The Mythical Selkie...

Today I'm doing a repost on my favorite fairy/ mythological creature of Ireland. The Selkie. I'm not sure what has prompted me to think of them, perhaps it's the quiet fog and the smell of the sea that has enveloped the cottage this morning.

The shapeshifting Selkies, who are also known as Silkies, or Roane as the Irish call them (Gaelic for seal), occupy the seas surrounding the Orkney and the Shetland isles. The exact nature of their undersea world is uncertain, though some believe it to be encased in giant air bubbles. Their true forms are those of faeries or humans, though they take the form of large seals when traveling the through the oceans. In particular: great seals and grey seals are said to take human forms. Older tales tell that selkies are only able to take on human forms on certain nights of the year, such as Midsummer's Eve or All Hallows.

Occasionally the selkies encounter humankind, sometimes becoming their mates. A human male may take a selkie female as his wife if he finds her seal skin on the beach and hides it from her. In the end she always recovers the skin and returns to the sea, though she may return occasionally to watch over her human family from the safety of the waves.

A human woman may bear the child of a selkie male if she weeps seven tears or seven drops of blood in the nighttime sea. Such relationships are rarely lasting. Seven years hence, the selkie would return for his child, offering the mother a fee for nursing her own babe.

There is even a movie with focus on my favorite being. It is called "The Secret of Roan Inish." In the movie a fisherman steals a selkie's pelt while she is sunbathing. She is then forced to return to his house, as she cannot escape back into the sea, and becomes his wife and bears him children. The skin of the seal gives her power over men, but without it she is a mortal woman, trapped on land, slave to the whims of her husband. The life there slowly suffocates her and she spends much time splashing in the shallows of the ocean. Years later, one of the children sees the pelt and asks what it is. The wife immediately knows, drops what she is doing and retrieves the pelt from its hiding place, having long ago despaired of ever finding it. She does not hesitate; she rushes to the ocean to return to her former life as a seal.

Do you have a favorite fairy?