There are many different Scottish legends & stories about
the selkie, but the most common ones are usually the tragic one's.
These are over theft, love and loss and among other things! The
There is a widespread belief that seals can become human, perhaps only at certain times of the year-
Some say it's may be the spring tide, midsummer and the full moon. This could because it is when they come down from the icy water of the north to celebrate the coming spring and full moon! And these are Magick nights! This is when they feel safe to shed their sealskin's to sing and dance on the shores of Scotland. Of course, how in their human form, they are the most beautiful naked women in the land or that a human Scotsman has ever seen!
There is a tragic story if you would like to hear!
Of an young Scotsman who lived in a small village close by the sea, who dared to see the silkies dance!
Here is how it goes! As the young Scott came down upon the beach, he say the many beautiful women dancing naked on the beach, pale skin visible in moments of moonlight and they also played the most memorizing music he had ever heard. One of the young selkies was so beautiful that his heart was lost in her beauty...
So the young man decided to do the unthinkable, he crawled slower than the tide on his hands and knees to the pile of sealskin's at the edge of their party and he hunted for the softest,smallest most perfect skin. Then he said,'This must be Hers!' he rolled it up, shoved it under his jacked and crawled away to his house overlooking the shore of the ocean.
When the party was finished, all the songs were sung, all the dances were danced and the morning light was threatening to come in from the east, all the selkies rushed over to the pile of skins.
Everyone found their own skins and started to pull them on like capes, swirling round and engulfing their human bodies. One by one the all became seals again and slipped into the freezing ocean. All but one.
So when the young fisherman appeared in the dawn light with a blanket and a hot drink for her, she was impressed. Also the fact that he had said that he had search for her sealskin, all along the beach even under every rock, but never found it. So she had to be content to live in his house by the sea. To hear,smell and watch the waves, but never swim in the great ocean again as a selkie.
This also meant she could never become a seal again without her sealskin, so the feelings of sadness of never being with her seal family, her brothers and sisters and children again was heart-aching for the selkie.
So when the fisherman asked selkie to live with him forever and to be his wife, his love for her was so apparent. And Her home at sea! and her children, family was so impossible to reach, she decided to conceded to marry him.
She was as happy as one could be, at least she was close to the ocean, loved by her man and had a lovely human family. She did all this with tears in her big brown eyes every day.
Yet, every full moon and spring tide, her seal family would swim up, to the crest of the waves and would sing to her on the beach. This would happen every year and this is what make the dear selkie be able to live day in and out as a human wife and mother to his children.
But on one Sunday, while her husband and the children were at Church, a place she had never felt entirely comfortable/ so she never went. She was spring cleaning at their home. Every shelf dusted, every flagstone gleaming, she clambered up a ladder to deal with the cobwebs among the roof beams too. As she poked around the roof beams and prodded the duster into a darken corner, a dry old bundle fell down on her head.
It was her sealskin! Bound up with a string! Hidden, binding here forever. Which meant the young fisherman had lied to her all these years!
She quickly cut the knots and let the skin unroll. It still smelt of the sweet smell of salt.
She thought of her human children at church for a moment. She thought of the sea, and the fish and the currents and the songs. Then she thought of her seal children under the waves. And she thought of her husband, pretending to search for a sealskin that he had hidden himself above her head!
When her family returned from church, she was gone! The fisherman saw the old string cut into bits on the floor and he knew where she had gone!
Now the fisherman's children go down to the shore every evening, and hear the sad song of the seal floating in the bay. Crying because she left her human children on the shore, to be with her children of the sea.
As you see there is no happy endings to the Selkirks stories either way there is sadness, and lost of children.. I hope you Enjoyed this Tale.
I have loved the stories and legends of the Selkirks and I hope you all my dear Friends and Followers Enjoyed this one too!
Your Wendy..
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