The Selkie girl

Duration: 14

Year Published: 1991

Creator: Weston Woods

Format: 16mm

Color: Color

Sound: sound

Description: The coasts and islands of Scotland and Ireland provide the setting and source for this iconographic adaptation of an ancient legend. Donallan lived a solitary existence by the sea, with only a dog and a cat for companionship. One spring morning, while collecting seaweed by the shore, the young man espied three comely sea maidens, one blonde, one redhead, one raven-tressed, sunning themselves upon a rock. When Angus the dog growled, the startled women plunged into the sea becoming selkies or seals. Intent on having the blonde selkie girl for his wife, Donallan conferred with the old man, Thomas, who reluctantly told him that in order to win his beloved, he must return the following spring, retrieve her sealskin bundle and keep it hidden. Following Thomas' instructions, Donallan secured the hand of Mairi who eventually bore him five children, three girls and two boys. Only her daughter Kate Ann noticed the sadness with which her mother gazed at the sea. One day, Mairi's son James discovered the hiding place of the sealskin bundle enabling Mairi to return to her natural habitat. Taking her children to the water's edge, Mairi revealed that she was taken from her marine home against her will and that she was mother to five other offspring who live in the deep. Bidding her children farewell, Mairi promised to protect their fishing boat in rough seas and bestow upon them bounteous catches. For in the end, a wild creature will always go back to the wild.