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The People of the Sea: A Journey in Search of the Seal Legend
The author, a Scotsman raised in a fishing village, chases after the enduring myth that seals were once human and occasionally resume human form.
210 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1954
42 people are currently reading
1096 people want to read
About the author
David Thomson
11 books10 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
David Thomson (1914 – 1988) was a writer and BBC radio producer. He was born in British colonial India to Scottish parents. As a child, he lived in Scotland, as well as in Derbyshire and London, where he attended University College School.
From 1943 to 1969 Thomson worked for the BBC as a writer and producer of radio documentaries. Many of these programs, which covered a range of topics in natural history of peoples and places also found a place in his written work, for example The People of the Sea (1954), on the lore and life of the grey seal in the coastal rural communities of Ireland and Scotland. In 1953-4 he was seconded to UNESCO to produce radio programs in France, Liberia and Turkey.
Among his most notable works are three moving memoirs: Woodbrook (1974), reflecting a ten-year period from 1932 when he visited Ireland regularly, tutoring Phoebe Kirkwood; In Camden Town (1983), describing his life and neighbors in London in the 1950s and 60's; and Nairn in Darkness and Light (1987), where he revisits his childhood years spent in his mother's home in Scotland.
David Thomson (1914 – 1988) was a writer and BBC radio producer. He was born in British colonial India to Scottish parents. As a child, he lived in Scotland, as well as in Derbyshire and London, where he attended University College School.
From 1943 to 1969 Thomson worked for the BBC as a writer and producer of radio documentaries. Many of these programs, which covered a range of topics in natural history of peoples and places also found a place in his written work, for example The People of the Sea (1954), on the lore and life of the grey seal in the coastal rural communities of Ireland and Scotland. In 1953-4 he was seconded to UNESCO to produce radio programs in France, Liberia and Turkey.
Among his most notable works are three moving memoirs: Woodbrook (1974), reflecting a ten-year period from 1932 when he visited Ireland regularly, tutoring Phoebe Kirkwood; In Camden Town (1983), describing his life and neighbors in London in the 1950s and 60's; and Nairn in Darkness and Light (1987), where he revisits his childhood years spent in his mother's home in Scotland.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
January 12, 2013
Of all the houses I remember with love the house called Tigh na Rosen is the sweetest smelling and the brightest begins Thomson's account of his lifelong fascination with seal lore.
I don't know why it begins this way; the house is of little importance to the remainder of the book and is only referred to once or twice in passing. Perhaps this is a mental association on the author's part, the place he lived when he first became interested in selchies, starting with his mother's cousin La's reminisces of a chidhood neighbor lady who was suspected of being a seal. That wouldn't be out of character, for this is certainly a highly personal account, wandering where the author wills and feeling no responsibility to conform to any scholarly principles or narrative order.
Or perhaps Thomson is setting the reader up, lulling you with childhood memories and pretty houses and innocent games at pretty little Patsy's birthday party so he can kick the feet out from under you in the next scene. The narrator (presumably the author as a small boy, although he never absolutely states this) slips away from the party to explore alone. He wants to investigate the fisherman's bothy while it's uninhabited. He enters and in the dark stumbles over the body of a mutilated woman, moaning in pain. David vomits from the trauma and climbs onto a table, where he huddles until a fisherman finds him and soothes him by telling him the victim was a selchie, not a human woman. This seems to make everything just dandy for the little boy, who has a hearty snack and listens to a story about more seal-killing.
Like many of the stories Thomson hears throughout the book, this one presents selchies as, if not the same as humans, possessed of equal intelligence and emotion. In their human forms, their appearance is indistinguishable from that of regular humans. They feel the same love and grief and pity that we feel, and sometimes help the needy or save lost children from harm And these are the assertions of the people who kill them, the people who can describe the heartbroken weeping of a seal mother for her murdered baby and the sorrow in her eyes as the same as a woman's, and explain in the next breath, "Ye'd no soon stun your seal than ye'd set to and skin him, ye understand, because if ye left him there he might come to life and go back into the sea, while ye turned round." I guess life is tough and sometimes you really need that seal blubber. And people suck.
Thomson himself makes few judgements and speaks only enough to keep the stories coming (except for that one bit where's checking out the hot girl who really wants a gas stove). His prose style is lovely without overshadowing the individual voices of the people he interviews. I would recommend this to anyone with an interest and folklore and not too much sensitivity to accounts of animal cruelty and grinding poverty and rape and abuse and possibly letting retarded kids drown.
I don't know why it begins this way; the house is of little importance to the remainder of the book and is only referred to once or twice in passing. Perhaps this is a mental association on the author's part, the place he lived when he first became interested in selchies, starting with his mother's cousin La's reminisces of a chidhood neighbor lady who was suspected of being a seal. That wouldn't be out of character, for this is certainly a highly personal account, wandering where the author wills and feeling no responsibility to conform to any scholarly principles or narrative order.
Or perhaps Thomson is setting the reader up, lulling you with childhood memories and pretty houses and innocent games at pretty little Patsy's birthday party so he can kick the feet out from under you in the next scene. The narrator (presumably the author as a small boy, although he never absolutely states this) slips away from the party to explore alone. He wants to investigate the fisherman's bothy while it's uninhabited. He enters and in the dark stumbles over the body of a mutilated woman, moaning in pain. David vomits from the trauma and climbs onto a table, where he huddles until a fisherman finds him and soothes him by telling him the victim was a selchie, not a human woman. This seems to make everything just dandy for the little boy, who has a hearty snack and listens to a story about more seal-killing.
Like many of the stories Thomson hears throughout the book, this one presents selchies as, if not the same as humans, possessed of equal intelligence and emotion. In their human forms, their appearance is indistinguishable from that of regular humans. They feel the same love and grief and pity that we feel, and sometimes help the needy or save lost children from harm And these are the assertions of the people who kill them, the people who can describe the heartbroken weeping of a seal mother for her murdered baby and the sorrow in her eyes as the same as a woman's, and explain in the next breath, "Ye'd no soon stun your seal than ye'd set to and skin him, ye understand, because if ye left him there he might come to life and go back into the sea, while ye turned round." I guess life is tough and sometimes you really need that seal blubber. And people suck.
Thomson himself makes few judgements and speaks only enough to keep the stories coming (except for that one bit where's checking out the hot girl who really wants a gas stove). His prose style is lovely without overshadowing the individual voices of the people he interviews. I would recommend this to anyone with an interest and folklore and not too much sensitivity to accounts of animal cruelty and grinding poverty and rape and abuse and possibly letting retarded kids drown.
August 6, 2014
Here is Seamus Heany's introduction quoting Wordsworth's definition of a poet to apply it to David Thomson
In addition to an off-putting introduction (that's to say it put me off Wordsworth a lot, Heany a little, and this book not at all), there is also a pointless afterword explaining the truth-status of Thomson's text, which is, as was obvious, unimportant. All this rationalising and gaudy (and sexist) wrapping paper only goes to emphasise the degraded status of oral history and the obstacles facing its *scription. If anyone is to be enticed into reading, this humble stuff must have the name of a great poet, it must be packaged with academic explanations and endorsements, and those creatures, women, who only care about plot and relateable characters, ought to be well warned off.
I am saying all this because the text itself leaves me near speechless. Like the tellers of tales who talk in these pages, I am minded to hold my tongue until I have something worthy to say at the fireside, where I feel I am still sitting, with the sea rolling in my heart and the mournful songs of the seals in my ears. When I finished this book, I dreamed vividly of my family in strange houses and strange landscapes and awoke feeling I had drunk some restorative potion.
When I first began the book I felt I was hearing a voice apart, an uncolonised voice, but that is a wildly idealistic misperception I suppose: Thomson's voice might perhaps be called postcolonial (critically oriented to colonialism) seeking the uncolonised memory still speakable in lives actively and unevenly colonised. For instance, Christianity is entrenched, but its grim binary-bound worldview is strongly inflected by a world of fairy folk, speaking creatures, strange blessings. The coercive teaching of English is remembered with the shadow of resistence. These topics are prominent - I'm not imposing my preoccupation! - but come up incidentally; Thomson never adopts a studious voice, an outside voice. His telling has no edge; it is tales within tales, songs within shells within rockpools within memories within women that are all of them story. The submerged listener invites the reader in and under too. This is a Scots-Irish 1001 Nights of the seal. I will carry it on my chest.
a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankindI may as well give up then! This made me laugh and feel extra grateful for Aubrey's new group.
In addition to an off-putting introduction (that's to say it put me off Wordsworth a lot, Heany a little, and this book not at all), there is also a pointless afterword explaining the truth-status of Thomson's text, which is, as was obvious, unimportant. All this rationalising and gaudy (and sexist) wrapping paper only goes to emphasise the degraded status of oral history and the obstacles facing its *scription. If anyone is to be enticed into reading, this humble stuff must have the name of a great poet, it must be packaged with academic explanations and endorsements, and those creatures, women, who only care about plot and relateable characters, ought to be well warned off.
I am saying all this because the text itself leaves me near speechless. Like the tellers of tales who talk in these pages, I am minded to hold my tongue until I have something worthy to say at the fireside, where I feel I am still sitting, with the sea rolling in my heart and the mournful songs of the seals in my ears. When I finished this book, I dreamed vividly of my family in strange houses and strange landscapes and awoke feeling I had drunk some restorative potion.
When I first began the book I felt I was hearing a voice apart, an uncolonised voice, but that is a wildly idealistic misperception I suppose: Thomson's voice might perhaps be called postcolonial (critically oriented to colonialism) seeking the uncolonised memory still speakable in lives actively and unevenly colonised. For instance, Christianity is entrenched, but its grim binary-bound worldview is strongly inflected by a world of fairy folk, speaking creatures, strange blessings. The coercive teaching of English is remembered with the shadow of resistence. These topics are prominent - I'm not imposing my preoccupation! - but come up incidentally; Thomson never adopts a studious voice, an outside voice. His telling has no edge; it is tales within tales, songs within shells within rockpools within memories within women that are all of them story. The submerged listener invites the reader in and under too. This is a Scots-Irish 1001 Nights of the seal. I will carry it on my chest.
March 20, 2012
This book is many things: oral history, travelogue, folklore, poetry, treasure. It's the reassuringly salty tang of the seaside air, a glimpse of glossy eyes in the water, finding humanity in nature and vice versa. It's a product of a particular place, or set of places, and a time that I worry would otherwise be lost to us:
Seamus Heaney notes in the introduction that The People of the Sea, first published in 1954, "was written at a great moment in the history of radio, during the 1940s and 1950s, when the BBC employed poets and writers to record and collect oral material and — most important — gave them permission to re-create it in a new artistic form." The cover of my copy identifies this as a journey in search of the seal legend, but it, they, we are just the beginning.
I find it difficult to do justice to the voices, the characters Thomson has kept alive, and I type "character" deliberately, with the best, least belittling sense of the word in mind: these people are all so vivid and memorable, I couldn't help reading aloud in my mind hoping to capture the rhythm, the timbre, the richness of both the language and the stories themselves. Some are familiar, featuring Coneelys and stolen skins and longing above all else. The Secret of Roan Inish, a film I first watched and loved as a teenager, remains a favorite for taking the legends at their word and allowing the tales to become not just history, but heritage. In that movie, like this book, seals are a kind of mirror. A child left behind in a cave is nursed and cared for by a flippered matron; another, having wandered with his dog to a rocky outcrop from which he can't escape, finds rescue in the desperate cries of a seal who alerts his mother with her astonishingly human-like wail. Seal-killers, seeking skins and fat, find themselves cursed. Seals become men become limpid-eyed saviors, offering a ride to safe havens or underwater palaces to aid their injured relatives. They prevent the deaths of five brothers who are lost at sea as their family and friends embark on a marathon wake in their honor:
I love this realization — the way Thomson captures the essence of the moment without injecting himself into it in a disruptive way. He goes from shore to ferry to island asking questions about seals but letting the answers he receives speak for themselves. There is no unnecessary guidance or sentimentality, no hand-holding or moralizing, and reading The People of the Sea is a more intimate and emotional experience as a result. He returns to the same place multiple times, and the people who had welcomed him as a stranger before now embrace him as an old friend, sharing charms, trinkets and wisdom. ("It is right to throw some object at a mermaid, and if she does not sink, you are safe. A knife is a very good object to throw at a mermaid.") Most of all, he embodies respect: I liked and admired this man who cared enough for seals to chase after their tales.
The People of the Sea contains nine meandering chapters that take what a traveler might describe as the scenic route, ending on the perfect note with a musical epilogue. I can think of no better way to convince you to follow in Thomson's footsteps, too, than by adding to the quotes above this passage from Marjory Kennedy-Fraser's From the Hebrides (1925):
Mrs. Charleson clicked her tongue. "The old people were full o' superstitions," she said.
"Maybe," said Gilbert.
"And maybe superstition is right," said his father.
"Well," said Gilbert, "I think maybe the old people saw what we canna see. There no doubt, Mother, that your mother saw things. Now if ye think o' the trows, the little people — I believe there were some who could see them. And there's no doubt the little people were in Shetland at one time. Ye can see the houses they lived in down at Jarlshof where the excavations are and the doors are only so high." He held his hand by his knee. "So maybe the people one time had the power to see what's hidden from us. In the hills there's something to be seen, I'm sure o' that. And on the sea."
"We believe what we believe," said his father, getting up and moving to the door. "And there's no way to ken is it right or wrong."
Seamus Heaney notes in the introduction that The People of the Sea, first published in 1954, "was written at a great moment in the history of radio, during the 1940s and 1950s, when the BBC employed poets and writers to record and collect oral material and — most important — gave them permission to re-create it in a new artistic form." The cover of my copy identifies this as a journey in search of the seal legend, but it, they, we are just the beginning.
I find it difficult to do justice to the voices, the characters Thomson has kept alive, and I type "character" deliberately, with the best, least belittling sense of the word in mind: these people are all so vivid and memorable, I couldn't help reading aloud in my mind hoping to capture the rhythm, the timbre, the richness of both the language and the stories themselves. Some are familiar, featuring Coneelys and stolen skins and longing above all else. The Secret of Roan Inish, a film I first watched and loved as a teenager, remains a favorite for taking the legends at their word and allowing the tales to become not just history, but heritage. In that movie, like this book, seals are a kind of mirror. A child left behind in a cave is nursed and cared for by a flippered matron; another, having wandered with his dog to a rocky outcrop from which he can't escape, finds rescue in the desperate cries of a seal who alerts his mother with her astonishingly human-like wail. Seal-killers, seeking skins and fat, find themselves cursed. Seals become men become limpid-eyed saviors, offering a ride to safe havens or underwater palaces to aid their injured relatives. They prevent the deaths of five brothers who are lost at sea as their family and friends embark on a marathon wake in their honor:
"And then there was knocking on the door and no man had courage enough to open it, but when one did there stood the five Cregan men before him and spoke to him. But it was a long time before the people would believe they were alive. Now the first thing they told the company was how they were saved by that seal."
"It was a miracle," said the slow voice, and I was surprised to find that every man in the room, except me, knew exactly what had happened but was eager to hear it again. As it was the ferryman's turn to tell it, they waited after every interruption for him to go on in his own way.
I love this realization — the way Thomson captures the essence of the moment without injecting himself into it in a disruptive way. He goes from shore to ferry to island asking questions about seals but letting the answers he receives speak for themselves. There is no unnecessary guidance or sentimentality, no hand-holding or moralizing, and reading The People of the Sea is a more intimate and emotional experience as a result. He returns to the same place multiple times, and the people who had welcomed him as a stranger before now embrace him as an old friend, sharing charms, trinkets and wisdom. ("It is right to throw some object at a mermaid, and if she does not sink, you are safe. A knife is a very good object to throw at a mermaid.") Most of all, he embodies respect: I liked and admired this man who cared enough for seals to chase after their tales.
The People of the Sea contains nine meandering chapters that take what a traveler might describe as the scenic route, ending on the perfect note with a musical epilogue. I can think of no better way to convince you to follow in Thomson's footsteps, too, than by adding to the quotes above this passage from Marjory Kennedy-Fraser's From the Hebrides (1925):
We were some little distance from the water's edge, parallel with which out in the sea, ran a long line of skerries, reefs that are covered at high tide. On the skerries were stretched, also basking in the sunlight, innumerable great grey seals, seals that visit these isles only at long intervals. My friends, great enthusiasts for Hebridean songs, who use their own string instrument arrangements of them for their students, said to me: 'Try singing "The Sealwoman's Sea-joy" to the seals themselves.' I raised myself on my elbow — I was too lazily happy at the moment to stand erect — and, with the most carrying tone I could summon, sang the first phrase of the song. Instantly the response began at the southern end of the reef, and a perfect fusillade of single answering tones came from seal after seal, travelling rapidly northward, until at the further end of the reef it ceased. Then, after a moment of intense silence, a beautiful solo voice sang...
The voice was quite human in character but much greater in volume than any mezzo-soprano I have ever heard.
Is the song I sang really a seal song, and did the Isles folk learn it from the seals? I noted it many years ago from an old Uist woman. Did the seals mistake me for one of themselves, and had the phrase I sang a meaning for them, and did they instantly grasp it and answer it?
May 31, 2021
I have a special fondness for collectors of folklore who gathered just before their subjects nearly went out of existence. This book exactly fits that scenario. The writing is wonderful. Thompson begins the book with several stories from his own childhood in northern Scotland that show an early fascination with the seals. Later, as an adult, he travelled around the coastal areas of Ireland and Scotland talking with fishermen, farmers, and their families asking to be told stories of the selchies (seals). He must have had a real talent for making these people who were already nearly anachronisms in the modern world, open up and tell him what had been passed down to them. Sometimes an embarrassed wife would try to remind everyone that they were silly old stories and not true.
The book was published in the early 1950s but these people are never made to look foolish or backward. They certainly come off as timeless or from days long gone.
The title The People of the Sea is very apt. Human like qualities are attributed to the seals and the seals live in a fluid world, interacting with people on sea and land. Humans recognize the sea as our place of origin and seals become special, magical intermediaries.
The book was published in the early 1950s but these people are never made to look foolish or backward. They certainly come off as timeless or from days long gone.
The title The People of the Sea is very apt. Human like qualities are attributed to the seals and the seals live in a fluid world, interacting with people on sea and land. Humans recognize the sea as our place of origin and seals become special, magical intermediaries.
February 17, 2023
This is a strange little book, part reminiscence and part a collection of folklore tales regarding seals and selkie legends. The result is a bit of an anomaly, but compelling and beautifully written. The details about everyday life amongst the people on various remote islands is fascinating.
If you are interested in selkie/seal legends and surrounding folklore doubtless you would find this slim volume of interest.
If you are interested in selkie/seal legends and surrounding folklore doubtless you would find this slim volume of interest.
April 17, 2020
"So maybe people one time had the power to see what's hidden from us. In the hills there's something to be seen, I'm sure o' that. And on the sea."
"We believe what we believe [...] And there's no way to ken is it right or wrong."
This is one of the most unique, puzzling, and beautiful books I've ever read. My husband finds my newfound interest selchies ('seal folk' of the Celtic Isles) somewhat amusing. David Thomson also had a hard time describing his deep interest in the folklore around the grey seals - "I don't think of stories that way," he said, "as lies or truth. I like to hear them; that's all."
Selchie stories are largely sad, violent, and absurd. Some say the grey seals are fallen angels. Some say they're the souls of drowned sailors. There are stories of selchie kings and their human children. There are many stories of beautiful selchie women who find their seal skin and return to the sea but continue to leave fish for their human children and husband on the shore.
This book is like a memory you can't place. It has the rhythms of a way of life all but lost. As much a collection of selchie tales as a record of the Isle folk who told them. These stories can only be understood and found in societies that live so closely to the Earth. The Sea and it's inhabitants - the very human eyes of the seals - haunted fishermen for generations. It was seen as bad luck to save a drowning man. God - the Sea - had claimed him. You didn't interfere with the will of the Sea.
Selchies represent a bridge between men and the ocean - animals of both land and water... Animals that seemed to mourn their children, to love their mates. The selchie became a conduit for the fears and dreams of men. Thomson takes us into a lost world - an Ireland filled with travelling story tellers and old "Black Houses." An Ireland where every action had a prayer - a prayer for raking the fire in the evening, etc. An Ireland where myths and memory merged - who could say what was true and what wasn't? There is a sense that perhaps the world is changing - the magic is leaving - but there was a time, not so distant, when these strange and magical things truly did happen.
Near the end, when Thompson recounts some of the old selchie songs, he describes how the seals seemed to know the old Gaelic melodies - how they even answered and finished the ballads of singers on the beach. Did the old songs come from the seals? Did the fishermen perhaps learn their songs from the selchies? But now the songs are mostly lost. There is no back and forth between men and seals, between men and the sea. The language - the stories - are being lost.
At once sad and beautiful. Again, a strange, imaginative book, unlike anything I've read before.
"We believe what we believe [...] And there's no way to ken is it right or wrong."
This is one of the most unique, puzzling, and beautiful books I've ever read. My husband finds my newfound interest selchies ('seal folk' of the Celtic Isles) somewhat amusing. David Thomson also had a hard time describing his deep interest in the folklore around the grey seals - "I don't think of stories that way," he said, "as lies or truth. I like to hear them; that's all."
Selchie stories are largely sad, violent, and absurd. Some say the grey seals are fallen angels. Some say they're the souls of drowned sailors. There are stories of selchie kings and their human children. There are many stories of beautiful selchie women who find their seal skin and return to the sea but continue to leave fish for their human children and husband on the shore.
This book is like a memory you can't place. It has the rhythms of a way of life all but lost. As much a collection of selchie tales as a record of the Isle folk who told them. These stories can only be understood and found in societies that live so closely to the Earth. The Sea and it's inhabitants - the very human eyes of the seals - haunted fishermen for generations. It was seen as bad luck to save a drowning man. God - the Sea - had claimed him. You didn't interfere with the will of the Sea.
Selchies represent a bridge between men and the ocean - animals of both land and water... Animals that seemed to mourn their children, to love their mates. The selchie became a conduit for the fears and dreams of men. Thomson takes us into a lost world - an Ireland filled with travelling story tellers and old "Black Houses." An Ireland where every action had a prayer - a prayer for raking the fire in the evening, etc. An Ireland where myths and memory merged - who could say what was true and what wasn't? There is a sense that perhaps the world is changing - the magic is leaving - but there was a time, not so distant, when these strange and magical things truly did happen.
Near the end, when Thompson recounts some of the old selchie songs, he describes how the seals seemed to know the old Gaelic melodies - how they even answered and finished the ballads of singers on the beach. Did the old songs come from the seals? Did the fishermen perhaps learn their songs from the selchies? But now the songs are mostly lost. There is no back and forth between men and seals, between men and the sea. The language - the stories - are being lost.
At once sad and beautiful. Again, a strange, imaginative book, unlike anything I've read before.
April 1, 2012
The haunting record of a journey in search of the man-seal legends of the Celts. David Thomson's travels in the Hebrides and the west coast of Ireland brought him into contact with a people whose association with the sea and its fertile lore runs deep. These simple people were gifted with the most ancient storytelling arts. They told of men rescued by seals in stormy seas, of babies suckled by seal-mothers, and of men who took sea-women for wives--stories centuries-old handed down to them by their forefathers. This book seeks to brings these fascinating legends alive.
This could have been a dry textbook and, indeed, as Stewart Sanderson says in the book’s afterword, “Some of the material has been published in scholarly monographs and journals [and] more is to be found in the collections of folklore archives in Ireland, Scotland and the Scandinavian countries in particular,” but what works for me about this collection is the fact that real people tell the stories. That Thomson writes himself into the book is one thing – and a good thing – but he doesn’t simply retell the tales as A S Byatt chose to do, albeit eloquently, in her recent Ragnarok: The End of the Gods; instead we feel the presence of the various storytellers exactly as in Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya’s novel The Storyteller of Marrakesh. As Heaney puts it:
David Thomson's achievement is pre-eminently stylistic; his writing combines a feel for the "this-worldness" of his characters' lives with an understanding of the "otherworldness" they keep a place for in their consciousness.
I found this a thoroughly-engaging book, quite a delight to read, in fact, and it doesn’t feel like non-fiction in the slightest because so much of it isn’t.
You can read my full review on my blog here.
This could have been a dry textbook and, indeed, as Stewart Sanderson says in the book’s afterword, “Some of the material has been published in scholarly monographs and journals [and] more is to be found in the collections of folklore archives in Ireland, Scotland and the Scandinavian countries in particular,” but what works for me about this collection is the fact that real people tell the stories. That Thomson writes himself into the book is one thing – and a good thing – but he doesn’t simply retell the tales as A S Byatt chose to do, albeit eloquently, in her recent Ragnarok: The End of the Gods; instead we feel the presence of the various storytellers exactly as in Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya’s novel The Storyteller of Marrakesh. As Heaney puts it:
David Thomson's achievement is pre-eminently stylistic; his writing combines a feel for the "this-worldness" of his characters' lives with an understanding of the "otherworldness" they keep a place for in their consciousness.
I found this a thoroughly-engaging book, quite a delight to read, in fact, and it doesn’t feel like non-fiction in the slightest because so much of it isn’t.
You can read my full review on my blog here.
Want to read
May 1, 2009Wow- I had no idea I would ever be interested in this, but it looks fabulous.
January 28, 2021
In summer the sun slants across the garden, but the drawing-room smells of rose and of potpourri and is always cool. In the drawing-room you do not forget about the sea.
This book was not written recently and it shows (in a good way).
The People of the Sea is a form of a travelogue, or perhaps I should say it’s a collection of stories about seals and/or seal people. But despite this being a journey around Scotland and Ireland to collect stories, and despite this being inspired by an event in his childhood, this is not an introspective travel book. There is no purpose to the journey other than “I want to collect stories about seals and see them” and the reflections on similarities between seals and humans will be made by the reader, not the author.
Given all the memoir-nonfiction hybrids that I’ve seen, where the author’s experience is centered (or it’s a more academic work), this is a really refreshing change.
Each chapter of The People of the Sea starts with a deftly sketched picture of where Thomson is and who he’s with, and then the conversation just takes over. We hear about tales, some recent, some not so recent, about people and seals, why killing seals may not be great, and even stories that go beyond “seals may have human form” to “I met a seal in human form”. It’s all written down in the speaking style of that area, which makes it a bit harder to understand but extremely immersive and very lyrical.
At the end of the book, Thomson shares some songs and interesting tidbits that he read about the seals. Some of the songs come with scores, so if you can read music, you can play them and hear what they are supposed to sound like.
If you are interested in folklore and about the tales of seals and selchies, this is a book that you should be reading. I think Thomson did a really good job preserving the stories as they were told and this will be a great addition to any collection of folklore.
This review was first posted at Eustea Reads
December 24, 2019
A fascinating look at the folklore tales of Scotland and Ireland regarding selchies or seals and their relationship with people/as (half land, half sea) people.
Like Niall519 mentioned, I would have preferred it had Thomson told us a little more of selchie lore instead of the heavy reliance on reminiscence, since many of the "tales" were similar if not the same but repeated. Nevertheless, the communities in which he immerses himself, come across as friendly and conversational.
Intriguing if not a little rambling on occasion.
Like Niall519 mentioned, I would have preferred it had Thomson told us a little more of selchie lore instead of the heavy reliance on reminiscence, since many of the "tales" were similar if not the same but repeated. Nevertheless, the communities in which he immerses himself, come across as friendly and conversational.
Intriguing if not a little rambling on occasion.
October 3, 2011
One of those books that you slow down your reading pace in order to enjoy the experience. A sensitive and gentle tale exploring the simple lives of isolated Irish and Scotish communities, and the role of storytelling in their lives, now all but lost. Beautiful recording of an fragment of a dying mythological tradition.
I saw seals every day on the Cornish Coast arround the time I was finishing this book!
I saw seals every day on the Cornish Coast arround the time I was finishing this book!
June 3, 2008
If you had one shot at writing a great book, would you choose sealskin as a subject?
Maybe you should. Nah, already been done.
Maybe you should. Nah, already been done.
September 7, 2025
“ In the garden under the fir trees there were raspberries and cream and cakes and milk and lemonade. There were musical chairs and tig and a child's version without the kissing of 'Here we go gathering nuts and may', and suddenly I saw outside myself that everyone was laughing, that everyone was happy, including me. And there were chocolate biscuits and cream cookies and everything was as good as it ever had been or could be. One of the grown-up people began to organise my favourite game, which we called 'French and English', a mock fight with lines like the battle lines in the books I then read, such as Brigadier Gerard. I was chosen for the French side - the only side that pleased me. Patsy was on my side. I could defend, or pretend to defend, her. The sun shone sideways through the trees, and the sky between the pine needles overhead was blue. My sister Joan was on my side too, and the boy who lived at Clach na Mara was one of those against us. Life on this earth at that moment was arranged like heaven.
***
'The fire is gone out.'
'Oh you talk English well. Show me how you smoor the fire?
Mairi crouched still further into the wall.
'There was a prayer for that. There was a prayer for everything one did in the house and on the land. You raked the ashes over the red coals, to keep them in all night, and you made the Sign of the Cross over them and you said this prayer. I've forgotten the prayer. Mairi, do you remember the prayer?'
There was silence and we could hear the sea.
***
As soon as I came into the room, I was aware of one girl, tall, black-haired and full of health. There were many such, but she each time I saw her for a moment moving in the crowd affected me nostalgically and deeply. She was absorbed in herself and during the first dance we had together she only once looked at me and she did not speak at all. It was the custom to separate immediately after each dance, men and women walking quickly to opposite sides of the room, so there was little opportunity to talk, but later in the evening when the gale outside and the violence of the dancing and the music made the company more fluid, I went with her to the end of the room where people were standing in groups.
'Tell me your name,' I said, and she answered in so low a whisper that I could not hear. When I told her mine she nodded and said, 'I know,' but because she was grown up now and was wearing lipstick, I still did not know who she was. She wore round her neck a white ribbon which disappeared beneath her jersey as though it held a locket.
***
She glanced at me.
' And the King of Lochlann, her grandfather said, laying down his pipe against the purse, 'by him came the seals and out of them came the Clan MacCodrum of the seals, in the island of North Uist; and you will be able to know one that has the blood of the seals in his body by the rock where he sits or lies, for no matter how warm the day, and his clothes being dry upon him, when he rises, there the rock will be damp where he was and the vapour from it lifting will leave crystals of sea salt beneath the sun.' Mairi looked at me for a second again, and it is by those separate seconds when our eyes met briefly that I now remember her.
***
The sun shone suddenly between showers. A sandy beach as we drew near was splashed with red where women stood; men in close groups around each beast showed white, grey and blue like rocks. Young girls were laughing and many children running brightly dressed. With a sling tied under its belly, a rope on its horns and ten or twelve men clinging round it, each animal was manhandled to the water's edge and with much shouting and plunging, and many backward turns, was brought through the breakers until it could no longer stand. The men went up to their necks in the water fully dressed. The other end of the rope was held by one who knelt facing the shore in the stern of a curragh and as soon as the animal was well in the water he pulled back towards it until he was near enough to take hold of its head. When he had its chin resting on the stern of the curragh, his crew began to row. So the animals were towed to the Dun Aengus and there slung on board. They were not allowed to swim in case they should drown in that rough sea.
Every active man, woman and child had come to the shore that day and I stayed for three hours watching their bright and lively movements. The women wore skirts of a deep red, thick and full, almost reaching their ankles. Over their heads and shoulders, the wives and widows wore big shawls, black or brown, but the children, and the girls who were not yet married, had bright scarves of many coloured threads, crossed over their breast and under their arms and tied with a knot at the back. The men's trousers are woven at home out of wool, undyed in the weft and blue in the warp, which gives them a shadowy worn appearance. The fly buttons are not covered and the narrow trouser legs are split at the ankles, like cuffs. They wear heavy jerseys, grey or blue, knitted in an intricate pattern, and a sleeveless tweed waistcoat. Some have a blue-serge jerkin and some still wear the bawneen - an undyed jerkin almost white, for which they were so famous long ago. On their feet they wear pampooties - flatsoled shoes of uncured cowhide with the hair outside like the rivlins of the North. These grow hard and stiff if a man walks on dry land too long, but as the Aran Islander spends half his life in the sea, there is little danger of that.
When the evening came we went to the public house.
The men who had been loading the cattle came in two's and three's and sat on benches and barrels against the walls, and the seawater from their clothes settled in small pools on the stone floor. In the middle of the floor stood a bucket full of Guinness, and when everyone had arrived and found somewhere to sit, it was ladelled out in mugs by one who stood in the centre. There were only two mugs for the whole company. Each took his time to drink and passed it back when it was empty to be filled again for his neighbour.
***
Several men made ready to leave. As they stood up I noticed the dark marks left on the benches by their damp trousers. The tall man came with us. There was no rain now and under a great moon the walls so near together enclosing tiny fields made one grey hill of stone, as I looked up, but below the road towards the sea I could see the silvery grass between the walls, and the straight lazybeds, black, now sown with potatoes. Scattered houses shone whitely.“
***
'The fire is gone out.'
'Oh you talk English well. Show me how you smoor the fire?
Mairi crouched still further into the wall.
'There was a prayer for that. There was a prayer for everything one did in the house and on the land. You raked the ashes over the red coals, to keep them in all night, and you made the Sign of the Cross over them and you said this prayer. I've forgotten the prayer. Mairi, do you remember the prayer?'
There was silence and we could hear the sea.
***
As soon as I came into the room, I was aware of one girl, tall, black-haired and full of health. There were many such, but she each time I saw her for a moment moving in the crowd affected me nostalgically and deeply. She was absorbed in herself and during the first dance we had together she only once looked at me and she did not speak at all. It was the custom to separate immediately after each dance, men and women walking quickly to opposite sides of the room, so there was little opportunity to talk, but later in the evening when the gale outside and the violence of the dancing and the music made the company more fluid, I went with her to the end of the room where people were standing in groups.
'Tell me your name,' I said, and she answered in so low a whisper that I could not hear. When I told her mine she nodded and said, 'I know,' but because she was grown up now and was wearing lipstick, I still did not know who she was. She wore round her neck a white ribbon which disappeared beneath her jersey as though it held a locket.
***
She glanced at me.
' And the King of Lochlann, her grandfather said, laying down his pipe against the purse, 'by him came the seals and out of them came the Clan MacCodrum of the seals, in the island of North Uist; and you will be able to know one that has the blood of the seals in his body by the rock where he sits or lies, for no matter how warm the day, and his clothes being dry upon him, when he rises, there the rock will be damp where he was and the vapour from it lifting will leave crystals of sea salt beneath the sun.' Mairi looked at me for a second again, and it is by those separate seconds when our eyes met briefly that I now remember her.
***
The sun shone suddenly between showers. A sandy beach as we drew near was splashed with red where women stood; men in close groups around each beast showed white, grey and blue like rocks. Young girls were laughing and many children running brightly dressed. With a sling tied under its belly, a rope on its horns and ten or twelve men clinging round it, each animal was manhandled to the water's edge and with much shouting and plunging, and many backward turns, was brought through the breakers until it could no longer stand. The men went up to their necks in the water fully dressed. The other end of the rope was held by one who knelt facing the shore in the stern of a curragh and as soon as the animal was well in the water he pulled back towards it until he was near enough to take hold of its head. When he had its chin resting on the stern of the curragh, his crew began to row. So the animals were towed to the Dun Aengus and there slung on board. They were not allowed to swim in case they should drown in that rough sea.
Every active man, woman and child had come to the shore that day and I stayed for three hours watching their bright and lively movements. The women wore skirts of a deep red, thick and full, almost reaching their ankles. Over their heads and shoulders, the wives and widows wore big shawls, black or brown, but the children, and the girls who were not yet married, had bright scarves of many coloured threads, crossed over their breast and under their arms and tied with a knot at the back. The men's trousers are woven at home out of wool, undyed in the weft and blue in the warp, which gives them a shadowy worn appearance. The fly buttons are not covered and the narrow trouser legs are split at the ankles, like cuffs. They wear heavy jerseys, grey or blue, knitted in an intricate pattern, and a sleeveless tweed waistcoat. Some have a blue-serge jerkin and some still wear the bawneen - an undyed jerkin almost white, for which they were so famous long ago. On their feet they wear pampooties - flatsoled shoes of uncured cowhide with the hair outside like the rivlins of the North. These grow hard and stiff if a man walks on dry land too long, but as the Aran Islander spends half his life in the sea, there is little danger of that.
When the evening came we went to the public house.
The men who had been loading the cattle came in two's and three's and sat on benches and barrels against the walls, and the seawater from their clothes settled in small pools on the stone floor. In the middle of the floor stood a bucket full of Guinness, and when everyone had arrived and found somewhere to sit, it was ladelled out in mugs by one who stood in the centre. There were only two mugs for the whole company. Each took his time to drink and passed it back when it was empty to be filled again for his neighbour.
***
Several men made ready to leave. As they stood up I noticed the dark marks left on the benches by their damp trousers. The tall man came with us. There was no rain now and under a great moon the walls so near together enclosing tiny fields made one grey hill of stone, as I looked up, but below the road towards the sea I could see the silvery grass between the walls, and the straight lazybeds, black, now sown with potatoes. Scattered houses shone whitely.“
September 3, 2015
This is such a beautiful book, albeit melancholic in atmosphere sometimes. Written in the 1950s and accounting experiences before then, I guess a lot of this is a world long since lost. Not that I want to look at things through rose-tinted glasses. Life was tough and dangerous and for women there wasn't much doing. But at the same time it has been fascinating.
It's hard to classify this book. In some ways it's travel and childhood memoirs. It's also a study of folklore, of Irish and Scottish culture. David Thomson developed a particular interest in the celtic folklore of the selchie, seal-people, and these chapters tell of times he's come into contact with the stories. Starting in northern Scotland, at Nairn, where he spent childhood summers, and then trips to the Hebridies, Shetland, Orkney and Ireland, sitting with old sea dogs in their cottages and listening to the tales that had been handed down generation from generation. Some with the requirement of a translator, because back in those days there were still some that we're so comfortable with English and were much happier speaking Gaelic.
It's hard to classify this book. In some ways it's travel and childhood memoirs. It's also a study of folklore, of Irish and Scottish culture. David Thomson developed a particular interest in the celtic folklore of the selchie, seal-people, and these chapters tell of times he's come into contact with the stories. Starting in northern Scotland, at Nairn, where he spent childhood summers, and then trips to the Hebridies, Shetland, Orkney and Ireland, sitting with old sea dogs in their cottages and listening to the tales that had been handed down generation from generation. Some with the requirement of a translator, because back in those days there were still some that we're so comfortable with English and were much happier speaking Gaelic.
July 26, 2016
A very enjoyable read in which culture blends with magical tales. This non-fiction work delves into the world of legends and folklore surrounding seals as selkies, mermaids, and people. The explanations are passed along through wonderful stories and recollections of locals from small fishing villages.
Read
November 19, 2007really fantastic book collecting different bits of seal folklore around ireland. its full of information, but gives the feel of learning around a hearth fire rather than a dry academic approach. wish i could find more by him
February 28, 2010
Beautiful, quirky story of one man's love of the sea and the story of the selkie legend. Could just as well be under travel section, as he travels to the Hebrides and Ireland's West Coast. Lovely writing on an engaging topic.
March 17, 2010
As much about sea-Gaels and Orcadians as the marine fey and the sea they interact with, a beautiful interweaving of observation and folk-telling. See http://saltnester.livejournal.com/113...
January 28, 2008
Beautiful REAL stories about the selchies of Ireland and Scotland...
March 6, 2015
Gorgeous. Amazing. Fascinating. I love this book so much.
December 10, 2011
I loved this. The writing is exceptionally fluid. I'll probably read it again soon.
January 9, 2025
Ireland exploded into my consciousness during my undergrad. I read Seamus Heaney’s first collection of poetry within a few weeks of being introduced to Samuel Beckett in an acting class. (Yes, it was Waiting for Godot.) I was probably no more than twenty-one. I vividly remember the old book store where I used to loiter on Princess Ave, in Kingston, Ontario; you could buy a book for twenty-five or fifty cents if it hadn’t been commercially “successful.”
The collection fell open to a point where the previous owner’s attention had spent the most time. (Or perhaps had been thwarted.) It was a poem titled “The Grauballe Man,”" which was about an archeological find of an iron-age Irish man, preserved in a bog:
So, I guess I knew the book I was about to read was going to have an impact on me, when I found that yer man, Seamus, had written the introduction to David Thomson's book, The People of the Sea. (Later, the poet won the Nobel Prize for his work, in 1995, so take that profit-oriented definition of "successful.")
Thomson's book is an anthropology, a mythology, a poetry of sea and strand. It’s about an interstitial period, when it was possible for someone who had a modern framework to visit people who lived in a previous age.
And it’s about a fella’ who is mad for the seals.
The author is crazy for them. Or, let’s be honest, stories about seals and how they may be more than they seem. He visits the Hebrides in Scotland and the west coast of Ireland, and there, he learns many myths about the selkies – creatures that are born of the sea, but capable of walking on land. And more, as we learn from the multitude of storytellers he interviews.
The author frames the book with own experiences, starting as a child living in Scotland. Then as an adult, he reports on his travels. Each chapter is just that – excellent reportage. He sets the scene: where he is, and who he is with. Then the conversation that unfolds. He’s not a passive observer – he asks questions. And as time goes on and he becomes known to his subjects, they know what he wants. Seal talk.
Mind you, this is all mostly in translation. For he was writing at a time when English was a second language in these places. Most of the tales are transposed from Gaelic or Irish. But still an all, they translate well.
Now, full disclosure: I’ve been to Ireland thirteen times, so I’m particularly inclined to love this book. My grandmother was born there, or so I’m told. My first trip was in 1990, before the Republic joined the EU and the transformation of the country into the Celtic Tiger. When I was there, I walked from Kinsale to Galway. (Oh, maybe a few bits of hitchhiking when the weather was really foul or my feet were.) But mostly I did tramp my way around the coast. Always I was almost always in sight of the sea. And there were hardly any seals.
I did see some, on the Dingle peninsula, and on the Arran Islands. On Cape Clear Island, Co. Cork, I was sure I heard them speaking in their way, far below me under the cliffs, but I never saw them. (I was on Cape Clear to see if I could meet Seamus Heaney, who had a cottage on the island, where they were starting an Irish summer school, but alas, I missed him by a few days.) I was more certain I saw fairies. A word of advice, don’t ask about the fairies in a pub there. Irish thought about it varies, of course, but there's still discomfort.
But even though there is more than thirty years distance from when Thomson wrote the book and when I first went to the west coast of Ireland, there’s no question in my mind: he’s captured the essence of their speech and spritit. He’s found a way to translate their sense of wonder at the edge of the world.
It's a genuine reminder to be curious about the marvels around us. Always.
The collection fell open to a point where the previous owner’s attention had spent the most time. (Or perhaps had been thwarted.) It was a poem titled “The Grauballe Man,”" which was about an archeological find of an iron-age Irish man, preserved in a bog:
As if he had been poured
in tar, he lies
on a pillow of turf
and seems to weep
the black river of himself.
So, I guess I knew the book I was about to read was going to have an impact on me, when I found that yer man, Seamus, had written the introduction to David Thomson's book, The People of the Sea. (Later, the poet won the Nobel Prize for his work, in 1995, so take that profit-oriented definition of "successful.")
Thomson's book is an anthropology, a mythology, a poetry of sea and strand. It’s about an interstitial period, when it was possible for someone who had a modern framework to visit people who lived in a previous age.
And it’s about a fella’ who is mad for the seals.
The author is crazy for them. Or, let’s be honest, stories about seals and how they may be more than they seem. He visits the Hebrides in Scotland and the west coast of Ireland, and there, he learns many myths about the selkies – creatures that are born of the sea, but capable of walking on land. And more, as we learn from the multitude of storytellers he interviews.
The author frames the book with own experiences, starting as a child living in Scotland. Then as an adult, he reports on his travels. Each chapter is just that – excellent reportage. He sets the scene: where he is, and who he is with. Then the conversation that unfolds. He’s not a passive observer – he asks questions. And as time goes on and he becomes known to his subjects, they know what he wants. Seal talk.
Mind you, this is all mostly in translation. For he was writing at a time when English was a second language in these places. Most of the tales are transposed from Gaelic or Irish. But still an all, they translate well.
Now, full disclosure: I’ve been to Ireland thirteen times, so I’m particularly inclined to love this book. My grandmother was born there, or so I’m told. My first trip was in 1990, before the Republic joined the EU and the transformation of the country into the Celtic Tiger. When I was there, I walked from Kinsale to Galway. (Oh, maybe a few bits of hitchhiking when the weather was really foul or my feet were.) But mostly I did tramp my way around the coast. Always I was almost always in sight of the sea. And there were hardly any seals.
I did see some, on the Dingle peninsula, and on the Arran Islands. On Cape Clear Island, Co. Cork, I was sure I heard them speaking in their way, far below me under the cliffs, but I never saw them. (I was on Cape Clear to see if I could meet Seamus Heaney, who had a cottage on the island, where they were starting an Irish summer school, but alas, I missed him by a few days.) I was more certain I saw fairies. A word of advice, don’t ask about the fairies in a pub there. Irish thought about it varies, of course, but there's still discomfort.
But even though there is more than thirty years distance from when Thomson wrote the book and when I first went to the west coast of Ireland, there’s no question in my mind: he’s captured the essence of their speech and spritit. He’s found a way to translate their sense of wonder at the edge of the world.
It's a genuine reminder to be curious about the marvels around us. Always.
September 27, 2020
This one is rather difficult to define – it is neither a study in folklore, a straightforward collection of myths and legends, a memoir, a travel narrative nor a nature book. It’s mostly a mix of all of these things, sprinkled with what I assume might be some fiction too (you can’t be certain, but with a book that refuses to be defined, the author is free to do pretty much what he or she wants to enhance the narrative).
Thomson acquires an interest in selchies – mythical creatures that take the form of grey seals and can transform into humans – at an early age, and that interest (named an obsession by himself) stays with him throughout his adult life. He undertakes to seek out the stories of selchies that for many years were told and believed on the remote sea coasts of the Scottish Isles and the west of Ireland, and the result of his travels is this book.
The stories he discovers are full of magic, both in telling and in content. Thomson skilfully recreates real settings and landscapes that transport you and draw you fully into the legends that accompany them – you start to feel a sense of awe for the seal, even if your rational mind knows it is just a seal, nothing more. You also feel affection for the people that live in this book. The characters telling the stories are unique and a dying kind – the younger generations are seduced and enlightened by the modern world, removing themselves more and more from the stories and traditions of their origins. A young girl calls the myths lies, but Thomson says gently that he cares not whether they are lies or truths, he just “likes to hear them; that’s all.” Which is, to some extent, the truth that forms the basis of our love for stories.
If you are at all into folklore, this one is for you. It’s a slow book, and it won’t provide you with much background information – it’s not in the least academic, and for all the memoirish elements it does have, this book is not about the author either. The stories are front and centre and are really the entire point of this book. I enjoyed it immensely.
/NK
Thomson acquires an interest in selchies – mythical creatures that take the form of grey seals and can transform into humans – at an early age, and that interest (named an obsession by himself) stays with him throughout his adult life. He undertakes to seek out the stories of selchies that for many years were told and believed on the remote sea coasts of the Scottish Isles and the west of Ireland, and the result of his travels is this book.
The stories he discovers are full of magic, both in telling and in content. Thomson skilfully recreates real settings and landscapes that transport you and draw you fully into the legends that accompany them – you start to feel a sense of awe for the seal, even if your rational mind knows it is just a seal, nothing more. You also feel affection for the people that live in this book. The characters telling the stories are unique and a dying kind – the younger generations are seduced and enlightened by the modern world, removing themselves more and more from the stories and traditions of their origins. A young girl calls the myths lies, but Thomson says gently that he cares not whether they are lies or truths, he just “likes to hear them; that’s all.” Which is, to some extent, the truth that forms the basis of our love for stories.
If you are at all into folklore, this one is for you. It’s a slow book, and it won’t provide you with much background information – it’s not in the least academic, and for all the memoirish elements it does have, this book is not about the author either. The stories are front and centre and are really the entire point of this book. I enjoyed it immensely.
/NK
May 12, 2020
An enjoyable book, structured as reminiscences and retellings of stories from the west coasts of Scotland and Ireland (and Orkneys) that focus on the interactions of seals as magical or at least also human beings; their interactions with humans. The author has a warm sympathy for human societies now vanished, and for seals, and writes well. As someone who lived years in those societies, though, he does sometimes indulge in some fey mush, as well.
"Fey mush"? It is a question of the style, though that style arises from the person.
Though it will not be obvious to a reader who doesn't know the communities and stories, Thomson is too present in the book. Not overtly, and not so much in the stories themselves, but in the descriptions of his travels and interactions, where his identity as a member of a superior society (British middle class) traveling among the natives -- in this case picturesque "natural" Gaels -- and also his "personality", flavor the interactions that he describes in sometimes uncomfortable ways. I'm thinking of the encounters with the Hebridean girl; and various children, in particular. (These encounters are illuminated by his other book (Woodbrook House?). At the risk of being an idiot, I might say that Thomson as a person was an outsider who wanted very much to be part of the warm close human communities that he describes here, but that something in him prevented that. I'm probably overstating it, and, again, it won't be an issue to most readers.
By the way, versions of most of the Mayo stories can be found in the book The Living Landscape: Kilgalligan, County Mayo (1975).
"Fey mush"? It is a question of the style, though that style arises from the person.
Though it will not be obvious to a reader who doesn't know the communities and stories, Thomson is too present in the book. Not overtly, and not so much in the stories themselves, but in the descriptions of his travels and interactions, where his identity as a member of a superior society (British middle class) traveling among the natives -- in this case picturesque "natural" Gaels -- and also his "personality", flavor the interactions that he describes in sometimes uncomfortable ways. I'm thinking of the encounters with the Hebridean girl; and various children, in particular. (These encounters are illuminated by his other book (Woodbrook House?). At the risk of being an idiot, I might say that Thomson as a person was an outsider who wanted very much to be part of the warm close human communities that he describes here, but that something in him prevented that. I'm probably overstating it, and, again, it won't be an issue to most readers.
By the way, versions of most of the Mayo stories can be found in the book The Living Landscape: Kilgalligan, County Mayo (1975).
October 13, 2019
I've been very slowly reading this book for almost two years now, not because it's long or difficult, but simply because I didn't want it to end. It's a rare and beautiful talent that can bring forth an entire culture and a way of life right before it disappears altogether in to modernity. Thomson wrote this book in 1954, his account of travels in the remote sea coasts of the Scottish Isles and Ireland in search of legends of the selchies [or selkies], mythological creatures in the form of seals that can transform into humans. He gathers and pays homage to these stories, legends and folktales, talking to old people and fishermen and sea village dwellers, often reproducing the cadences and rhythms of the way they use language as they tell their stories.
Mostly the author just respectfully listens, asking an occasional question, wandering desolate landscapes where he is always open to tracking down another tale. Very often he is taken in by isolated residents who enjoy providing hospitality . The harsh environment seems to lend itself to something close to belief in these people. There are stories of seals rescuing seamen in storms, seal-wives and husbands, a magical symbiosis between humans and seals that filtered through their daily lives and beliefs. Thomson's beautiful prose and quiet selection of detail make him the very best kind of storyteller and folklorist. I am very thankful that Thomson was able to capture this fascinating sense of the world before it became lost to us forever.
Mostly the author just respectfully listens, asking an occasional question, wandering desolate landscapes where he is always open to tracking down another tale. Very often he is taken in by isolated residents who enjoy providing hospitality . The harsh environment seems to lend itself to something close to belief in these people. There are stories of seals rescuing seamen in storms, seal-wives and husbands, a magical symbiosis between humans and seals that filtered through their daily lives and beliefs. Thomson's beautiful prose and quiet selection of detail make him the very best kind of storyteller and folklorist. I am very thankful that Thomson was able to capture this fascinating sense of the world before it became lost to us forever.
June 25, 2018
I picked this up at a used bookstore on a whim and I'm so happy I did. I LOVED it. I'd been interested in selkie stories ever since I saw The Secret of Roan Inish. This book is basically an account of the author wandering around Ireland and Scotland for several years listening to people tell seal stories. It was just so evocative and the stories were so gripping... would that we still had such a strong oral storytelling tradition in our culture today. I am itching to visit the Hebrides now. BONUS: This book taught me about the incredible beachgoing, seaweed-eating sheep of North Ronaldsay. For real.
August 8, 2021
A dreamy, poetic book -- perfect for anyone who is enchanted with tales and legends of selkies. The author writes about his own travels in the 1950s to Ireland and Scotland and especially to the isles where the experience with seals and the belief in selkies is most vivid. The stories are embedded in the author's descriptions of his travels and visits with people. The tales are told the way he heard them -- complete with both conviction and doubt. The only downside is that if you're looking for specific stories or wanting to go back to find a particular story, it won't be easy to find. Still, highly recommended for this engaging topic.
January 20, 2023
A gorgeous, gorgeous book, one that I hope will stay in my mind’s ear forever. David Thomson, a BBC journalist, travelled round the coasts of Ireland and Scotland at various points between the late 1940s and 1979, in search of lore about the grey seal. He met fishermen, farmers, children and travellers, and (apparently with some help from folklore archives) channels their voices in this book, showing how selkie tales at that time had a strong gravitational pull for the coastal folk, surfacing their longings — for love, to be away from home, to be back at home.
February 8, 2017
Simply a collection of the selchie tales the author was able to collect travelling around Scotland and Ireland, all of them charming and -- to the tellers -- often 100% true. I was startled to read that one of the tellers of these tales takes it as a fact that (among others) a family named Coneely is believed to have been descended from a selchie -- the plot of the movie THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH, presented as fiction. Apparently if you're an Irishman, it's just a fact. This was a great read.
November 5, 2017
A nice collection of folk tales, tied together in a narrative that is both charming and frustrating. On one hand it gives a real feeling of the hospitality of remote fishing communities, the likes of which are probably all but gone these days, but there are numerous detours along the way, some of which interrupt the flow.
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