What Is The Basis In Fact For The Legends Of The Selkies???, --- By Celtic Rings...

Shrouded in Mystery

There is a debate about the origin of the legends surrounding selkies. There are suggestions that long ago, Spaniards had shipwrecked and washed ashore and that their dark hair reminded the people of seals. Another story says that seal people are really Finns that travel in kayaks and wear furs. Some people have said that selkies are fallen angels that dropped into the sea and transformed.

There is even a suggestion that after Christianity swept through the lands, the seal people were meant to represent those in purgatory, caught between two worlds. One of the most popular theories is that they were formed from the souls of drowned people who were granted one night each year to return to their human form and dance upon the shore of the sea.

Selkie Speculation

It is widely speculated that, like many myths from all cultures, tales of selkies were created as a way to explain the unexplainable. There were children sometimes born with webbed fingers and toes, faces resembling that of a seal, and sometimes, scaly skin that smelled fishy. Today, there are scientific names for all of the above. Webbed toes is a hereditary condition called syndactyly, seal faces result from the rare medical phenomenon, anencephaly, and scaly skin probably existed from icthyosis, a genetic skin disorder.

Stories of the seal people could also have been imagined as ways to account for women that did not fit in with the rest of society.

Stories of the seal people could also have been imagined as ways to account for women that did not seem to fit in with the rest of society. They share similarities with sirens, mermaids and mermen in other cultures. However, for people that lived on the edges of the seas and depended on the water and its gifts for survival, it seems natural for them to have believed legends of beautiful, mysterious creatures that shed their shiny seal coats to become humans for a night of dancing under the moon.

The sea is unpredictable, just like life had been for the ancient Celts. It is wild and tempestuous, but also can be calm, bountiful, and life giving. The seal people represent all that is gentle and loving about the vast waters, but they are also shape changers and can disappear without warning, making them the perfect characters to star in the romantic tragedies of folklore.