The islands of Orkney and Shetland abound with with seals, and it’s easy to sea how people anthropomorphized these intelligent creatures. Their eyes show emotion. Their expressions intrigue and their playfulness delights. They have been friend to many fishermen over the ages, and the stories of selkies, seals that shed their skin and become human, are just a natural extension of this interaction between nature and man. To this day, children born with webbing between fingers or toes are whispered about, for having selkie blood in their veins.
Like many stories that evolve over a long period of time, the selkies tales differ in detail. Some say that these creatures can leave the sea only at spring tide (seventh stream), or midsummer’s eve. Others give the selkies shape-shifting powers to change at will. In some stories, the selkies retain some of their seal characteristics (like webbed toes), others have them as beautiful men and women, with seductive powers, like the merpeople.
If a selkie loses her skin to a human, she comes under his control and must do his bidding. This is the source for many sad tales of selkie females forced into unhappy marriages, until they can regain their seal skins and return to the sea. Other selkies fall in love with fishermen, and leave the sea willingly. Selkie women make good wives, though they are often withdrawn and pensive, perhaps missing the beautiful world under the waves.
When a selkie’s husband is lost at sea, she haunts the shores and cliffs, singing melancholy songs into the wind, hoping that her voice will guide him home. If forced to return to the sea, herself, a selkie mother will stay close to shore, watching over her human children even as a seal.
Selkie men have a more sinister reputation. They revenge themselves on seal-hunters by conjuring ship-sinking storms, or by leading hunting vessels onto the rocks. Selkie men are handsome creatures both in human and seal form. As a human he has seductive powers over mortal women, and delights in luring married women and maidens astray. Because of their reputations as generous lovers, more than one unsatisfied wife has sought out a selkie man. It is an easy thing to do. Seven tears shed into the sea at high tide, and an earnest desire, brings the selkie from the deep to shed his skin for his waiting lover.
