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