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Genuine Voices
The People of the Sea:
A Journey in Search of the Seal Legend
by David Thomson.
Introduction by Seamus Heaney. Decorations by Jonathan Heale.
Counterpoint, 2000. 214 plus xxiv pages.
Reviewed by Michael Wilt
Folk songs introduced me to the seal legends of Scotland and Ireland:
I am a man upon the land
I am a selchie in the sea;
And when I'm far from every strand,
My dwelling is in the Sule Skerry.
Traditional ballads like "The Great Selchie of the Sule Skerry" were supplemented by newly written lyrics, by authors such as Jane Yolen, who picked up the mystical, transformational aspects of the selchie tales and made from them songs of yearning for home. In a typical story, a selchie comes to land and sheds her sealskin to reveal her woman-nature. A passing man steals and hides her sealskin, preventing her return to the sea and taking her as his wife. Many years pass, in which the selchie woman is a devoted wife and mother; but then, she finds the sealskin, and despite her love for her husband and her children, she cannot resist the call of the sea. She dons her sealskin and goes back to the sea, but never ventures too far from her human husband and children, always there to protect them from the dangers of the sea.
In 1994 John Sayles wrote and directed The Secret of Roan Inish. Set in Ireland, the film tells a story that is at once lovely, enchanting, and down-to-earth. The seals of Roan Inish restore a lost child to a family from the island; they restore, too, the sense of balance and bargain between the land, the sea, and the humans who take their living from nature. The story is complete with a selchie woman, whose place in the family's genealogy has created a generations-long bond between the family and the seals. Roan Inish is a favorite of mine, a film I return to regularly.
Long before folk songs and Roan Inish had made the seal legends live for me, David Thomson wrote The People of the Sea. First published in 1954, this wonderfully unclassifiable book is an account of Thomson's travels on the west coast of Ireland, the east coast of Scotland, and the Hebrides, where he encountered people in pubs and kitchens, at dances and on beaches, who had something to say about the seals, the people of the sea. The result is part travelogue and memoir, part folklore, part exploration of the melding of pre-christian legends and traditions with the newer Christian elements.
Thomson (1914 - 1988) is a keen listener and observer who never intrudes on his hosts. As Seamus Heaney says in his introduction to Counterpoint's new edition of the book:
The sweetness and intimacy of David Thomson's imagination mean that he is able to bring us very close to that vanished world. His complete at-homeness in the crofts and cabins and "Black Houses" he entered, his ability to be all ear and eye, allow the reader access to the otherness of the minds and manners of those he met. Total respect, intuitive understanding, perfect grace and perfect pitch -- possessed of such gifts, he was never regarded as an intruder.
The qualities that made Thomson a perfect guest, together with his downright poetic gifts, make him the reader's perfect host. He draws us with ease into the places and times to which his own hosts drew him. Whether we are hearing a local legend about the seals who saved the lives of the Cregan men, or learning about the blessing and smooring of the fire at night, or seeing our first "Virgin Mary's bean," we are witnesses to a world that is both here and gone, both lost and found.
There is much folklore in The People of the Sea, and the book can be easily enjoyed for the stories that Thomson's acquaintances tell. Those acquaintances themselves, though, are the author's real focus. They carry and share these stories -- mere children's tales, some might say -- with a natural grace that is rarely seen at the start of the twenty-first century, when even "reality" is staged and rehearsed. Listen, and be refreshed by spontaneous and genuine voices.
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