DragonsFaeriesElves&theUnseen : SELCHIES-2016

SELCHIES -

Selkies are said to be fictional creatures that live in Faroese, Icelandic, Irish, and Scottish
Mythology. They can shed their skin form seals to become humans which are usually woman. The legend is originated on the island of Orkney and the Shetland Islands. The Silkies have many different names.This can be Selchies; Silkies or Selch. is some of the Scots word for the seal/selkie from the old English seolh.
Legends-
The legends of the Silkier has been around for centuries, especially in the Icelandic, Ireland and Scotland countries. These of course were the oceans of the very icy seas.The Selkies of these icy seas are able to become human by shedding their seal skins and can then return to the seal form by putting them back on. Ancient stories concerning the selkies are generally romantic tragedies. Sometimes the human[mostly always men] will not know that their lover is a selkie and wakes to find them gone.Other times the human male will hide the selkie skin which is almost always of a Female selkie, thus preventing her to return to the seal form. A selkie can only make contact with one particular human for a short amount of time before they must reture to the sea/ocean. They are not able to make contactt with that human again for seven years, unless the human has steal their selkie skin and hidden it or even worst of all
''burned it' If they have burned the selkie seal skin they may never go back to the ocean again where they probably have a husband and children and a entire family that they will never see again. And the longing for the sea will forever be there but she will never be able to be again.
There are a few such stories in ballad; called the Great Silkie or Sule Skerry and the movie

'The Secret of Roan Inish'.
The Selkie legend is also told in Wales, but in a slightly different form. The selkies are humans who have returned to the sea. Dylan - Dylan Eil Don - the firstborn of Arianrhod - was variously a merman or sea spirit who is some versions of the story escapes to the sea immediately after birth. In the Faroe Islands there are two version of the story of the Selkie or what they say 'Seal's Wife'. This is how the tale goes; A Young farmer from the town of Mikladalur on the island of kalsoy goes to

the beach to watch the selkies dance under the moon light as they always do every summer, because it can be so very cold in the winter months. The selkies always take care in hiding their seal skins so that they can find them at dawn to put them back on to go back into the sea their home to their families. Also so that no farmers or fishermen can find them to make them their wife against the will. Well, in this tale that is just what happened to one such selkie, the farmer that was watching them dance by the moon light was also watching where they were putting there seal skins too. He had his eye on one beautiful selkie maiden, so he went to find her skin and so she couldn't go back to sea, and forced her to marry him.

The farmer kept her skin in a chest, and the key to lock it around his neck both day and night. One day when he was out fishing, the farmer discovered that he forgotten to bring his key. When he returned home the selkie wife had escaped back to the sea, leaving their children behind. Sadly years later, when the farmer was on a hunt in the ocean, he killed both her selkie husband and her two selkie sons. She then promised to take revenge upon the men of the island of Mikladalur. Some of them drowned, some shall fall from the cliffs and slopes and this shall continued, until so many men have been lost that they will be able to link arms around the whole island of Kallsoy.
Male Selkies are very handsome in their human form, and have a

great seduction powers over the human women. They will typically seek those who are dissatisfied with their romantic life. This includes married women waiting for their fisherman husbands to come home after months at sea.

If a human woman wishes to make contact with a selkie male all she has to do is go to a beach and shed seven tears into the sea.
If a human male steals a female selkie's skin, she is in his power, that instant he has taken her seal skin. Then is forced to become his wife.

Female selkies are said to make excellent wives, however their true love & home is the sea, they will often be seen gazing longingly at the ocean. If she finds her skin again, she will immediately return to her true home, and sometimes to her selkie husband in the sea. Sometimes a selkie maiden is taken as a wife by a human man and she has several children by him. In these stories, it is one of her children who has discovered her sealskin who often unwitting of its significance and she soon returns to the sea leaving the child. The selkie woman usually avoids seeing her human husband again but is sometimes shown visiting her children and playing with them in the waves. Selkies are not always faithless lovers. One tale of a fisherman Cagan who married a Seal-Woman.

Against his wife's wishes he set sail during a dangerously late in the year, and was trapped battling a terrible storm, unable to return home. His wife shifted to her seal form and saved him, even though this meant she could never return to her human body and hence her happy home.
Some stories from Shetland have selkies luring islanders into the sea at midsummer, the lovelorn-humans never returning to dry land. Seal shapeshifters similar to the selkie exist in the folklore of many cultures. A corresponding creature existed in Swedish legend,and the Chinook people of North America have a similar tale of a boy who changes into a seal.

Theories of the origins of the Selkie~

There seem to be lots of theories on the Selkie, one is that they belief is that the selkie ware actually fur-clad Finns, traveling by kayak. Another is that shipwrecked Spaniards that washed ashore and their jet black hair resembled seals. As the anthropologist A. Asbjorn Jon has recognized though, there is a strong body of lore that indicates that selkies are said to be supernaturally formed