Original Story: Ithel and Wir

 I have always loved Selkies, but many of the core stories of the Selkie focus on the reclaiming of power after abuse and captivity. While this is an important theme to consider, I also wanted a Happy Ever After for a Selkie and their partner, and was moved to write this to fill that niche in my own soul.

Ithel and Wir

By Lord Gavin Kent, AS LV, AD 2021

gavinkent@gmail.com

In the time before my grandsire’s forebears tilled these lands, when the kings of Erin claimed the shores to the South and West it was that Ithel plied the waves in his curroch in search of fish.

Those days, the sea bore such riches as the most avaricious could desire, pouring forth into net and spear to feed the families of the seaside, and Ithel among them was great with the skill.

But a wife had Ithel none. Nay, nor kin there about neither. No son, nor daughter laughed in his home, and his Da had been lost five years to the storms of midwinter, and so Ithel fished alone.

Early mornings he would paddle along the rocks and cast his nets, and late evenings he would return and make good trade to those in the village. And tho none shared his table, Ithel was mean to nobody and never cheated a soul. 

One morn, when the mist hung soft on the air, Ithel slipped along the islets of the western coast and beheld a sight never before known to him.

A maiden - skin the white of ocean foam, hair as shining black as seaweed, in form as lithe as a fish and lovely to behold - sat up a rock, gazing toward the shore.

In a language unknown to Ithel she sang, and her voice made his heart ache with his loneliness.

From stories long told, Ithel know that nearby would lie the sealskin robe of the Selkie maiden, and any man who owned such would have the creature in it’s sway. And Ithel sought stealthily among the rocks to seaward until he found what he sought.

Some time later, the selkie maid returned to slip within her cloak of sealskin, and found not all was as she had left it. Cautiously she crept upon the rock where she had hid her magic, and there beheld Ithel’s work.

For, lying upon the skin, rich with sweet flesh… were three fine fat cod, arranged so in a neat line.

Swiftly the maid took up her robe, and in her seal form she swept away.

… but not before eating well of the offered fish.

Spring passed into summer, and the maid selkie returned often to her rock to gaze upon the meadows of land and bask in the sun. And some days when she returned to her skin, always hidden in a new spot, there would be things left there.

Fish. And Cockles. Shells carved into small, intricate shapes. A fine comb made of bone that she pulled slowly through her long hair.

And then, one day. A flower.

It was colors the maid, whose name was Wir, had no names for, and she marveled and spun it in her fine fingers.

So lost was she in the bloom that Ithel, where he sat some yards hence in his curroch, had to cough for the maid to notice him. Wir made to flee, but Ithel made no move at all, save to bow his head gently, and she stopped.

When they spoke, it was some work to make their words known to each other, as their tongues were clumsy and their speech queer to the other’s ears besides.

“Why took you not my hide?” she asked of him.

“No man’s goods would I take by force or trick, nor thief would I be” he replied. “No, nor any maiden would I bind from her freedom save by her own will and joy.”

So the summer passed into autumn, and Ithel paid court to Wir. And as the harvest festivals came to pass it was that Ithel went to sea alone… but did not return so.

Their days were merry, and their nights snug, and as the first snows of winter covered Ithel’s little cottage, the flowers bloomed within.

So they were married, and Ithel and Wir had three sons and four daughters too, and their joy filled the house to bursting.

When grown were the children, and gone to their own, Wir was seen less often in the village. But Ithel, tho his beard grew white and his hands gnarled, went to sea each day accompanied by a seal who reveled in the waves. And still, Ithel’s nets were full.

The years passed, and Wir grew older, but not so swiftly as her love, and the day came when he could no longer rise and go to the shore, and his sons and daughters, and their daughters and sons gathered at his side.

But Wir was not among them.

They spoke his deeds, and held Ithel’s hands, and they wept as he slipped from them to the very edge of the land of shadows… when their mother returned, bearing an armful of hides to her love’s bedside.

“Help me wrap and carry him” she said, and they did so, and brought him to the shore where Wir lay in him the curroch, and then kissed the children each in turn, and pushed the boat off, and paddled it out to sea under all of nature’s infinite jewels.

Never more were Ithel or Wir seen. But their sons and daughters, and theirs in turn were ever aware of the warm brown eyes of two seals, joyous together, who lived in those waters and watched them with love and pride for many, many years.