JMD Blog

Beach finds from between Penzance and Marazion. 15 January 2020.

Selkies (also spelled silkies, sylkies, selchies, Scots: selkie fowk) are mythological creatures found in Irish, Scottish, Faroese, and Icelandic folklore.

Selkies are said to live as seals in the sea but shed their skin to become human on land. The stories frequently revolve around female selkies being coerced into relationships with humans by someone stealing and hiding their sealskin, often not regaining the skin until years later upon which they commonly return to the sea, forsaking their human family. The legend is apparently most common in the Northern Isles of Scotland and is very similar to those of swan maidens.

Male selkies are described as being very handsome in their human form, and having great seductive powers over human women. They typically seek those who are dissatisfied with their lives, such as married women waiting for their fishermen husbands. If a woman wishes to make contact with a selkie male, she must shed seven tears into the sea.

If a man steals a female selkie’s skin she is in his power and is forced to become his wife. Female selkies are said to make excellent wives, but because their true home is the sea, they will often be seen gazing longingly at the ocean. If she finds her skin she will immediately return to her true home, and sometimes to her selkie husband, in the sea.

Sometimes, a selkie maiden is taken as a wife by a human man and she has several children by him. In these stories, it is one of her children who discovers her sealskin (often unwitting of its significance) and she soon returns to the sea.

In Scottish folklore the Ghillie Dhu or Gille Dubh was a solitary male fairy. He was kindly and reticent yet sometimes wild in character but had a gentle devotion to children. Dark haired and clothed in leaves and moss, he lived in a birch wood within the Gairloch and Loch a Druing area of the north-west highlands of Scotland.

Ghillie Dhu moodboard

Kelpies, malicious shape-shifting water spirits that inhabit the lochs and pools of Scotland, often appearing as a horse, although they can take human form.

Forget-Me-Not (Myosotis sylvatica)