The Silkies

To my dear departed Scottish-Irish nanny Elisabeth Wilkie and to my distant ancestors who migrated to Scotland in the Middle Ages.

Do mo chara a d'fhág nanny Albanach-Éireannach Elisabeth Wilkie agus chuig mo shinsir i bhfad i gcéin a chuaigh ar imirce go hAlbain sna Meánaoiseanna.

Dans la mythologie celte et nordique, les silkies, selkies ou selchies désignent le peuple des hommes-phoques, capables de changer de phoque en humain en se dépouillant de leur fourrure. Il s'agit souvent d'êtres féminins qui vont s'unir aux hommes qui leur ont volé ou caché leur peau.

En navigant et en campant pendant des mois d'affilée sur les côtes du Labrador, côtoyant tous les jours des phoques gris, des phoques communs et des petits rorquals, j'ai souvent rêvé d'êtres mi-hommes mi-phoques qui nageaient à côté de moi, parfois même vêtus d'une veste d'officier de marine avec des galons, et qui conversaient avec moi. C'est que vivant constamment entre la mer et la terre, j'étais devenu moi-même mi-homme, mi-phoque.

Selchie Warrior est le pseudonyme d'un anthropologue écossais génial dont j'ai reproduit plusieurs fois sur ce blog cette réflexion très importante et profonde:

Both Aymara and Mäori refer to the past as the time before us and the future as the time behind us.

In Mäori, the phrase i ngā wā o mua, literally the time before us refers to the idea that tikanga, correct traditions [from tika, correct] are handed to us from the past as part of an unbroken chain which, if we take the time to follow it, will lead us all the way back to the creation. The past is not a mystery, it is something that we can see, whereas the future, which is yet to come, is unpredictable, and as hard to see as something behind us.  

In Aymara, qhipa pacha translates as behind time, which to speakers of English seems like the past, but which to the Aymara translates as the future, whereas nayra pacha, front time, refers to the past. In Aymara this understanding of time has even affected the body language of its speakers - Aymara speakers will often gesture forwards when talking about the back and point backwards when talking about the future.

The Selchie Warrior http://selchieproductions.tumblr.com/post/9975207172/both-aymara-and-m%C3%A4ori-refer-to-the-past-as-the

Pierre-Olivier Combelles

2007 Faroese stamp depicting a selkie (Source: Wiipedia)

[Chorus]
In Norway, there sits a maid
By lou, my baby, she begins
Little know I my child's father
Or if land or sea he's livin' in

Then there arose at her bed feet
And a grumbly guest
I'm sure it was he
Saying here am I thy child's father
Although that I am not comely

I am a man upon the land
I am a selchie in the sea
And when I am in my own country
My dwellin' is in Shule Skerry
And he hath taken a purse of gold
He hath put it upon her knee
Saying give to me my little wee son
And take thee up thy nurse's fee

And it shall come to pass
On a summer day
When the sun shines hot
On every stone
That I shall take my little wee son
And I'll teach him for to swim in the foam
And you will marry a gunner good
And a proud good gunner I'm sure he'll bev And he'll go out on a May morning
And he'll kill both my wee son and me

And lo, she did marry a gunner good
And a proud good gunner I'm sure it was he
And the very first shot that ere he did shoot
He killed the son and the great selchie

[Chorus]