come up with about six stories having to do with kelpies and they were hard to find (although just recently I've found three articles with stories and first hand accounts of kelpies via JStor).  Stories about kelpies range from terrifying to light-hearted. The most common story that has many variations goes like this:  Some children are playing in the wood (all boys, though the number of boys varies) when they see a little lost pony.  The boys decide to climb on its back, as young impulsive boys will, and all of them miraculously fit (because of course this is no regular horse).  However, the last little boy can’t get on the horses back either because he is too small or he notices that there is something wrong with this horse (it could be the lake weeds in its hair or the fact that its eyes burn like coals).  The littlest boy refuses to get on and is left behind while his playmates are spirited away and drowned.  There are several stories in which a kelpie either helps or torments a miller.  I assume the connection with millers is due to the fact that mills relied on the water power of rivers, the kelpie's domain, in order to function.

Boy on White Horse by Theodor Kittelsen

Kelpies live in lochs and streams although I found one story were a Kelpie lived in a well.  They are shape-shifters but no matter what shape they take Kelpies always have some mark of their watery home about them.  Often they have lake weeds in their hair or their skin will be cold and wet.  Kelpie’s often take the guise of lost horses.  They are notorious for coaxing riders on their backs only to dive under the waters of the loch where they would devour their rider leaving only the liver to float on the surface of the loch.  The kelpie's aversion to liver is featured in an episode of the anime Hakushaku to Yosei (Earl and Fairy), when the Earl Edgar offers a kelpie liver pate.  Not realizing that this delicacy is made of liver the kelpie eats the foie gras and becomes sick, which I find amusing despite myself.  Poor kelpie!  The Scottish clan MacGregor is supposedly in possession of a golden bridle that may be used to bind a kelpie to the riders will.  the golden bridle is the only thing that will allow a person to have complete control over a kelpie although the Bible or saying the Lord's prayer will deter the kelpie.  In one story of a maiden tried to strike a water horse and her hand became stuck, as the kelpie galloped toward the nearest loch the frightened maiden stammered the Lord's prayer and was released.

There are variations of water horses in Scandanavia and Ireland and their appearances range from being black, white or green as glass.  Their eyes may be pearly white or red as a brand but most often their manes and tails are black.  The kelpie’s  Scandinavian cousin the Njogel (also known as Nikker or Neck) is pure white and possesses a long tail.  According to J. A. Teit in his article "Water-beings in Shetlandic folk-lore, as remembered by Shetlanders ing British Columbia", "some claim that his naturally very long tail was dragged behind and occasionally rolled up like a hoop or the rim of a wheel, between his legs, or on his back" (183-184).  I had never heard of this detail about the water-horse's tail before but as soon as I read this it reminded my of Tony DiTerlizzi's rendering of the Kelpie in Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You, where the Kelpie's tail does roll up at the end as described to Teit.

Illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi

The nikker was also known to be quite the ladies man and sometimes kelpies will appear as men to seduce women and take human wives.  As a man a kelpie may charm a girl into letting his head rest in her lap while she combs his hair, usually the maiden finds a bit of lake-weed and realizes the kelpie's true nature.  Although there are kelpie women they are reported to be be very few of them.  Another suggestion put forward by the kelpie character from the anime Earl and Fairy is that kelpie woman are too contrary, head strong and unruly for kelpie men to handle.  While some kelpie husbands might raise gales if their human wives managed to run away from them, others were very caring husbands.  The legendary Kelpie of Loch Garve brought a stone mason down to his watery home to build a fireplace and chimney so that the kelpie's human wife could be warm under the loch.





Resources:

DiTerlizzi, Tony and Holly Black. Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You. New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2005. Print.

Froud, Brian and Allen Lee.  Faeries.  New York : Abrams, 1978.  Print.

Gregor, Walter. "Kelpie Stories from the North of Scotland". The Folk-Lore Journal , Vol. 1, No. 9 (Sep., 1883), pp. 292-294. Web. 11 Sept. 2013. http://0-www.jstor.org.www.consuls.org/stable/1252794

"Kelpie".  Wikipedia.com.  30 August 2013.  Web. 11 Sept. 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelpie

"Kelpie Stories" The Folk-Lore Journal , Vol. 7, No. 3 (1889), pp. 199-201. Web. 11 Sept. 2013.  http://0-www.jstor.org.www.consuls.org/stable/1252766

"Loch Garve".  ambaile.org.  Web. 11 Sept. 2013. www.ambaile.org.uk/en/item/item_photograph.jsp?item_id=37365

Parkinson, Daniel. "Kelpie". Web. 11 Sept. 2013. http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/scotland/folklore/kelpie.html

Teit, J. A."Water-Beings in Shetlandic Folk-Lore, as Remembered by Shetlanders in British Columbia".

The Journal of American Folklore , Vol. 31, No. 120 (Apr. - Jun., 1918), pp. 180-201. Web. 11 Sept. 2013.  http://0-www.jstor.org.www.consuls.org/stable/534874

"Water Horses". fantasyhorses.homestead.com.  26 October 2012. Web. 11 Sept. 2013. http://fantasyhorses.homestead.com/water.html

"White Bow Scarlet Bow". Hakushaku to Yosei.  Writ. Mizue Tani, Asako Takaboshi, and Tokuko Nagao.  Dir. Koichiro Sotome.  Artland, 2008. Web. 11 Sept. 2013. youtube.com.

Huldra: Ain't your Hollow Back girl

It's been a drizzly overcast day and I woke up this morning thinking about these elf women I'd once read about that had hollow backs.  In a dreamy haze I thought of women that I've met and heard of that leave men I know feeling sad and hollow...and it made me wonder if those women were hiding hollow backs.

So once I was a little more awake I began my research.  I found that I don't have anything in my limited little library of folklore about elves with hollow backs and JStor didn't relinquish anything very helpful.  But I did find a few blogs and a Wikipedia page about the Scandinavian Huldra, "in Norwegian folklore, she is known as the skogsfru or skovfrue (meaning 'Lady (read, counterpart of a Lord) of the forest'). She is known as the skogsrå (forest spirit) or Tallemaja (pine tree Mary) in Swedish folklore, and Ulda in Sámi folklore" (Wikipedia).

'Svenska folksägner', Herman Hofberg (1882) Artist: Per Daniel Holm.

Huldra are a lesser form of troll women, known as Lady Forest Spirits.  They are ravishingly beautiful and often appear naked, covered only by their long hair or dressed as dairy maids.  But their backs are hollow like old trees, sometimes they have bark growing on their skin and they also have a tail, either of a cow (Norway) or a fox (Sweden).  The Huldra is said to lure men away into the woods, releasing only those that can satisfy her in bed and killing those lovers that weren't up to par.  I'm not sure why they prefer to seduce human men since there is a male counterpart to the huldra, known as huldu.  A huldra might try to marry a man of a village but as soon as she enters the church or the priest puts his hand upon her to bless the union her glamour (faery's magic) will fall apart, giving her true form away or, some accounts say, her tail will just fall off.  The huldra were also reported to steal away human babies leaving their own huldrebarn in their place.The huldra were sometimes reported to be helpful creatures to charcoal burners and other laborers, allowing them to rest by watching over them and their work in exchange for food and drink.

Apparently in 2012 the movie Thale came out in Norway and the main character is a huldra.  Needless to say It's been added to my Netflix list and I can't wait to see it!



Resources:

"Huldra"  thedemoniacal.blogspot.com. 23 December 2009.  Web. 10 September 2013.  http://thedemoniacal.blogspot.com/2009/12/huldra.html

"Huldra"  Wikipedia.com. 26 August 2013. Web. 10 September 2013.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huldra

Walsh, T.F. "Huldra - Norse Forest Lady" tfwalsh.wordpress.com.  6 June 2011.  Web. 10 September 2013.  http://tfwalsh.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/huldra-%E2%80%93-norse-forest-lady/

The Griffin

The Griffin (alternatives: Gryps, Gripes, Gryphon or Griffon) is a majestic mythical beast said to have the head, claws and wings of an eagle and the hindquarters of a lion.

Roman depiction of a griffin

Hailing from mountain regions of the middle east, there are "thousands of griffins in art between 700 BC and AD 300" (Mayor 45).  The griffin is featured in Persian, Greek and Roman art as well as Roman and Medieval bestiaries, often appearing in family crests and coat of arms.  Griffin's were often associated with gold and the sun.  Some ancient accounts say that griffins guarded the gold of their mountain homes, attacking miners and other gold seekers.  The Greek historian Herodotus reported that the griffins were often at war with the nomadic one-eyed horsemen known as Arimaspians.  It is interesting to note, as Adrienne Mayor does in his article "What were the Griffins?", that "unlike other ancient monsters, the griffin does not interact with mythical heroes; instead it is encountered by real people of a distant land...The dissimilarity between the griffin and other mythical creatures, the consistency of the image over centuries, and the rather mundane details about nests and gold added by later writers, suggest that the griffin may have been based on something observed and verified over time by many people in a specific landscape" (48).

The ancient Roman scholar Pliny the Elder included the Griffin in his Natural History (AD 77), describing it's hooked beak, wings and ears.  Pliny is also the first to mention griffins nests which are said to be full of gold (Mayor 42).  Earliest accounts of the griffin describe it simply as a four legged beast with a beak. Some accounts even claimed that the griffin's wings were actually webbed, more like a bat's than an eagle's, and were used for gliding rather than flying.  According to Margaret Robinson in "Some Fabulous Beasts", it's only in the "seventh century, when Isidore of Seville tells the the story, the griffins are in the Hyperborean mountains and contain a rather higher proportion of lion in their composition than they did at first" (282).

A gryphon fighting a horse retrieved from http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast151.htm

By the Medieval period the griffin was still considered a fearsome beast, included in the Medieval Bestiary, right after Lynx and just before elephant, as "The gryphon is at once feathered and four-footed.  It lives in the south and in the mountains.  The hinder part of it's body is like a lion; its wings and face are like an eagle.  It hates the horse bitterly and if it face to face with a man, it will attack him."  Although some ancient scholars and naturalists, such as Pliny, believed that Griffins kicked up gold while burrowing their nests or lined their nest with gold and jewels as birds sometimes do with coins and bits of tinsel, and thus the griffin's fierce attacks were due to the protection of their eggs rather than the gold itself.  The griffin's legendary golden nests are most likely how they came to be associated with the sun.  According to legend griffins drew both the chariots of the Indian sun god and Apollo, although modern scholars believe that the lore surrounding griffins is most likely based on the discovery of the fossilized skeletons and gold-flecked fossil nests of Protocerotops found in the same mountains regions where tales of griffins originated.

The griffin's legacy continues in modern storytelling as a fearsome beast and creature misunderstood.  In Gail Carson Levigne's Two Princesses of Bamarre, Griffins are horrible, glutenous, wild beasts that plague the land of Bamarre attacking villagers and heroes alike.  In Jim Henson's The Storyteller, the story of the "Luck Child", a young hero much fetch the golden feather from a ferocious griffin that feasts on knights and heroes.  the griffin in this case however keeps one human companion because he is such a good cook and back-scratcher.  The griffin joins the side of the heroes in the Spiderwick Chronicles where the griffin, Byron, forms a bond with one of the Grace twins.


References and Works Cited:

Bestiary: Being an English version of the Bodleian library, Oxford M. S. Bodley 764 with all the original miniatures reproduced in facsimile.  Translated and introduced by Richard Barber.  The Boydell Press.  Woodbridge. 1999. Print.

Mayor, Adrienne and Michael Heaney. "Griffins and Arimaspeans".  Folklore , Vol. 104, No. 1/2 (1993), pp. 40-66. Web. September 4, 2013.

Robinson, Margaret. "Some Fabulous Beasts". Folklore , Vol. 76, No. 4 (Winter, 1965), pp. 273-287. Web. September 4, 2013.

Schimmrich, Steve. "Geomythology - Part III". 17 June 2011. Web. September 7, 2013. http://hudsonvalleygeologist.blogspot.com/2011/06/geomythology-part-iii.html.