Home   News   Article

A sealskin legend – and a grave that never goes dry


By Contributor

Easier access to your trusted, local news. Subscribe to a digital package and support local news publishing.



Click here to sign up to our free newsletters!

THE REAL MACKAY: By Dan Mackay

The selkie grave in Olrig cemetery, close to Castletown.
The selkie grave in Olrig cemetery, close to Castletown.

A sealskin is found lying on the rocks. A lost pelt…

Later a woman is found on the shore. Her naked body is lifted to a nearby croft house.

There is no news of any recent shipwreck. The victim, obviously a foreigner, speaks in a strange tongue. They name her Marina.

She is shy and socially awkward but does her best to adapt to her new life. The son of the croft house takes her in marriage but, before that, a son is born out of wedlock. The neighbouring community disapproves.

For all their efforts things don’t work out and the marriage quickly goes cold. But life on the land and at sea continues as each season passes into the other and the years roll by.

The child brings them a shared joy but he is a clumsy boy. He seems moody and at times almost morose. In the school playground he grows detached and remote from the other children. Like his mother he is restless and never quite fits in.

It is noted that the sea has a strange hold on them. They seem to be looking out to distant horizons – always scanning the open waters but never seeming to find what they are searching for.

And then one day after many years the pelt, long forgotten where it had been stored high up in the rafters of the byre, is rediscovered. It is brought into the house as a bed cover or to soften the hard-backed fireside chair. None can deny it is a decorative item. But is presence changes everything, and very mysteriously both Marina and the sealskin disappear.

An emptiness sets in about the old croft. The boy’s father loses interest in the fishing. His health deteriorates and one morning he is found in his bed, his body blue and unresponsive.

They seem to be looking out to distant horizons – always scanning the open waters, never seeming to find what they are searching for.

By now the boy seems lost and has no-one or nothing to turn to except his books. They had been his sole escapist comfort and he had read extensively. He sells the croft and his father’s old boat and, with what money he has, embarks on his travels. Life takes him on a strange migration. He is drawn to the old seminaries and their ancient libraries.

There one day he discovers an aged Celtic manuscript. It weaves a curious account of theology and mythology. A strange interaction of religious fundamentalism with references to supernatural metamorphoses…

What began in a garden led to a Fall in which the time-honoured distinctions between man and beast fall from grace. It is in northern climes, especially (he has read), that unions between young men and the shy cold creatures washed ashore – the basking seals – bear fruit and have begotten offspring.

The account, from an ancient tract which decried a stained radiance, seemed to offer the boy an explanation of sorts. But it made him wonder what other restraints mankind had shed. And continues to cast asunder…

And so to the selkie grave in Olrig cemetery. For they did not all return to the open waters. And who is to say that none of these unions had happy endings?

There is no name and no inscription. The grave itself is said never to go dry… How was this last resting place mourned, I wonder? And by whom?

Today there are some signs of compassion: an everlasting flower, sea pinks I think (albeit of the plastic variety) and a few shells brought up from the shore. And, if you listen carefully, the sound of the waves on the nearby Dunnet sands seem to lap the very gravestones themselves. I’d like to think so.

  • This article is inspired by a visit to Olrig graveyard and a George Mackay Brown short story called Sealskin.

Do you want to respond to this article? If so, click here to submit your thoughts and they may be published in print.



This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies - Learn More