Celtic Selkie Coloring Pages
Selkies are seals who can slip out of their skins and walk around as people. The stories come from Scotland, Ireland and the Faroe Islands, and most of them are a little sad and very beautiful. I spent six months living in Newfoundland and after watching the fog roll in on many mornings, I like to imagine that a few selkies followed the settlers across the Atlantic and now bob around off the coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
Selkie Maidens and Their Sealskins
Every selkie story hinges on that sealskin, so these three pages show a selkie holding on to hers. One is cartoon style and easy to color, and the other two are more detailed. Soft greys and silvers work well for the sealskin, with a darker shade along the back so it looks sleek and wet.
Selkies from the Celtic Coasts
These selkies come from the rocky shores of Ireland and Scotland, where the sea is cold, the weather changes by the hour and a seal looking back at you from the waves might be more than a seal. Try sea blues and greens for the water, and leave a little white paper for the foam.
Scotland's islands are where most selkie stories began, so here are three more from there.
More Selkies
The Selkie Wife
Selkie stories are told all over the northern seas, but Scotland has the most, especially the Orkney and Shetland Islands. Ireland and the Faroe Islands have seal-folk tales too, which is why selkies turn up all over the Celtic world. The details change from one teller to the next, but the idea stays the same: a seal who can shed her skin, and a person who has to decide what to do with it. If you like shape-shifting water creatures, the kelpie is another one from the same cold waters.
On certain bright nights, the seals of the northern seas are said to haul themselves onto a quiet beach and slip right out of their skins. Out steps a crowd of dark-eyed people with long wet hair, who dance on the sand until the moon starts to sink, leaving their sealskins folded on the rocks like coats at a party. A fisherman walking home late with his nets once crept close enough to watch, and he'd never seen anything so lovely in his life. He wanted to keep hold of it, so he picked up one of the sealskins and tucked it inside his coat. When the dancing ended, the others pulled on their skins and splashed off into the dark water, but one young woman searched the rocks again and again, and her skin was nowhere to be found.
Without her skin she couldn't go back to the sea, so the fisherman offered her a warm cottage and a kind word, and in time they married. She was a good wife and a loving mother who sang over the cradle in a language nobody in the village quite knew, but every evening she walked down to the shore and stood looking at the waves while the seals bobbed up to look back at her. The fisherman had hidden her skin well, up in the thatch or inside a locked chest, depending on who's telling it. But children find everything, and one day his youngest pulled out a soft grey bundle and carried it to her mother to ask what it was. The selkie knew at once. She hugged each of her children, walked down to the water with the skin over her arm, and was gone before supper. In some versions she's never seen again, but the fisherman's children always swore a seal watched over them whenever they played in the shallows, close enough to keep an eye on them, the way a parent watches from the porch.