selkies?

Just in case you thought this blog was turning into 'A Guide to the Birds of Scotland' & were wearying of my avian appreciation, I present you with another sort of creature: harbour seals! Wandering just before dinnertime near the mouth of the Don, I saw three of them in the deep pool between the river and the sea, searching for their own snacks. Two of them were busily fishing, but the third was shy and sneaky. He kept popping up out of the water and looking at me with his shiny black little coal-eyes, & then quickly ducking back under as soon as I turned to focus on him. We played this game for a little while.

Then one of them caught a massive fish of some sort. He kept surfacing to munch on it, but soon the local congregation of seagulls realized what he'd caught & began a frenzied circling, hoping they might steal a morsel. The seal couldn't dine in peace with their squalling halo around his head, so he disappeared with his dinner out toward the sea.

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The northeast of Scotland (especially up on the Shetlands and Orkneys) has a rich tradition of selkie stories -- tales of seals transforming into humans after shedding their slick skins. They can live on land for awhile -- & as the narratives go, they tend to fall in love during this time -- but eventually long too much for their freedom in the ocean. They tire of the ways of humans, their hard life on the rocks, dwelling in the harsh air -- so they slip back into their seal-skins & disappear.

Some say they're the reincarnated souls of drowned people, and naturally miss their homes -- so they'll visit once in awhile, until their new nature overpowers them and calls them back. In the Shetlands, at Midsummer, they often have a particularly strong power over land-dwellers, and people must be very careful not to be lured away under the waves to live with them.

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Joanna Newsom's song 'Colleen' makes me think of selkie transformations, though in the song it implies this particular young lassie was a shapeshifting whale-girl (whelkie?) .

She washes ashore without her memory, & tries to adapt to human life, but she is haunted by dreams of water & nothing ever seems to quite fit right. Some of the elements -- dresses & corsetry, prayers for chastity & babies -- make this a lovely allegory as well of being trapped & separated by constructions of gender and from one's own feelings of self & creativity. In the song she is visited by a spirit - 'a grey and sloping shouldered thing' who can call her by her secret name, & she begins to understand her connection to the sea. I haven't heard enough selkie stories to really understand for sure, but the preponderance of woman-selkies in tales makes me think that some of these elements of freedom, constraint & longing for creative power might also be present there.

Will you come down there with me
Down were our bodies start to seem
Like artefacts of some strange dream
Which afterwards you can't decipher
And so, soon, have forgotten everything.