Episode 453 - Skule Skerry

I immediately thought of The Secret of Roan Inish when I was listening to this episode. I have not seen it in years, but remember it was really sweet. Maybe I will break it out again to watch between Stranger Things episodes.

Speaking of walruses, you should cover Gahan Wilson’s The Sea Was Wet as Wet Can Be. https://www.lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/wilson/index.html

Ben Gilbert

I've always been of the opinion that stories of silkies and other such things were ways to explain away getting pregnant at an "inconvenient" time. Just like "goblins swapped my baby" probably was a way to explain a deformed or infirm baby. Human nature being human nature and all.

Chad, you almost killed me! I was lifting weights when you got to the part about were-walruses and I almost turned myself into a were-pancake.

I have a similar story. When visiting some friends in South Africa we were driving down the coast when we saw a beautiful lighthouse. The keeper there had a Jack Russel Terrier missing an eye, an ear, and a good half of its face. She was happy as could be and twice as friendly, but the lighthouse keeper said the wound was from a seal she’d approached when she was two. Now to be fair I don’t think the myth of the selfie is usually intended to be scary. Usually they are a woman who, captured by a man who steals the seal skin she uses to transform, eventually leaves the man alone with their children and returns to the sea. It’s more a sad cautionary tale about hooking up with unfaithful women (and all the questionable ethics involved with forcing someone into marriage) than a horror tale. The excellent movie Song of the Sea has selkies as a main story element, and is a beautiful animated film I highly recommend.

Kit Ainslie

And derives from the Norse "mickle" which also has an Old English cognate (although in Old English I think it has connotations of power rather than just size). For example, Constantinople was Miklagard to the Vikings and Micklegarth to the Anglo-Saxons. The Big City indeed.

While I agree that seals seem like roly-poly friendly creatures when you see them on land, a few stories I heard when taking a wildlife first aid course made me reassess that opinion. The instructor spent plenty of time describing the risk of approaching or touching seals, particularly the ability of contracting "Seal Finger" from a bite. Basically, if you get bitten by a seal, you're supposed to go to an emergency room and tell them right away so they can give you very strong antibiotics. It's not just your fingers they can bite either, as the instructor shared a story of a diver that tried to help a seal only to get bitten on the top of his face, which severed enough tissue that "his face fell down his skull". Maybe he just really really didn't want us to try and help seals. But yeah, if you want to see them in a different light there are enough underwater photos and videos of them chomping things to make me take his warnings to heart.

Bad movie, fantastic Fleetwood Mac song.

Mandy Reznor (She_It)

I was certain the movie Tusk was going to be brought up. Still, probably for the best.

Honestly, at that point the deep diving, dark vision, and tolerance of arctic temperatures is just a bonus.

Mandy Reznor (She_It)

Man sees a seal and faints. Biggest anticlimax since the last episode of GoT. Still, the podcast was fun and you guys make me laugh. Great you are still enjoying yourselves after all this time. Keep up the good work of cheering up this grumpy old Scot.

Why would anyone choose to be a human if they could be a seal? Seals have way more fun and the possibility of being eaten by a killer whale would be worth it to never have to wear pants again. My sister-in-law is a surfer and she tells me that seals are adorable sea puppies right up until one swims up next to you and opens its mouth wide. Apparently they have terrifying teeth.

I've been racking my brain (but alas to no avail as brain has been of no help whatsoever) to remember a story that I could have sworn was covered here but it would have been a while ago. But maybe it was Pseudopod or No Sleep or I actually read it or (as is often the case) dreamt it. It was a very romantic/gothic tale about Selkies I think set in Scotland somewhere. The menfolk (only female Selkies) capturing a wife through stealing their seal skin being a village tradition going back ages and the newcomer or lost traveller protagonist wandering in and ignorantly falling in love with a maiden who wants to be set free. The Selkies are unable to tell him what's up because that's part of the curse when their seal skin gets stolen. I think it ended tragically or the maiden got away with the protagonist suffering a broken heart. Is this ringing any bells? Been driving me nuts or more so than usual since listening to this latest episode. But like I said, it could just be a dream I had. It happens.

Also, great to hear a Scottish reader for this one! More of this sort of thing. And, I'm sure you're already aware of this, but muckle is just Scots for big, so it's the big black selkie!

Derek Robertson

As others have mentioned, Selkies are more fairy than werewolf in their transformation. The tales of them, are usually of locals marrying them (I've seen both male and female Selkies in various tellings). The end point us usually the Selkies returning to the sea, and usually taking any children with them. To me they are more tales of losing people to the sea, which would be a common fear of folks on these islands, who rely on the sea for their living, but are fully aware of the dangers that it holds. Also, the Post offices of these islands usually were the only government building on the island, and usually doubled as the generals store, as well as a place for visitors to stay, on the rare occurence that they didn't know someone on the island to stay with. They were also built at the boat landing, so would be the first place visitors would come to, and the centre of the community in some ways.

Derek Robertson

A non-rural version of this happened to me the other day. I had read my son his bedtime stories and was lying next to him until he fell asleep. The lights were all off except for the LED on the baby monitor. I must have drifted off for a minute and opened my eyes to see a shadow like a hunched, shrouded figure on the ceiling directly above me. After a moment of abject, sphincter-clenching fear I realised that it was the shadow of the baby monitor antenna cast by the aforementioned LED. I shifted the position of the monitor to avoid freaky shadows and went to change my pants.

On the topic of seeing something convincing that you identify as terrifying, here's this from my youth. I grew up on a dairy farm, all dark barns with creepy spaces. When I was about eight or nine I was walking through one sometime after sunset. I walked past an open side room that had a back door, which was also open, framing an extremely bright moon. I did a quick double-take as something with a goat-like head and horns stood up, silhouetted by the moon . I knew it wasn't a cow, calf, or bull, but that wasn't the worst part. As I said, it *stood up*. Like a person. Straight up, taller than me, head where man's should be on a set of shoulders, all framed in black with the moon behind it. I didn't know how to react. I didn't scream or run. It was just so alien, disconcerting and stereotypically demonic that I didn't know *what* to do. So I stood there and stared. Yeah, turns out it was a goat that I didn't know my cousins had bought. I had no idea it was on the farm, let alone tied up in this little open-air alcove. It had leveraged itself up on a tall box, pushing it's head and shoulders into a pretty convincing black outline of a devil standing up and towering over me. Also, I'm pretty sure I pooped myself a little.

"The Secret of Roan Inish" is a movie about Selkies (It's a piece of magic). In it a Selkie removes her seal skin and suns herself on a rock. A man sees her and steals her seal skin which gives him dominion over her. He marries her and the result is a family with a stronger than usual ties to the island and the seals that live around it. I saw a "behind the scenes" short about the making of it. The writers or producers (forgive me, it's been an age) thought the legend of the Selkie arose in part from guilt. The people on the islands could see from direct observation that the seals were beautiful and intelligent creatures, but they depended on their slaughter to survive. It's a hard truth they had to make peace with in one way or another.

Ironically what the mapmakers were commenting on was a tiny convent on another nearby island and its /notoriously/ stern abbess who very much frowned on all the sailors’ sexy mischief.

Bret Kramer

These days it’s empty except for Seal. The singer. I expect it’s a bit lonely but the acoustics must be sweet. Kind of like ... oh I don’t know ... a kiss from a rose?

Yeah, but the only “certain” warning I have ever gotten from the townspeople was some local in a grocery store telling me not to buy homogenized milk because something something chemicals. I drank the milk and have yet to encounter gibbering horrors.

Super excited for some Alice B. Sheldon goodness!

As a younger man, I hit that Abyss nearly every weekend. There were plenty of birds - if you know what I mean. Birds of prey - if you know what I mean. And the music was thumpin'. I'd recommend you get more info about the Abyss, but you should be careful if you do. You look into the Abyss, after all, and - well you know what I mean.

I always thought rule number one was get a dog or better dogs and trust them (though constantly replacing them may be necessary depending on the frequency of monster attacks)

“Rule #1: listen to the townspeople.” I would LOVE to hear a full list of these rules as determined by the stories covered on the show!

Georgia Abrams

Guys, guys, selkies are a type of fairy. I'm sure christian propaganda later reworked them as a spooky demon, but they're Fae. Which isn't really surprising--shapechanging is a common motif among fairies, (pucas, kelpies, grimalkins, etc. etc.) as is the whole "seductive woman luring you to ruin" thing. (Kelpies, mermaids, the Leanan Sidhe, etc. etc.) Now, from what I remember in the original legends, selkies generally AREN'T portrayed as threatening per se. I think the stories tend to focus more on the fact that selkies need their sealskins to transform, and any man that can steal that skin from the selkie that owns it gains power over her--which is often done to force a selkie into marriage. (A direct inverse to the mermaid's behavior, really.) But, again, as Fae they were spooky non-christian supernatural creatures, so I'm not surprised they ended up being reimagined as demons. Also, yes! "The Screwfly Solution!" That story is fantastic, and it's in a more modern time period than most of the stories you guys are used to covering. I can't wait!

Mandy Reznor (She_It)