No. 113: The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry
[There are no known traditional US or Canadian versions of this ballad.]
CONTENTS:
1. Child's Narrative
2. Footnote (There is one footnote)
3. Brief (Kittredge)
4. Child's Ballad Texts A
5. Endnotes
6. Additions and Corrections
ATTACHED PAGES (see left hand column):
1. Recordings & Info: 113. The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry
A. Roud No. 197: The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry (30 Listings)
2. Sheet Music: (Bronson gives one music example)
3. English and Other Versions (Including Child version A with additional notes)]
Child's Narrative: The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry
A. Proceedings of The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, I, 86, 1852. Communicated by the late Captain F. W. L. Thomas, R. N.; written down by him from the dictation of a venerable lady of Snarra Voe, Shetland.
This Shetland ballad[1] was reprinted in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine, April, 1864, with spelling Scotticized, and two or three other uncalled-for changes.
"Finns," as they are for the most part called, denizens of a region below the depths of the ocean, are able to ascend to the land above by donning a seal-skin, which then they are wont to lay off, and, having divested themselves of it, they "act just like men and women." If this integument be taken away from them, they cannot pass through the sea again and return to their proper abode, and they become subject to the power of man, like the swan-maidens and mer-wives of Scandinavian and German tradition: Grimm's Mythologie, I, 354 f . Female Finns, under these circumstances, have been fain to accept of human partners. The Great Selchie, or Big Seal, of Shul Skerry, had had commerce with a woman during an excursion to the upper world. See Hibbert's Description of the Shetland Islands, pp. 566-571, and Karl Blind in the Contemporary Review, XL, 404, 1881. A correspondent of Blind gives stanza 3 with a slight variation, thus:
I am a man, upo da land,
I am a selkie i da sea;
An whin I 'm far fa every strand
My dwelling is in Shöol Skerry.
Footnotes:
1. The ballad was pointed out to me by Mr. Macmath, and would have followed No 40 had I known of it earlier.
Brief Description by George Lyman Kittredge
"Finns," as they are for the most part called, denizens of a region below the depths of the ocean, are able to ascend to the land above by donning a seal-skin, which then they are wont to lay off, and, having divested themselves of it, they "act just like men and women." If this integument be taken away from them, they cannot pass through the sea again and return to their proper abode, and they become subject to the power of man, like the swan-maidens and mer-wives of Scandinavian and German tradition: Grimm's Mythologie, i, 354 f. Female Finns, under these circumstances, have been fain to accept of human partners.
Child's Ballad Text
The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry- Version A; Child 113 The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry
Proceedings of The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, I, 86, 1852. Communicated by the late Captain F.W.L. Thomas, R.N.; written down by him from the dictation of a venerable lady of Snarra Voe, Shetland.
1 An eartly nourris sits and sing,
And aye she sings, Ba, lily wean!
Little ken I my bairnis father,
Far less the land that he staps in.
2 Then ane arose at her bed-fit,
An a grumly guest I'm sure was he:
'Here am I, thy bairnis father,
Although that I be not comelie.
3 'I am a man, upo the lan,
An I am a silkie in the sea;
And when I'm far and far frae lan,
My dwelling is in Sule Skerrie.'
4 'It was na weel,' quo the maiden fair,
'It was na weel, indeed,' quo she,
'That the Great Silkie of Sule Skerrie
Suld hae come and aught a bairn to me.'
5 Now he has taen a purse of goud,
And he has pat it upo her knee,
Sayin, Gie to me my little young son,
An tak thee up thy nourris-fee.
6 An it sall come to pass on a simmer's day,
When the sin shines het on evera stane,
That I will tak my little young son,
An teach him for to swim the faem.
7 An thu sall marry a proud gunner,
An a proud gunner I'm sure he'll be,
An the very first schot that ere he schoots,
He'll schoot baith my young son and me.
End-Notes
A. 62. Quhen.
Additions and Corrections
P. 494. "On the west coast of Ireland the fishermen are loth to kill the seals, which once abounded in some localities, owing to a popular superstition that they enshrined 'the souls of thim that were drowned at the flood.' They were supposed to possess the power of casting aside their external skins and disporting themselves in human form on the sea-shore. If a mortal contrived to become possessed of one of these outer coverings belonging to a female, he might claim her and keep her as his bride." Charles Hardwick, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-Lore, chiefly Lancashire and the North of England, p. 231. (G. L. K.)
506 a, last paragraph but one. So in Douns Lioð, Strengleikar, ed. Kayser and Unger, p. 52 ff. (G. L. K.)
P. 494, III, 518. See David MacRitchie, The Finn-Men of Britain, in The Archaeological Review, IV, 1-26, 107-129, 190 ff., and Alfred Nutt, p. 232.
A husband who is a man by day, but at night a seal: Curtin, Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland, p. 51. (G. L. K.)