Picture Book Monday: The Selkie Girl

[osprey_archer]

Another picture book by Susan Cooper! This time, The Selkie Girl, a classic retelling of a selkie story, which is one of those stories that speaks to my soul and someday I would like to do to a retelling of my own, although the whole "and then the selkie swam away in the blue water" is a tough ending for a romance novel...

Anyway, as I was saying, this is a classic selkie story: the naked selkie singing on the rocks, the fisherman who steals her skin, she lives with him in his cottage till the day one of her children asks, “Why is my father keeping an old sealskin in our wall?”

At which the selkie leaves the oatcakes, and goes out to fetch her skin, for she must leave them now. “I have five children in the sea and five on the land,” she tells her land-children. “And that is a hard case to be in.”

(I don’t believe I’ve seen a version where the selkie mentions having sea-children. Perhaps it’s meant to soften the blow as she leaves her land children behind.)

Unfortunately Warwick Hutton’s illustrations are not in a style that particularly appeals to me – doubly unfortunately, since he also illustrated Cooper’s book The Silver Cow: A Welsh Tale! I thought the book would have benefited from something a bit more delicate and detailed. But at the end of the day, I can’t complain too much, for it’s still a selkie story.

Comments

[asakiyume]

I found a video of it being read on Youtube, and I see what you mean about the illustrations. But I like how Susan Cooper handled the going back to the sea--and that line, it sounds very ballad-esque ("I have XX upon the land and XX upon the sea" is definitely a formula I've heard, though I don't know any selkie ballads, so not in that particular context). But I like how the older sister says she'll look after the younger brother, and how the mother says she'll check in on them. Having children in the sea definitely adds a reason for wanting to get back!

I confess I'm always glad that the selkie leaves.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I'm always rooting for the selkie to go. GO SELKIE GO! Go back to the waves, go back to the waves, go back to your seal-sisters.

[genarti]

The selkie song I know best contains "I am a man upon the land, I am a selkie in the sea," which is close! Though not quite the same formula.

[asakiyume]

I love those patterns in ballads.
--plus I remembered the ballad I was thinking of: it was Jean Ritchie's singing of "The House Carpenter": "I have seven ships upon the sea; seven ships upon the land" (I always thought... what does it mean, seven ships upon the land? Drydock? Under construction?)

In that same ballad you get the pattern "they hadn't been sailing but about two weeks/I'm sure it was not three," which I've seen in other ballads.

[genarti]

Ooh, a classic selkie story indeed! And I love the "I have five children in the sea and five on the land" phrasing -- very balladic, and it does indeed seem like a very hard case to be in.

[osprey_archer]

There's just nothing like a classic selkie story! And I love these sort of mirroring patterns that you get in ballads, and often fairy tales as well.

[superborb]

Huh! According to wiki, in the Shetland version, the selkie has a husband already, and in the Faroese version, she has a husband and children (and that version is even sadder than the usual, yike). I hadn't ever encountered that before.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, fascinating! I do love the many variations of folktales.