Hello and welcome to Stories of Scotland. We're in this fireside folklore episode. We are setting sail in search of the wonderful Selke. I'm Jenny, an out-of-order lighthouse.

And I'm Annie, an impressive, modern, centrally controlled automatic light bulb.

Oh, how fortuitous that we should come together.

It's a bit awkward, really, because I feel like I might be superseding you, Jenny.

I think any light is better than no light when it comes to the coastline.

True, true.

Something tells me that we won't need to use our light to search too hard

because the beaches and coves of Scotland are saturated with rich Selkeye lore. The Selke is one of the most well-known of

Scottish mythological creatures. For generations, tales were told of these shape-shifting beings.

It's really one of the favourite stories to be told around the smouldering fire of the Cayley House.

Selkays are said to live in the sea as seals, but they are not confined to the water,

for Selkays are able to remove their soft seal skin and walk upon the land in human form.

The Selke's skin is incredibly powerful, and if taken from the Selke whilst they're on

land, they cannot return to the ocean.

I'm feeling really in a Selky mood today because last night I was swimming in the Murray Firth

and a curious wee seal came over to say hello. She was looking at me with

her big dark eyes and I said, oh hello, lovely seal. But I felt we came to a real understanding.

I saw her, she saw me, it was beautiful. How lovely. Many sulky stories revolve around quite a strange power dynamic that happens when a human,

usually a fisherman, steals a selky skin. The lower goes that the selky skin is what allows

the selky to transform from a human into a seal. So they strip off their selky skin and they've got their

human inside, but then they put on the skin like a cloak almost to become a seal. I always saw

them wiggling into it like a sleeping bag, you know, that's zipped up and you got to like get your

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