John Stewart and the Selkie

(1)

Those selkie girls, they like to climb

Up onto the rocks to take the air

Peel off their seal skins and recline

As human girls in the warmth of the sun;

But if a human from from the land comes near

They’re seals again and off they swim.

John Stewart knew that this was so,

Had watched them from his boat out in the bay

But never could get close enough before they’d go.

One day he hid himself among the heather

Above the rocks washed by the highest tides

Where he knew the selkie girls would gather.

Spreading their skins upon the rocks above

They sat and sunned themselves above the spray

Or cooled themselves in pools the selkies love.

(2)

He waited until they slid into the water

Then crept out to take the skin  of one he’d noticed

Above the others for her grace and beauty

Knowing that if he had her skin he’d also have her.

When he was seen the girls came out and scrambled

Onto the rocks to put their seal skins on

And swim back out into deeper waters.

But one remained, frantic, for the skin she’d shed,

Which he had folded away secretly.

He said to her ‘Come home with me

To be my wife and I will love you

For now you cannot go back to the sea’.

For nine years she lived with him

And bore him two girls and a boy

But gazing over the waves from the rocky shore

Her thoughts strayed often to her selkie kin.

(3)

One day she looked up and saw a leak

Dripping through the thatch of their cottage

And climbed up into the roofspace to check.

Then she saw it, lined in the thatch,

The skin she had shed nine years before,

Dry and wrinkled now, but intact.

Her husband was away at sea and she

Felt the swell of the waves, and the taste

Of the the tear on her cheek was salty.

So she took the skin and called to her children,

For the last time, her heart breaking,

Fed them, bade them be good, and kissed them

Went to the beach and put on the skin,

Felt a shiver as the chill waves touched it

And swam, as a seal, back to the ocean.