The Selkie
Tales of mermaids cross every culture. Odd, that even though most people in the ancient world never laid eyes on one another, couldn’t call one another up on the phone to share mysterious happenings; still these stories have persisted. As with different colored threads, these stories are woven with varying details, yet one point remains the same: there is a world far below the water’s surface that sometimes collides with our own. Such is the lore of The Selkie.
There was a young fisherman of the Orkney Islands, who lived by himself in a small croft overlooking the ocean that he had built with his own hands. Each day he would go out onto the ocean by himself, or with one other fisherman, returning at the end of his labor to that solitary existence. He despaired that he would ever find a woman to love and with whom to share a life and home. Until one day, weary from a day at sea and heading in the direction of home, he came upon a woman sitting on a rock crying over her wounded hand. As he approached, he saw how beautiful she was, with eyes as black as coal, and his heart melted at the sight of her. Gathering her up in his arms, he saw a seal skin lying next to her and threw it over his shoulder, bringing it along.
At home next to the fireside, the young fisherman tended the woman’s injured hand, wrapped it in linen and tenderly kissed it.
“I havena much to offer, but I would offer ye my home and my companionship, for ye have my heart,” he told her in the fire’s glow.
“Sir, you have been so kind, but I need my skin to return to the sea. This could never be my home,” she replied.
“No, I canna let you go. You’ll learn to love me and I’ll care for ye. We’ll have a good life, you’ll see.”
And so, the fisherman and his wife lived there in the croft together. As the years passed, the woman did grow to love the fisherman, tending their wee home and a beautiful garden they shared together, but she longed for the sea and could be found oftentimes gazing out at the expanse of blue, her thoughts lost on the horizon. As much as she loved the fisherman, with spring approaching each year, she would ask the fisherman if he loved her, would he give her back her seal skin and let her go. Each time, he would answer,
“No, my Love. I canna do it. If ye were to go, I’d die. Ye might as well just plant me here in this garden because I couldna go on. But I’ll give ye a blue hydrangea bush to plant in your bonnie garden, and ye can pretend you’re swimming in the deep blue waters with yer selkie friends.” And so with each passing year a new hydrangea bush was planted, until there was truly an ocean of blue petals, watered by her tears.
The couple grew old, and with the years, the woman’s health began to slip away. Knowing that he could no longer deny her from returning to the place she longed for, the old fisherman brought out the seal skin and, gathering her up in his arms, returned to the spot that he had first found her. Kissing her one last time, her long grey hair blowing behind her, they clung to each other and wept as they said their goodbyes.
As he had foretold, the old fisherman indeed could not go on without her, and soon he died; his neighbors granting his last request that he be buried under the sea of blue hydrangeas in the garden. Even many years later, some would tell of sighting of an old grey seal often seen on a large rock not far from the cottage, keeping watch over it and its garden. It was said by some, especially on sunny days when the hydrangea bushes shone the most blue, that the sound that came from the rock was the sound of weeping.