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  The Selkie-folk

The children of the selkie-folk

The following account was documented by the Orkney antiquarian, and folklorist, Walter Traill Dennison towards the end of the 19th century.

In a paper, published in 1893 in the pages of the Scottish Antiquary, he recounts the semi-mythical tale of an Orcadian woman, who, after lying with a selkie man, falls pregnant and produces offspring with distinct traits.

Dennison changed the name of the woman, so as not to "bring shame on the family and embarrass her descendants"...

Ursilla was the daughter of a laird belonging to one of the oldest families in Orkney.

She was handsome and pretty, but had a sternness of manner, and that firmness of features which often presents a masculine exterior in families of Norse blood, and often hides, as with a film of ice, a loving heart within.

Ursilla was not one to wait patiently till some one turned up to offer himself as her husband. Indeed, had any one presumed to approach her as a lover, she would have treated him with haughty disdain, regarding his bold presumption as sufficient ground for his rejection.

She determined not to be chosen, but to choose for herself.

Her choice fell on a young handsome fellow, who acted as her father's barn-man. But she knew that any disclosure of her passion would mortally offend her old father and bitterly mortify his family pride and might lead him to disinherit her.

So she locked up her love in her own breast; kept watchful eye on the object of her love, and treated him to a full share of the scoldings she daily bestowed on the servants.

When, however, her father died, and her [dowry] was safe, she disclosed her passion to the young man, and commanded him to marry her — a command which he was too gallant to disobey.

Her marriage excited among the gentry great indignation; to think that one of their class should marry a farm-servant. Ursilla treated their contempt with indifference; she made a good housewife, managed her house well, and also, it was said, managed her husband and the farm.

At this point, Dennison went to great pains to remind his readers that the information he had provided so far was valid but that which followed was merely "an imaginary tale, invented by gossips, in order to account for a strange phenomenon visibly seen on her descendants."

The tale, he states, "is only given to illustrate one of the popular beliefs":

Yes, Ursilla was married, and all went well and happily, so far as outward appearances showed; Yet Ursilla was not happy. If disappointed in her husband, she was far too proud to acknowledge it, knowing that the gentry would only say in derision, "She shaped her own cloth, let her wear her ill-fitting dress."

Whatever the cause might be, there was a terrible want — a want that Ursilla felt bitterly.

And she was not the woman to sit down and cry over her sorrow; she determined to console herself by having intercourse with one of the selkie-folk.

She went at early morning and sat on a rock at high-tide mark, and when it was high tide she shed seven tears in the sea. People said they were the only tears she ever shed. But you know this is what one must do if she wants speech with the selkie-folk. Well, as the first glimpse of dawn made the waters grey, she saw a big selkie swimming for the rock.

He raised his head, and says he to her, "What's your will with me, fair lady?"

She likely told him what was in her mind; and he told her he would visit her at the seventh stream [spring tide], for that was the time he could come in human form.

So, when the time was come, he came; and they met over and over again. And, doubtless, it was not for good that they met so often. Anyway, when Ursilla's bairns were born every one of them had web hands and webbed feet, like the paws of a selkie.

And did not that tell a tale?

The midwife clipped the webs between every finger, and between every toe of each bairn.

"She showed the shears that she used to my grandmother." So said the narrator. And many a clipping Ursilla clipped, to keep the fins from growing together again; and the fins not being allowed to grow in their natural way, grew into a horny crust on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. And this horny substance is seen in many of Ursilla's descendants to this day.

Whatever may be thought of this tale, its last sentence is quite true.

The horn still appears on feet and hands of some of the lady's descendants. One, two, or three in a family may show the abnormal horny substance; while brothers and sisters are entirely free from the troublesome horn.

Although Dennison put no real faith in the folklore origin of this horny crust found on the hands and feet of some of Ursilla's descendants, the condition at least was verified.

Some ten years ago, while engaging a harvest hand, I said to one of these men, "Of course, you can do all kinds of harvest work?"

"Oh na, sir," said he, "hid's nae use tae tell a lee aboot hid; but I cinno' bind a sheaf wi' this plaguid horn in me livs."

Another of the same family told me that when, through the growth of the horn, he was unable to walk or work, he would, with hammer and chisel, cut off large slices of horn from the soles of his feet. This growth is by no means confined to those engaged in manual labour. I have felt it on the hands of one of the same race who followed a profession where manual labour was not required.

This curious phenomenon seems well worthy of careful investigation by the physiologist. Pity it could not be traced to the seal; we might then be in sight of the missing link.

Many wild tales were told of the offspring of such strange parentage who had webbed hands and feet; but the foregoing will serve to illustrate a once popular belief.

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