Selkie

Quick facts

What the source says

Dennison introduces the story as one of several versions known in Orkney. He describes his unnamed teller as a native of North Ronaldshay familiar with English literature and a frequent helper in his folklore enquiries. The printed account combines English narration with dialogue represented in local dialect; this profile paraphrases both in present-day English.^{[1, p. 173]}

The goodman of Wastness surprises a group of selkie folk playing and sunning themselves on a flat rock. They seize their skins and flee, but he captures one woman’s skin. She follows him, weeping and asking for it back, because she cannot live at sea without it. He refuses. The narrator explicitly presents her acceptance of marriage as reluctant and constrained by that refusal.^{[1, p. 174]}

She becomes a capable, kindly wife and has seven children, teaching them unfamiliar songs. Yet she often looks longingly towards the sea. While the goodman and three sons are fishing, she searches the house. Her youngest daughter, kept home by a sore foot, tells her where she saw her father hide a skin: beneath the sloping roof above the bed. The mother retrieves it, says farewell to the child, and runs to the shore.^{[1, pp. 174–175]}

Putting on the skin, she plunges into the water and is welcomed by a male selkie. She calls to the goodman’s returning boat, acknowledging affection for him but declaring a greater love for her sea companion. He searches the shore afterwards, but never sees her again.^{[1, p. 175]}

Description and transformation

The group appears human without its skins, and the narrator describes the woman as beautiful. Her skin enables her return to seal life; the story gives no precise size, eye colour, hair colour, or seal species for her. Her songs are unfamiliar, but the narrative does not say that they enchant listeners.^{[1, pp. 174–175]}

In the preceding discussion, Dennison reports that transformation depended on particular periods and tidal conditions, while admitting that his oral authorities disagreed about them. No fixed lunar calendar or transformation interval can therefore be assigned to the Wastness wife from this account.^{[1, p. 173]}

Source realm: Wastness and the sea

The tale moves between an exposed shore, a rock beside a shallow pool, the goodman’s home, and the sea. North Ronaldshay identifies the teller’s origin; it should not by itself be treated as the story’s exact location. This record preserves the printed place-name Wastness without assigning a modern map coordinate.^{[1, pp. 173–175]}

Dennison’s introductory discussion places selkie folk on outlying skerries and distinguishes them from mermaids and the inhabitants of Finfolk-a-heem. This is his account of his informants’ distinctions. His later transition on page 175 nevertheless uses “finfolk,” so even his terminology is not wholly consistent.^{[1, pp. 172–175]}

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Themes in this account

These are readings of the narrated events, rather than traditional symbolic meanings assigned by the collector.

Possession and freedom

Control of the skin determines whether the woman can leave. Her recovery of it ends the arrangement imposed by its theft.

Affection and belonging

Her life with the children and affection for the goodman coexist with longing for the sea. The ending refuses to make her apparent domestic happiness the whole of her story.