March 2021 The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry

 The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry

March 2021

This story is about something that happened to me at the very end of my teacher training course, so I used it to also outline my introduction to, and long association with the wonderful organisation then called 'Colony Holidays for Schoolchildren' and now known as 'ATE Superweeks'.

I was introduced to Colony Holidays by a friend called Ginny in my second year of teacher training. I couldn't possibly have known at that time how important Ginny's kindness to me was to be. The experiences that I had on that course and on successive 'Colony Holidays' were remarkable and life changing and have fundamentally influenced my styles of teaching and parenting ever since. I owe Ginny a lot, but lost touch with her many years ago. I have re-paid the favour however by guiding many other young people towards that training course and time and time again their experience and their responses to it have been equivalent to mine. 

One way in which Colonies changed my life was to introduce me to storytelling and to persuade me, despite considerable nervousness, to try my hand at it, so without Colonies we wouldn't be sharing these evenings together.

My last Colony as a Monitor before training as an 'Assistant Director' was an extra-long one in Stornoway on the Outer Hebrides. It was an amazing holiday in which all forty young people (aged 12 to 15) and staff settled down into the slow, dreamy pace of the island and, as I remember it now, spent three weeks simply enjoying each other's company. I remember spending a whole afternoon with 20 of the older children helping a local family to off-load their winter's supply of peat from a lorry and being shown how to store it carefully in their shed, and then being given a feast of tea and warm scones as a 'thank you'.

At the end of that holiday, on the journey home I was able to leave the party at Inverness and decided to hitch-hike around the northern coast of Scotland. On the far northern coast there is a small fishing village called Skerray, and some way off the coast, a small rocky island called Sule Skerry which is home to a large colony of seals, or 'Selkies' as they are known in those parts.

The story of the 'Great Selkie of Sule Skerry' is immortalised in an ancient ballad, the words of which I've copied below. I couldn't let this moment pass however without mentioning our border collie, who, according to her pedigree is not 'black and white' (as she appears) but actually 'seal and white' and so was given the name 'Selkie'. Her puppy is much more silvery-grey and seal-like, but her pedigree insists that she is 'blue and white' and we called her 'Misty'! Photograph below.


The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry

An Earthly Mother sits and sings

And by she sings, Ba, ba, lily wan

Oh little ken I my bairn’s Father,

Far less the land that he comes from

 

Then ane arose at her bedside

And a grumly guest I am sure was he.

Saying ‘here am I, your bairn’s Father,

Although I be not comely.

 

For I am a man upon the land,

But I am a Selkie on the sea,

And when I’m far far from the land,

My home is on the Sule Skerr’y.

 

‘It was not well’, the fair maid cried,

‘It was not well, indeed’ quoth she

‘that the Great Selkie of Sule Skerry

Should come and aught a bairn by me’.

 

Then he has taken a little purse

And laid it down at her bedside

Saying ‘here take thee thy nurses fee,

And give my young son back to me.

 

And it shall fall out all on a day

And the sun shall shine hot on every stone

That I will take my little young son

And teach him how to swim the foam

 

And you will marry a proud gunner

And a very proud gunner I am sure he’ll be

And the very first shot that e’er he takes

He’ll kill both our young son, and me.


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