The Tale of the Selkie
A tale of sorrow, struggle and liberation
I was brought up in Scotland in a small seaside town called Limekilns. We spent our technology free days outside come what may, walking along the pipes at low tide, climbing down onto the pontoons at high tide only to forget the time and be left abandoned out in the Firth until the tide came back in.
There were no phones. Only imagination.
The one thing all Scottish natives have in common, is we learned the lore of the fae, the seellie and unseelie court, that you never went into the woods alone and burns and waterways were entrances to the otherworld.
We were told the stories of the Kelpies, the cave of the Cailleach and the Selkies.
As a child these tales felt foreboding. Scary. Like warnings. But now as I have come through Maiden and Mother, I feel the realness and wisdom in every cell of my body.
I do believe all the folklore, mythology and fairytale alike we have been told today are merely imaginary, are In fact rememberings. Like Druidry and ancient witchcraft, most of the teachings and passing of the torch was done through the spoken word, as a form of protection and preservation. It's no wonder we can not find any “evidence" to confirm the existence of much of what we deem as fantasy today.
So I tell this tale with an open heart, with what I know and what I don't. The tale of the Selkie.
Once there was a seal of soft silky pelt, of wild oceanic kin. Once a month the Selkies, the magical shape shifters, swim to shore and shed their skin and as they do they take on the form of a human so they may bask in the sun and dance under the full moon.
In their human form, they are so incredibly beautiful. This is well known by the folks of the fishing villages nearby.
The Moon was Full in the dark night sky, and a fisherman from the nearby village caught sight of a Selkie in the form of a woman dancing in the moonlight. He snuck down to the beach and his behind some rocks. Here, he saw her skin laying close by and without hesitation he stole the Selkies pelt. You see without her pelt, she is unable to return to the ocean and remains trapped in her human form.
When she notices her pelt has been stolen, and by whom, she is aghast. You see this fisherman had no intention of returning her pelt to her, he saw her merely as an object of desire and wanted her for himself.
Not once has he stopped to recognize that this is not a woman, but a creature of wild nature.
As she tried to reason with him and have her pelt returned to her, the fisherman took no note of her pleas and bound her, taking her back to his home. Still, the Selkie protested, over and over until she grew tired. The fisherman, taking this opportunity of weakness in the creature as an in, begged the Selkie to stay with him.
Seven years. Stay with me for seven years and I promise I will return your pelt to you.
The Selkie, tired, worn down and without options agreed.
Shortly after, she bore him a child. She named the child Maura, star of the sea.
She loved her dearly.
Time drew on as time does and Maura turned Seven. Her mother, desperate to return to the sea but wracked with guilt at the thought of leaving her daughter, found herself in a heart wrenching dilemma. So many years spent in a form so foreign, aching for a life now seems impossible to return to. The recognition of this traumatic. The light slowly began to diminish from the Selkies eyes.
Maura watched her mother become increasingly more distressed, distant and detached. Worried for her mother, she begged her father to return the pelt to her so she may return to the ocean, but her father could no longer remember where he had left the Selkies silk pelt.
Growing more and more concerned for her mother, Maura went in search of her mother's pelt. Eventually she found it, stashed in the boat her father had stolen her mother away in all those years ago, but it was damaged and torn and no longer usable. Still, desperate, Maura grabbed the pelt and brought her Mother, who now had lost all the light from her eyes, down to the shore line. She covered her mother with the pelt and pushed her into the sea water, praying it would work and she would return to her seal form. But it did not.
This tale is from a time where medicine women lived in the outskirts of the village, who knew incantations and had herbs and cures for all ails. There was no choice for Maura but to take her mother to the Cailleach in her cave deep in the woods.
When they reached the Cailleach, Maura begged her to restore her mother to her former glory. A spell, a herb, another pelt?! What can you do for her? What does she need?!
The Cailleach replied to Maura,
“I can not help her with an incantation. There is no herb, no spell. For she must reach deep inside herself. Deep into the pits of darkness, into the depths of sorrow. For there in the chasm of the deepest darkest cave is where she will find her true nature.”
The Cailleach told them when the time came, the Selkie would know what to do and to trust her instincts.
They returned home.
The Selkie, watching her daughter now growing ever more distressed, saw that she must do as the Cailleach instructed. Unsure if she would ever have the courage to complete what must be done, the Selkie grabbed nothing but a shawl to keep warm and left.
The weather was wild and her heart was heavy, she drank from icy burns and ate nothing but seaweed as she walked and walked, pushing against the storm, trying to find the strength within to keep going until as the old Cailleach said, she would know what to do.
She came upon a stairway, a terrifying narrow and deep stairway on the edge of a cliff. There was a sound coming from the below and she knew she must walk down the stairs. As she did, she entered into the darkness of the cliff. Inside, the voice whispered,
“Your old skin was no use anymore. That's the way it goes you see. Sure some of the Selkies find their old skins and slip them back on and away they go, no harm done, nothing learned.”
She noticed further in the darkness, the bodies and skins of eleven dead Selkies. Not seals, no, these skins were silver of silk and she felt there in the darkness, the knowing that these were her sisters, her kin of the ocean. This brought a deep guttural cry from within her in a language she had forgotten. A song so ancient and powerful, that as she sang the bodies of the dead Selkies began to come back to life, one by one they slipped on their skins. Noticing all but one had come back to life the group of Selkies surrounded the body of the one Selkie that was not to return. They sang and sang, mourning the loss of their kin, and when it was time they began to crawl back towards the waves of wild ocean outside the cliff.
They called their sister, come with us now.
Knowing at that moment what she was to do, she picked up the skin of her dead sister. It would have been easy at this time to slip it on and follow the rest of her sister's into the ocean. But there was one more thing she must do.
She folded the skin up carefully and held it tightly and made her way back up the stairs to the top of the cliff, making the journey back to Maura.
When she arrived she brought Maura down to the beach and told her all she must know. Even though Maura was young, she knew deep inside that her mother did not want to leave her, but that she must return to her true nature, to find her way home to where she belongs.
Returning to the sea, she sang the ancient song to her daughter and as the waves lapped against her body, she slipped on the silk pelt. The Selkie took a final look at her daughter, and slipped beneath the waves.
A year passed, and Maura saw a seal on the shore, as she approached it, the seal slipped off its skin and there was her mother. She looked different, wild, free, full of life and spirit. Maura felt happy at the sight of her, and her mother promised that every year, on the full moon she would return to her again and tell her stories and teach her the song, so that if one day Maura decides that she too would like to go onto the sea, she would be able to sing the song that would call her soul home. The song that was once for mourning, transformed into a song of joy.
This tale contains multitudes. For everyone that reads it may receive it as applicable. For me, this tale comes to me again as my youngest child reaches seven years old. Seven years. It's true, that you must reach into the depths of the deepest chasm to find your true nature. It can't be given to you. My true nature is not who I was in my years before Mother. That young maiden had her wonderful time, and now she lives inside me with my inner child, my inner teen. It's at this time I truly believe that postpartum is seven years. That the journey from birth to self actualisation is a full Saturn cycle. Birth of a mother and birth of a child.
It's at this time I have been called back to Scotland as someone I've never been before, to stand on the soil of my ancestors in the depths of winter. In the darkness.
Whatever you take from this tale of the Selkie, I hope you enjoy my telling. There are many versions of this story, this is mine.