A Sea Full of Selkies with Steve Gladwin and Co - Kevin Crossley-Holland

In the first of these blogs I talked about 'The Woman of the Sea' a selkie tale of Kevin Crossley-Holland's which, in the most unexpected way first gave me the gift of storytelling. Asking Kevin to talk about that story and the subject of selkies in general for this series, I sent him a load of questions, which he then very sensibly ignored. Instead he responded to the essence and intent of what I wanted, through the prism of his own experience and enthusiasms. Below you can see not only what a fine decision that turned to be, but in addition Kevin's own version of the story of St Cuthbert and the Seals, a favourite of his. Thanks to Kevin for being such a regular and willing contributor to my blogs and I'm sure you'll enjoy what he has to say.

 

One evening, when I was ten or eleven, my father sat at his piano, and played and sang a simple tune.

 

 

 

 My father told me that it had been noted down in Orkney just a few years before, and that 'Sule Skerry' (or Skerrie) was a rock out in the Atlantic, all of fifty miles west of Hoy, frequented by a colony of sea

There are rare moments in one's life when something completely changes; when your head buzzes and your heart lurches, and a film lifts from your eyes. . .   This was one of those awakenings, more common perhaps in childhood and old age than in middle age, and it has led to a lifelong interest in and familiarity with seals, as well as to some small experience of shape-changers and stories about them.

 

Once upon a time, I returned from the island of Tory off the coast of Donegal, devastated by having just seen an old woman appear through a wall - there's almost no one on that island who has not seen ghosts - and attending a wake where the deceased was propped up and holding a hand of cards while four men sat around him, playing and smoking, and where I heard over and again the unforgettable wailing of newborn seals, so like the cries of human babies.

 

And once, on the island of Rousay, I engaged in a kind of antiphon with a grey seal, who followed me as I walked up and down a strand, always keeping her distance, never far away.  I called out; she replied.  She called out; I replied.

 

And again, when my own older daughter (aged eleven) was swimming alone off the tidal island of Scolt Head, wearing a black costume, I watched concerned as a single seal approached her, as if to verify that she was not one of her own, and did not wish to be.

 

As you'll imagine, I've sought out stories old and new about encounters with seals, actual and fictional.  Do you know, for instance, Bede's account (in his Life of Saint Cuthbert) of how the saint used to pray all night on a beach and how at dawn two seals or sea-otters 'bounded out of the water, stretched themselves out before him, warmed his feet with their breath, and tried to dry him on their fur'?

 

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Have you come across the wildman or wodwo of Orford?  As Ralph of Coggeshall reported in his Chronicon Anglicanum, the fishermen who caught him during the reign of King John didn't know what to make of him.  Was he a human or a seal-man or an incubus or what?  And why did he prefer the company of humans, who tortured him, to a solitary existence?

 

Painting of Scolt Head by Gillian Crossley-Holland

 

When I compiled an anthology of British folktales and included their most celebrated collectors and retellers (Folktales of the British Isles, 1985), I wrote that 'The natural affection that exists between humans and seals has given rise to many folk-tales and folk beliefs, none of them more haunting than that of The Woman of the Sea, a story claimed by a number of the Northern Isles and here attributed to Unst in Shetland.  The tale-type has affinities with The Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach, for here is another union between male mortal and female fairy that is not destined to last, while in some versions the seal woman also returns like the lady of the lake to give her children medical knowledge.  The tradition that there are still a few families with webbed fingers or toes, or horny skin on their hands and feet, indicating descent from a seal-woman is still current in the north of Scotland.

 

Already aware of the work of Helen Waddell (1889-1961) as historian, novelist and translator, and of her enchanting Beasts and Saints, I included in my anthology her version of 'The Woman of the Sea', so simple and so graceful.

 

For my own version, 'Sea-Woman' (British Folk Tales, 1987 and Between Worlds 2019) I used Thomas Keightley's story of 'The Mermaid Wife' in his The Fairy Mythology (1828) as my starting point.  At the time, I was interested - less so now, I must say - in whether I could make a version that somehow straddled oral and literary traditions.  And as I noted, 'I have chosen to retell this story as a tale-within-a-tale in which. . .  the voice in the shell is a kind of externalisation of the girl's own memory and sense of loss'.

 

 

 

Sheila Disney, our own seal-woman here in the Burnhams in north Norfolk - the subject of my poem 'Diz' - did catch her breakfast (dabs and the like) in the creek with her feet, and it's true she was rather whiskery, and that she told me that she was the 'last child of a seal-woman', but some components of this short poem are imaginary.

 

https://www.blakeneypointsealtrips.co.uk/

 

 

But many times in recent years I've gone out to Blakeney Point to see the ever-growing colony of grey and common seals, swarming around the boat and lazing on the sands, as well as visiting a small rookery (or herd, or harem, or bob, take your pick) who have established themselves in a saltwater lagoon, sheltered from those who do not intend to find them.

 

How strange that on land, seals prefer to crowd together, when there is no obvious reason for them to do so.  And how predictable that their endless waddling and jostling leads to stress and aggression.

But I'm no sociologist or environmentalist, and leave it now to others to show all we humans can learn from the behaviour of seals.  But what will never be in doubt is their haunting appeal to our imagination.

 

 

SAINT CUTHBERT AND THE SEALS

 

Up on this cliff-top, there's always a storm of seabirds - whirling and swirling around the ruins.

            I met an old priest up here and he told me that maybe they're the souls of children like me, the ones who became nuns and monks, and stayed here all their lives.  That was hundreds and hundreds of years ago, before the monastery fell down.

            Saint Cuthbert used to come here.  He walked all the way up the coast from the island of Lindisfarne, and that's miles and miles away.

            'When the monks and nuns went off to their beds,' the old priest told me, 'and you bet they were lumpy ones, narrow and lumpy, Cuthbert used to steal out alone. By moonlight and starlight, he scrambled and slithered down that steep path there to the beach.

            'One night, a young monk followed him to find where he was going, and do you know what?

            'He saw Cuthbert walk straight into the water, right up to his neck.  All night he chanted loudly, and his song sounded so like the waves swelling and singing around him that you couldn't tell which was which.'

            At the first sign of dawn, Cuthbert waded back to the beach.  He knelt down on the pebbles, and began to pray.

            'Two seals followed him,' the old priest told me.  'They lay down in front of him, and panted loudly to try to warm his cold feet, and then rubbed their fur against him to try to dry him.'

            Well, when he had blessed them, the seals slipped back into the dark waters, and Cuthbert slogged up the path there, and got into the monastery just in time to sing dawn-prayers with the nuns and monks.

            The young monk following Cuthbert felt guilty.  He knew he had witnessed a secret between the saint and God - he'd witnessed a miracle.  And worse, he was sure the saint had heard him because he kept tripping over roots and stuff and cursing in his hurry to get back to the  monastery.  So he went and found Cuthbert, and asked his forgiveness.

            'Promise me,' Cuthbert told him, 'promise you'll never tell anyone what you saw until after my death-day.'

            'I promise,' said the young monk.

            The old priest stared at me.  His eyes were grey. 'The holy man who told me this heard it from a monk, and the monk said he had heard it from a nun, and she had heard it from. . . who. . .  heard. . .  heard. . .'

            Standing on the cliff-top, I felt quite dizzy. The priest was opening his arms, opening them, as if he were about to fly away; and when I closed my eyes and imagined, I saw nothing but surging salt-waves, and heard nothing but sea-voices, singing.

 

My thanks again to Kevin. Next month film-maker Sophia Carr-Gomm on the inspiration for 'A Wider Sun', her own film about selkies, and storyteller Sharon Jacksties gives us her own remarkable account of a selkie encounter. Thanks everyone.