Legend tells that a Selkie can become human simply by stripping off their seal skins, and can return to seal form by slipping back into it. Think Mr Benn but without the time travel and Fez loving shopkeeper.
Stories involving these 'seal people' mostly involve romance and tragedy, where a human falls head over heels with one (unaware of the seal part) and wakes to find them gone. So we can assume Selkies enjoy one night stands. Other stories tell of the human (the normal one) hiding the Selkie's skin, cleverly preventing the poor things from returning to seal form. But this is a tad cruel if the legend is to be believed as the rules go that a Selkie can only make themselves known to one particular human before going back to the ocean, and their time on land is short. (However they can return after seven years).
A stamp featuring a Selkie or Seal Woman
It is told that male Selkies in order to avenge seal hunting, can create storms at sea and is able to sink ships. And should a woman ever get tired of dating human men and decide to try and find a male Selkie she has to visit a beach and weep seven tears into the sea. (Has someone ever tried this?)
And the good news for us guys is, should your lady ever manage to find her dream seal guy, then mourn not because female Selkies make wonderful wives or so the tales go. All you have to do is steal her oily skin to have her in your power. (The one drawback being that she will always stare out to the seashore, her true home).
Stories of these beings have been popular and numerous. One from 'In The Secret of Roan Inish', tells of a fisherman who steals the pelt from a Selkie while she is doing a spot of sunbathing. (Rather rude!) Then under his power she becomes his wife and they have children together. The husband hides the skin and many years later, one of their children discovers it and naturally asks what it is. Upon seeing it the wife drops whatever it was she was doing, grabs her long lost pelt and returns to the ocean to be a seal once more. Good story, but from what I can make of the ending, I guess she didn't like her kids too much. (Although to be fair some tales have their children going to the sea with them).
Other stories are more sinister than romantic, for instance theres one from Shetland which has the seal critters luring the islanders out into the waves where the lusty humans are never seen again.
A Selkie Song (Unknown author)
An Earthly nurse sits and sings,
And aye, she sings by lily wean,
And little ken I by Bairn´s father,
Far less the land where he dwells in.
For he came one night to her bed feet,
And a grumbly guest, I am sure was he,
Saying "Here am I, they bairns father,
Although I be not comely.
I am a man upon the land,
I am a selkie on the sea,
And when I´m far and far frae land,
my home it is in Sule Skerrie."
And he had ta´en a purse of gold,
And he had placed it upon her knew,
Saying: "Give it to my little young son,
And take thee up they nurse´s fee."
"And it shall come to pass on a summer´s day,
When the sun shines bright on every stane,
I´ll come and fetch my little son,
and teach him how to swim the faem."
"And ye shall marry a gunner good,
And a right fine gunner I´m sure he´ll be,
And the very first shot that he e´er shoots,
Will kill both my young son and me."
Peronally I think its quite beautiful, especially the gloomy end which hits you like a slap in the chops, but back to Selkies! Who were they really? And how did such a romantic (albeit strange and tragic) story ever get started in the first place? Well theories abound with the seal folk as much as they do with Yetis, and one idea is that fishermen saw a nomad tribe wearing seal pelts and sailing around in kayaks off the coast and BLAM! The Selkie was born.
While another says that Selkies were supernaturally formed from the souls of drowned people. That sounds deliciously otherworldly, so thats the theory im going to believe.
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