Selkies in Scottish Folklore (#157)

If I were to say that today’s episode was about a beautiful woman/sea creature who once lived under the sea, but was tricked by a baddie to live a life ashore and potentially cursed for the rest of their life… I’d forgive you if you thought I was talking about The Little Mermaid, or mermaids in general. Especially with the new live action Disney version that’s being released in May this year, it certainly would be topical.

But nah! There’s more than one creature of folklore that fits these petametres, and who’d have thought that we’d only need to turn to Scotland to find the home of this folklore. Today, we will be learning more about Selkies!

Many of the folk-tales on selkie folk have been collected from the Northern Isles (Orkney and Shetland).

The selkie is a mythological being found amongst the folklore of Scotland. Selkies are shapeshifters, transforming between seal and human form by shedding and replacing their skin. In their human form, selkie folk are always referred to as being incredibly attractive. They are graceful, kind natured and amorous, resulting in any humans coming across them falling desperately in love.

Tales of Selkies are predominantly found in the Outer Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland – the word selkie, according to Orkney lore, is said to denote various seals of greater size than the grey seal; only these large seals are credited with the ability to shapeshift into humans, and are called "selkie folk". The type of large seals that might have been seen on the islands include the Greenland seal (also known as the Harp Seal) and the crested seal (also known as the hooded seal). Something similar is stated in Shetland tradition, that the mermen and mermaids prefer to assume the shape of larger seals, referred to as Haaf-fish.

However, as with much folkore we have discussed throughout the years, selkies are not just restricted to Scotland. Selkies also appear in the folklore of Ireland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and seal tales are also present in the folklore of the Inuit as well as the Chinook people of the West coast of America, where the Columbia river meets the sea.

The communities from which the tales originate are dependent on the sea for their livelihood. Living in close proximity to the sea, such communities are well aware of it’s ability to be a wild, tempestuous and an unpredictable force. The selkie is a symbol of it’s calm and bountiful temperament who often appear to saves the lives of child or fisherman who have fallen into the sea.

The tales themselves always depict selkies in the same light and are common in theme. Selkies love to come ashore, shed their skin and bask in the sunlight, or sing and dance by the light of the moon. Without their skin, they cannot return to the sea.

A Selkie Tale

The sea king and queen once lived happily with their many beautiful children. The children would spend all day frolicking amongst the coral gardens and lush meadows on the sea bed and their lives were full of singing and laughter.

One fateful day the sea queen fell ill. Nothing her king or the other sea folk could do would save her and, only weeks later, she died. The sea king and his children were bereft. The children missed their mother’s comforting arms and her gentle voice singing them to sleep at night. No longer could singing or laughter be heard in the coral caves and gardens.

Despite his sorrow, the king felt it was his duty to remarry and provide the children with a new mother. The sea witch, an ugly individual, due to many years of bitter jealousy of others, quite fancied the opportunity to become queen and rule over all those who had cause her such strife. She took advantage of the situation and convinced the sea king to marry her. However her jealousy over others continued and she now targeted her ill feelings at the sea children, who despite their sorrow were still more beautiful than the queen could ever be, for they were graceful and kind of heart.

The sea witch cast a spell on the kings children, turning them into seals, cursing them to never again be able to live in the kingdom, but to swim as seals forever more in the ocean, apart from the one day a year that they could shed their skin and take their true form on land.

The king, in his fury, banished the sea witch to a cave in the darkest depths of the ocean but no one could reverse the magic that had been done. And so the seals swim, and can often be found frolicking and singing near to the coast, amongst the shallows as was the nature of the sea-children.

One day, many years later, a tired young fisherman was heading home along the coastal path to his two young children. He was recently widowed and was struggling to bring up his children alone. The fisherman had to go to sea to try and earn money to keep his family and had no choice but to leave the children at home alone when he did so. While rounding the headland he happened upon a seal skin, discarded on the rocks. The fisherman felt the fine, silky pelt of the skin and thought what a fine price it would fetch, enough to allow him to employ an old maid to look after his young children while he was at sea. He took the pelt home with him and locked it safely in his wooden chest, hiding the key in the eaves, until the time came that he could take it to market.

That night the wind howled and the waves crashed upon the shore in an almighty storm. The fisherman was huddled with his two young children beside the fire telling a story to settle them when they heard a feint knock at the door. On opening the door, the fisherman was faced with the most beautiful creature he had ever laid eyes on. She had an old hessian sack wrapped around her naked body and her hair was wild and knotted with seaweed. She collapsed, sobbing, through the door and near enough passed out with exhaustion. The young fisherman wrapped the selkie girl in blankets and laid her down near the fire, thinking she must have come from a wreck at sea.

On waking the next morning, the fisherman and his two children found the selkie girl sitting by the fire, cooking porridge. She was incredibly grateful to the fisherman for inviting her into his home but could not tell him from where she had come, just that she had nowhere to go. The fisherman, who was so enchanted by the young woman’s beauty, insisted she stay until she was quite herself again. And so she stayed, for without her sealskin, the selkie could not return to the sea.

And so the days and weeks passed, the young woman kept the house, cooked the meals and cared for the fisherman’s children. In the evenings the fisherman would tell stories and the young woman would sing to the children. The selkie grew fond of the fisherman’s children, they reminded her of her own brothers and sisters and laughter returned to her life once more.

The fisherman fell deeper in love with the young woman every day until one day he asked her to marry him. Although she longed for the sea, the selkie had no way of returning without her skin (which, enchanted by the selkie, the fisherman had completely forgotten about, locked safe in his chest!) and she had found some happiness with the fisherman and his family, so she agreed. They were married and had children of their own and lived together in the little cottage for several years.

One winter’s morning, when the wind and the waves had been building all night and it was sure that a storm was coming, the fisherman readied himself for a day on the boat. The selkie couldn’t believe her husband was heading out but he would not listen to her pleas, insisting he knew how to read the weather after so many years on the sea and that there was no danger, the storm was passing further south.

The fisherman set off and the winds did grow stronger, and the waves more voracious. As the little cottage was battered by the storm, a sudden icy blast shook the roof and a small rusty key dropped from the eaves, where it had been hidden some years earlier. This very blast also chilled the bones of the selkie, convincing her something terrible had befallen her husband. She was set into some sort of trance, faced with images of her husband being thrown from his boat as it was torn apart by the storm, into the mercy of the storm fuelled sea.

The children meanwhile were delighted with the gift that had fallen from the eaves and examined the key carefully, imagining doorways to magical worlds and chests full of treasure. At this thought, the eldest girl grabbed the key and dashed across the room to the old chest. She placed the key in the lock and as she turned it, the lock clicked. Her brothers and sister rushed to join her and with excitement in their eyes, the children slowly lifted the lid which creaked open.

Whether it was the noise of the key turning in the lock, the creak of the lid opening or the familiar old smell of her skin, the selkie girl snapped out of her trance, turning to see her children pulling her long lost skin out of the chest. She knew in that instant the fate that had befallen her husband and dashed across the room, taking her old familiar skin in her hands. With nothing more than a quick kiss on each child’s head, the selkie was out of the door and running to the shore. She threw off her clothes and put on the skin, diving into the water she had once called home. She swam out in the storm and found her husband, clinging to a broken barrel amongst the waves. She returned him to the shore near the cottage, where, the next morning, he was found, unconscious but alive.

The selkie however could never return to land, for the constraints of the witches spell had been broken, she had remained on land longer than the day she was allowed, and she would remain a seal forever more.

Now this was one of the… nicer? tales I found, but there are plenty more that have far more sinister undertones. Tales once abounded of a man who found a beautiful female selkie sunbathing on a beach, stole her skin and forced her to become his wife and bear his children. The selkie woman was often seen gazing lovingly at the ocean. Years later, the selkie found her skin and later escaped back to seal form and to the sea, leaving her own children behind, never to return.

Some versions of the legend say that the selkie revisits her children on land once a year, others say that the children would witness a large seal approach them and say hello.

A Shetland version of the tale about the selkie compelled to become a human wife was published in Samuel Hibbert in 1822. In this edition, the selkie already had a husband of her own kind in the ocean before she was forced to stay on land. Some stories from Shetland have selkies luring islanders into the sea at midsummer, the lovelorn humans never returning to dry land – not too dissimilar to the stories told of sirens, which will definitely have to be another episode for another day.

And it’s not just women that are selkies, oh no! Male selkies are described as being very handsome in their human form, and having great seductive powers over human women. They typically seek those who are dissatisfied with their lives, such as married women waiting for their fishermen husbands. In one popular tattletale version about a certain "Ursilla" of Orkney (a pseudonym), it was rumoured that when she wished to make contact with her male selkie she would shed seven tears into the sea.

In many versions of the selkie myth, the children produced by the coupling of a selkie and a human, are born with certain physical characteristics that set them apart from normal children.

In David Thomson's book The People of the Sea, which chronicles the extensive legends surrounding the Grey Seal within the folklore of rural Scottish and Irish communities, it is the children of male selkies and human women that have webbed toes and fingers. When the webbing is cut, a rough and rigid growth takes its place.

In The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland, Ernest Marwick cites a tale of a woman who gives birth to a son with a seal's face after falling in love with a selkie man.

A group of selkie descendants, also mentioned by Marwick, possessed a skin that was greenish, white in colour and cracked in certain places upon the body. These cracks exuded a fishy odor.

In the case of "Ursilla" whom I mentioned earlier, who rumoured to have children sired by a male selkie, her children had to have the webbing between their fingers and toes made of horny material clipped away intermittently. Despite the rumours, there are apparently ‘confirmed’ stories from people who actually new “Ursilla’s” family that some of the descendants actually did have these hereditary traits.

But where on earth did these origins come from?! Well, there are theories that before the advent of modern medicine, many physiological conditions were untreatable. When children were born with abnormalities, it was common to blame the fairies. The MacCodrum clan of the Outer Hebrides became known as the "MacCodrums of the seals" as they claimed to be descended from a union between a fisherman and a selkie. This was an explanation for their syndactyly – a hereditary growth of skin between their fingers that made their hands resemble flippers.

Scottish folklorist and antiquarian, David MacRitchie believed that early settlers in Scotland probably encountered, and even married, Finnish and Sami women who were misidentified as selkies because of their sealskin kayaks and clothing. Others have suggested that the traditions concerning the selkies may have been due to misinterpreted sightings of Finn-men (Inuit from the Davis Strait). The Inuit wore clothes and used kayaks that were both made of animal skins. Both the clothes and kayaks would lose buoyancy when saturated and would need to be dried out. It is thought that sightings of Inuit divesting themselves of their clothing or lying next to the skins on the rocks could have led to the belief in their ability to change from a seal to a man.

Another belief is that shipwrecked Spaniards were washed ashore, and their jet-black hair resembled seals.

But stories, rumours, folklore or otherwise, these tales did end up creating superstitions within Scottish communities; It was only during hard times that the people of the Scottish Isles would kill seals to make use of their skin and blubber. It was thought that the killing of a seal would result in misfortune for the perpetrator. Tale of crofters who brought their sheep to graze upon a small group of holms within the Orkney Islands. During the summer, a man placed seven sheep on the largest holm. While on his way home from grazing sheep, the man killed a seal. That night, all of the man's sheep disappeared, however, the other crofters, who had not killed a seal, did not lose their sheep.