> Maddy Prior > Songs > Great Silkie of Sules Skerry
> June Tabor > Songs > The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry

Great Silkie of Sules Skerry

[ Roud 197 ; Child 113 ; Ballad Index C113 ; trad.]

Ray Fisher's sang The Silkie of Sul Skerry in 1972 on her album The Bonny Birdy.

Maddy Prior sang Great Silkie of Sules Skerry in 1999 on her album Ravenchild; this track was later included on the Park Records anthology Women in Folk and on the Maddy Prior anthology Collections: A Very Best of 1995 to 2005. Maddy Prior commented in the original album's notes:

This eerie ballad from the Shetland isles harks back to the land's Scandinavian roots. It is a shape-shifting story of a seal / man whose fate is told with great simplicity and grace.

Hannah James learned this song from Mary Macmaster at the Folkworks Summer School 1999 and recorded it with Kerfuffle in 2004 for their second album, K2.

June Tabor sang The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry in 2011 on her Topic album Ashore.

See also Barbara Dickson's version of Sule Skerry on her anthology For the Record.

Lyrics

Maddy Prior sings Great Silkie of Sules Skerry

An earthly nourris sits and sings
And aye she sings “Ba lily wain
And little ken I my bairn's father
Far less the land that he dwells in”

Then one arose at her bedfoot
And a grumbly guest I'm sure was he
Saying here am I, thy bairn's father
Although I be not comely

I am a man upon the land
I am a silkie on the sea
And when I'm far and far frae land
My home it is in Sules Skerry

And he has ta'en a purse of gold
And he has placed it upon her knee
Saying give to me my little young son
And take thee up thy nurse's fee

And it shall come tae pass on a summer's day
When the sun shines bright on every stone
I'll come and fetch my little young son
And teach him how to swim the foam

And you, you shall marry a pround gunner
And a proud gunner I'm sure he'll be
But the very first shot that e'er he shoots
He'll kill both my young son and me.