“The Selkie Girl” is a Celtic myth that I’ve played with repeatedly. Three seal sisters (“selkies”) shed their skin on land to sunbathe. A fisherman passing by steals the skin of one, forcing her to remain on land and become his wife. She has seven children with him. But she is forever bereft, haunted by the memory of the other seven children (“bairns”) she left in the sea.
“Woe is me, ah, woe is me,” she sings. “For I have seven bairns on land and seven in the sea.”
Years ago, I based a short story on the myth, setting it in Sausalito, California, where a restless wife has an affair with an artist she meets on the beach, leaving her children and starting a family with him. She remains unhappy. Somehow it lost the mystique of the original tale. Into the desk drawer it went.
Recently I dug it out, changed the setting and made her motherhood more painful. Still, it’s not right.
I just came across Eugene Pool’s wonderful countdown-to-Valentine’s-day art blog, where he features this painting by Howard Pyle of a mermaid saving a shipwrecked man. It conjures exactly what fascinates me about the Selkie story: the mystery in that zone where land meets sea. There is the story.
When I tried to find the “meaning” in the Selkie I went astray. Myths are not fables, I now remind myself. They do not have “points” or morals like fables do. The Selkie is just a fantastical creature. She is torn between places and lovers; she is a prisoner, who potentially has more freedom than any human. She is unfinished, powerful, tortured and a bit divine.