Selkie – A3 Print

Selkies, or silkies, are creatures in Celtic and Norse lore which can take both seal and human form. They can be both men and women, but most common are the stories of beautiful selkie women who briefly shed their selkie skins to become human in the light of the moon.

The story usually goes that a human man happens upon a group of naked women dancing beside the sea in the depths of night. The man, seeing their seal-skins on the rocks nearby, guesses that they are selkies. He steals a skin, and the selkie whose skin he steals has no option but to return with him to become his wife. They have children, but one day the child finds a key for an always-locked kist in their home. The child unlocks the kist only to find their mother’s selkie skin – as soon as it is revealed, the woman takes the skin and flees to the sea, where she becomes a selkie once again, never to return.

There are some variations of the story where the selkie returns to her children once a year, or even takes the children with her to the depths of the sea, but these are usually adaptations for children’s stories.

In the Scottish isles, it was said that seals were only killed in hard times, or by those who were brash enough to ignore the superstitions surrounding the killing of a seal. The largest of the seals were said to be those of the seal folk (sliochd nan ròn), and the largest of them the seal king.

Original illustration digitally printed on to lovely 300gsm off-white Tintoretto Gesso paper, with a dappled finish.

Available Framed

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