THE SELKIE WIFE

On the lonely shore of a Scottish island one mid-summer night, a fisherman was hiding behind a clump of rocks, watching a. strange and lovely sight.  A group of maidens, slender as moonbeams and fairer than the stars, were singing and dancing on the sand.  They were Selkies, those shape-shifters who swam as seals by day, and walked as men and women by night.

Few mortals were ever fortunate enough to catch a glimpse the Selkies in their human shape, for few were bold enough to wander lanternless along the shores at night.  But the fisherman’s boat had drifted far from land that day and it was sunset before he managed to steer her back to shore.  In his exhaustion he had sat down to rest for only a few moments, but the soft summer air and the gentle murmur of the sea had lulled him to sleep.  When he awoke the moon had risen high in the sky, and in the path of light that it made over the sea, he noticed dark heads gleaming, seals swimming to shore.

The fisherman had heard stories of Selkies since childhood and curiosity led him to take shelter behind the rocks and watch. He saw the seals flop on to the shore rocks and rest for a few moments.  Then the beasts began to tremble and rise, their pelts slid in silky folds to the ground, and they were seals no more. Their harsh barks and coughs became the sweetest of women’s songs and they danced to the ocean’s rhythms and to their own enchanted music on the silvery shore.

One of them had a voice lovelier than all the rest, and a body that caused him to ache with desire.  Carefully and ever so quietly he crept over to the rock where he had seen her fold up and hide her own sealskin.  He knew that without it she could not return to her seal shape or the sea.  Picking it up he stealthily made his way back to own home and hid it in an old chest in his attic.

 In this way the fisherman won himself a Selkie wife, for without her sealskin she could not follow her fellow seals.  She was as faithful and pretty a wife as any man could ever hope for, and she bore him two beautiful babies, a boy and a girl.  Their fingers and toes were delicately webbed like their mother’s but people in the village did not fear them.  They viewed them as a special grace from the sea, bearing an enchantment. But the Selkie wife was prone to strange moods and longing for her other life.

She told her children about the magical lands under the sea where her people lived –where seaweed grew in every color of the rainbow, where crystal palaces stood, lit by twinkling phosphorus and gilded with the shifting sheen of the northern lights.  When she saw seals out at sea she would call to them as if they were old friends.

The fisherman was always afraid that one day she would find her sealskin and leave him, but he could not destroy it, for he knew that would cause her death.  One day his fears were realized.  When he returned to his cottage after an outing he found it cold and silent, and the children unfed.  Despite all his efforts to keep the chest hidden and locked, she had managed to open it and return to her former shape.  The fisherman mourned his loss for a while, but he knew that she had never truly been his.  A daughter of the sea, she had returned to her own people and country.  No union could be permanent between the races of the waters and those of the land.

Adapted from the original Celtic version and performed in April 2013 with harp and vocals by Angelica Ottewell, a member of Peterborough Storytellers.